Which Studio Ghibli film was the first feature directed by Isao Takahata for the studio?

Grave of the Fireflies was Isao Takahata’s first feature film directed for Studio Ghibli.

Released in Japan in 1988, the film was produced alongside My Neighbor Totoro as part of a notable double-feature release. It adapts Akiyuki Nosaka’s semi-autobiographical 1967 short story about two siblings struggling to survive in Japan during the final months of the Second World War.

Takahata brought a restrained, historically grounded approach to the film. Instead of presenting wartime events as a conventional adventure, the story focuses on civilian hardship, family separation, hunger, and the consequences of pride and social breakdown.

Takahata later directed several other major Ghibli films, including Only Yesterday, Pom Poko, and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya. Those later works are sometimes named when people are asked for his first Ghibli feature, but Grave of the Fireflies came first. It remains one of the studio’s most acclaimed and emotionally difficult films.