Welcome to my Studio Ghibli food rant (slash why you keep fucking up trying to recreate it in other anime)

people talk abt how studio ghibli animates food perfectly, but every attempt to recreate that style falls flat imo. and I feel like the reason is because people get too caught up on the "perfect" part and forget the fact its still food????

Like. ok. Howl's eggs and bacon are iconic, but actually look at them for a second. The bacon bubbles with grease. The eggs are wobbly imperfect circles that overlap and slide to the side of the pan. It's the platonic ideal of food, but it also looks like real food you could actually put in your mouth. It's better for its imperfections because it reminds you of the flavor of the real, actual bacon you've eaten, then coupled with the amazing art and animation. Studio Ghibli paints the mundane as beautiful and it makes the magic hit even harder. It's not even particularly detailed bacon and eggs either in terms of the actual food, but the details around it give it that extra flair.

I think the colors are really important as well and honestly could be their own post- the bacon is just slightly warmer than actual bacon, the eggs are just a tiny bit whiter/more opaque. That's where the fantasy part comes in and brings out the charm. A lot of the food in Studio Ghibli is just a liiittle bit warmer in tone than it is in real life, which also helps it come across as cozy and good feeling.

Kiki's herring pie is another example of this too !! Look at the slightly burnt edges, the way the fish has changed shape with the baking and how the edges are a tiny bit uneven. It's just realistic enough to remind you of what herring pie tastes like, but then brings it up another level with the subtle ways the food is exemplified, like the rich color of the brown and tan of the crevices. It's really subtle but effective.

But then when we look at other foods people like to call "anime food porn" (hate that phrase but whatever), it looks,,, kind of off???

I think the reason stuff like the images above fail to capture the same effect is because they think all the love is in how you animate the food itself and not the details around it. Like yeah that's some super well rendered bacon, but it doesn't sit on the plate quite right. The tomatoes are so shiny and red they actually stop looking like tomatoes and just become weird. It looks posed and staged, and it reminds me more of an advertisement than something a real person would make. It's also really apparent when you look closer that most of this food is almost unidentifiable??? Genuinely I have no idea what the yellow and golden blobs are supposed to be besides maybe home fries and eggs???? maybe mashed potatoes?????? The same and more can be said about the second image, I feel like my point is pretty clear here.

Like I said, the actual food isn't always *that* detailed in Studio Ghibli (excluding Kiki's pie honestly bc goddamn), but it's the way it feels so real and at the same time like the platonic ideal of food. Trying to recreate Ghibli food by only caring about the food loses the forest for the trees.