Most Studio Ghibli movies are family-friendly affairs. However, even in the cutest adventures, some pieces of horrific content can traumatize viewers. Hayao Miyazaki, one of the founders of the studio and the core director behind most of these movies, seems to know what he is doing. His movies are some of the most breathtaking visually, but they can also be quite disturbing at times.
One cannot simply go through life without witnessing something scary and Miyazaki knows this in his Studio Ghibli movies. It's all a part of growing up. These examples are a bit more extreme than being frightened by a barking dog at a young age though. There will be spoilers for Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Spirited Away, Ponyo, and Princess Mononoke.
1 Kushana’s Bug-Maimed Body
Kushana is a character from Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, which was the second movie that Hayao Miyazaki directed. It directly preceded the formation of Studio Ghibli but has since been grandfathered in along with The Castle of Cagliostro. At first, this movie wants viewers to believe the giant alien bugs are the monsters, but humanity turns out to be the biggest monster of them all. It’s a tired trope at this point in post-apocalyptic content, but at the time, it was revolutionary.
Kushana then is revealed to be the worst human among the bunch. She wears big, thick armor in the movie, which at first seems normal. She then reveals there is nothing underneath a good portion of the armor thanks to the bugs. She even makes a remark that only her future husband will know how far gone her body truly is. It’s one of those lines that will stick with viewers long after the movie wraps up. What parts was she talking about?
2 The God Warrior’s Melting Body
There is another horrific part of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind that is more explicitly shown on screen. Kushana is obsessed with awakening an ancient being known as the God Warrior. When she does, Kushana rushes its formation so that when this behemoth starts to march around, its flesh is falling off of its body. It looks like lava as it flows from body to ground in seconds.
It is reminiscent of the scene in Attack on Titan when Rod Reiss becomes that giant Titan that can only support itself by crawling on the ground. As he does, parts of his body start to peel off. Now, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind isn’t as gory as Attack on Titan but the imagery is enough to make some viewers turn away in disgust.
3 Chihiro’s Parents Turning Into Pigs
Spirited Away is one of the most beloved Studio Ghibli movies, and, on the surface, has less frightening things in it. However, this movie is anything but normal and is secretly one of the most horrifying anime movies if one thinks enough about it. The movie follows Chihiro and her parents on moving day. They get lost on the way to their new home and her parents decide to get out and explore.
This leads them to an abandoned amusement park wherein they find a spread of food. Realistically, a person would be suspicious of this food but not Chihiro’s parents. They eat so much that they start to turn into pigs. At first, they look like human hybrids but eventually, they turn into the four-legged animal proper. Imagine having to witness that as a child in the middle of nowhere. Not only that, but Chihiro has to go to a ghost-filled hotel to find a way to free them of this curse.
4 The Cursed Tentacles
Princess Mononoke is, without a doubt, Hayao Miyazaki's most action-packed movie and his most mature overall. There is plenty of fighting and the director does not skip out on the blood. It’s wild that he never did another movie like this again, but maybe the extreme violence was too much even for him.
There is a curse in the movie that is shown through tentacles. These tentacles infect two of the elders of the Boar clan, Nago and Okkoto. Their infectious depiction is one of the most cringe-worthy in the movie as the tentacles burst out all over, including their eyeballs. Ashitaka and San get some tentacle action as well, which might be a bit more frightening to audiences since they can more readily imagine themselves getting afflicted as humans.
5 The Forest Spirit
The horror show in Princess Mononoke is not done yet because there is a lot of head trauma to discuss. The creepiest decapitation happens when Lady Eboshi lobs off the Forest Spirit’s head with an arrow. The Forest Spirit is supposed to be depicted as a gentle, deer-like creature. However, its face is horrifically unsettling even before it gets blasted off.
Another head that gets chopped off in Princess Mononoke is Moro’s. Even after Moro dies, the giant wolf head somehow crawls along the ground and is able to bite Lady Eboshi’s arm off in one clean swipe. The way characters lose limbs in this movie is out of this world. It’s like they are made out of paper, but paper that bleeds.
6 Ponyo’s Chicken Form
Ponyo is a great anime movie that is ideal for people of all ages, technically. It’s about a young boy, Sosuke, who finds a goldfish in the sea one day. He starts to feed it ham and accidentally, some of his blood. That is enough to help the titular Ponyo get enough magic to transform into a little girl.
As Ponyo starts to figure out how to use magic, her human girl form looks more like a cross between a frog and a chicken. It is the definition of body horror as this little girl is trapped in the most unsettling body one can imagine. Ponyo not being bothered by it is perhaps more frightening though. She has some obsessive tendencies toward Sosuke in the movie. It would be easy to piece parts of this movie together to make a horror movie or at least the trailer for one.