Best Studio Ghibli films: From Spirited Away to Princess Mononoke

Probably the most adult-orientated film in Ghibli's vast canon, Only Yesterday tackles the curse of nostalgia and memory and why we look back at the past. Animated with a more realistic style than other Ghibli productions, the human characters are more expressive, which makes Only Yesterday that bit more melancholy.

A broad sci-fi adventure, Nausicaä is influenced by Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and Frank Herbert's Dune with its story of a princess in a post-nuclear world in a struggle against a kingdom with genocidal intent. Like much of Miyazaki's work, Nausicaä was interested in exploring the evils of war and the need to protect the environment with the central character leading people to have a better respect for nature.

Yes, the one with a fighter pilot pig. Porco Rosso is set after the First World War and follows the fighter pilot of its title who has become a bounty hunter in this film that is an homage to aviation, a rebuttal to authoritarianism and also the closest Miyazaki has come to making a Hollywood film. With its Italian setting, it's fascinating to see Miyazaki animate Europe and the clear sense of location he gives the film.

An environmentalist treatise, Princess Mononoke follows the Emishi people as they come under attack from demons and humans who wish to use forest resources for mining. The demons are a not too subtle metaphor for corporate interests wishing to strip natural resources from the Earth. The US DVD release is widely credited with massively increasing Ghibli's visibility in the US.

Only Studio Ghibli could get away with making a film about a goldfish princess. A (very) loose retelling of The Little Mermaid, the goldfish is the Ponyo of the title who longs to experience life on land and serves as a more accessible gateway into the world of Miyazaki and Japanese animation. Dreamlike and lightly charming, Ponyo skews younger than Miyazaki's later work but is no less substantial.

Influenced by Miyazaki's ardent pacifism and more directly by his opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the US and their allies, Howl's Moving Castle is a rage against war and the sadism it promotes. The story follows a young milliner, who after being cursed by a witch, becomes entangled with Howl (amusingly voiced by Christian Bale in the dubbed version), a wizard in one of Miyazaki's darkest tales that tackles war, compassion and old age.

A semi-autobiographical account of the life of Jiro Horikoshi, a chief engineer for Mitsubishi who designed the planes used by Japan in the Second World War, The Wind Rises is a reckoning of one's creation being used for devastation. Themed centrally on the destruction of beauty, The Wind Rises is a fully realised masterpiece and was originally intended to be Miyazaki's swansong.

Recently seen on stage in London, My Neighbour Totoro revolves around two girls who become friends with the spirits (Totoros) that live by their new home. One of the warmest Ghibli productions and more outwardly child friendly than, say, Spirited Away, you've not lived until you've seen the bus that is actually a cat.

The film that largely broke Studio Ghibli into the Western mainstream, the Oscar-winning Spirited Away took cues from the terrifyingly surreal Alice in Wonderland with its imaginative story that tapped into fears of parental abandonment. The epoch of Hayao Miyazaki's work – boys become dragons, spirits have baths and parents are turned into pigs – it is not the most accessible work in the Ghibli canon but the best.