Hayao Miyazaki is coming out of retirement

The legendary animator of Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle and Ponyo is coming out of retirement for a new film about a squishy caterpillar

What is it with directors and retirement? Be it Steven Soderbergh, Ken Loach or Quentin Tarantino, they talk a lot about hanging up their viewfinders, but they just can’t stay away.

The latest filmmaker to announce he’s not as retired as we all thought is Hayao Miyazaki, the legendary director of My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away and co-founder of Studio Ghibli, who has announced he’s working on one final film. The 75-year-old anime master revealed his plans last night on NHK, Japan's public television network, during a programme entitled Hayao Miyazaki: The Man Who Isn't Finished.

Anime News Network report that on the television special he revealed that Boro the Caterpillar, a short computer generated animation he’d been working on specially for the Studio Ghibli museum in Tokyo, will become a full-blown feature film.

Miyazaki announced his retirement back in 2013 at the Venice Film Festival, saying that The Wind Rises, which was due to screen at the festival, would be his final feature, but while working on Boro the Caterpillar he’s clearly had a change of heart.

The director describes the film as "a story of a tiny, hairy caterpillar, so tiny that it may be easily squished between your fingers," and on the NHK show he makes some macabre joke about not being around to finish the project, which will take around five years to produce.

“I think it’s still better to die when you are doing something than dying when you are doing nothing,” Miyazaki said on the show. “It’s better to think about not dying when you die.”

We’re glad he’s back. The world may look bleak in 2016, but it looks a little less so with the knowledge we’ll get to see another Miyazaki film.