We’re back! Thanks for checking in. This is the first 2026 edition of the Animation Obsessive newsletter — we’re fresh off our break, and ready to explore more stories from across the globe.

Here’s the plan for today:

• 1. How Sherlock Hound (1984–1985) came to be.

• 2. Animation newsbits.

Now, as always, let’s go!

1. Scrambling

At one point in his animation career, Hayao Miyazaki was looking for work. Ghibli wasn’t there. He took jobs as they turned up.

Directing wasn’t his dream, initially. “Even today I don’t like being pegged just as a ‘director,’ ” he said in the late ‘70s. By then, though, he’d already accepted and overseen Future Boy Conan, his first time in the spotlight. He followed it with The Castle of Cagliostro (1979), his debut feature, despite his reservations about that project.1

To Miyazaki, The Castle of Cagliostro was a rehash — leftovers of the old Lupin the 3rd era. He and his team threw the film together in under five months, and it bombed in theaters. “You can’t use a sullied middle-aged guy to create fresh work that will wow viewers. I realized I should never do this again,” he said.2

Yet Miyazaki kept taking the work in front of him. Soon, he accepted two more Lupin projects — suffering as he went.

He viewed himself as a bit washed up by 1980, more than 15 years after the start of his career. His “year of being mired in gloom,” he called it. Miyazaki was pushing 40 and having a mid-life crisis.3 “With every piece I made,” he said, “it was obvious that I was just trotting out everything I had done before.”

But the world saw things differently. Future Boy Conan and especially Cagliostro began to bring him a name.

In meetings abroad, Miyazaki’s work became a calling card for Tokyo’s Telecom, the studio behind Cagliostro. “You know, whenever I go to the US, I take The Castle of Cagliostro with me,” said company head Yutaka Fujioka in the early ‘80s. “Recently I invited 200 Disney staffers to see it — and, wow, there was applause, great applause.”4

Although he doubted his creations, Miyazaki put in a supreme amount of effort and care, always. It showed, and word of his ability spread. The Cagliostro screenings seem to have caught the attention of