The first Studio Ghibli film directed by someone other than Miyazaki or Takahata was Ocean Waves.
Directed by Tomomi Mochizuki, Ocean Waves was made as an experiment in letting Studio Ghibli’s younger staff create a production with less reliance on the studio’s two established directors. It adapts Saeko Himuro’s serialized novel and follows a complicated teenage friendship and love triangle in Kochi.
The film first aired on Nippon TV on May 5, 1993, rather than receiving a conventional theatrical debut in Japan. That television-film format is one reason it is sometimes overlooked in discussions of Ghibli’s feature-film history. Its production was intended to be quick and economical, but it ultimately ran over both budget and schedule.
The other listed films came later: Whisper of the Heart was directed by Yoshifumi Kondō, The Cat Returns by Hiroyuki Morita, and From Up on Poppy Hill by Gorō Miyazaki. Ocean Waves therefore marks the studio’s first directorial handoff beyond its founding pair.