Studio Ghibli selected anime director Mamoru Hosada to direct “Howl’s Moving Castle,” though most of their studio was already committed to “Spirited Away.” Hosada secured his own animation team, but time and money constraints eventually forced him to abandon the film, leaving him riddled with guilt for having “betrayed” his animators.

After proving himself to studio heads Hayao Miyazake and Isao Takahata, Sunao Katabuchi was chosen to direct "Kiki's Delivery Service.” The film’s ambitions and expenses left investors uninterested “unless Miyazaki directed [the film] himself,” says Animation Obsessive, and Katabuchi eventually found another home at Studio 4C.

During Hiromasa Yonebayashi's time at Ghibli, he directed two films, "The Secret World of Arietty" and "When Marnie Was There." After “Marnie” in 2014 and with the studio heads either retired or about to be, Yonebayashi realized that he could no longer fulfill his ambitions at the studio, so he quit and founded Studio Ponoc with producer Yoshiaki Nishimura.

Miyazaki and Takahata fought to create an environment where the work of artists was respected, but as Ghibli's films were difficult and time-consuming to make, their best intentions were forgotten. It should also be noted that Ghibli’s producers hired outside directors for the studio to survive, such as would-be successors Yoshifumi Kondo and Tomomi Mochizuki.

Mochizuki was hospitalized while directing "Ocean Waves," and Kondo died of an aneurysm in 1998. Producer Toshio Suzuki claims in his biography that Takahata overworked Kondo, while former Ghibli producer Hirokatsu Kihara said that “there's a sense that everyone is replaceable ... rather than hire creatives with great ideas, they will hire people who will please the producers."