About

Hayao Miyazaki Looking Stressed is an image macro meme showing Studio Ghibli co-founder and animator Hayao Miyazaki leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed and a cigarette in his mouth. The image comes from a 2019 four-part documentary about Miyazaki and his work with Studio Ghibli. The image of Miyazaki taking a break from work is often used to joke about being overwhelmed and stressed about work, or being fed up and distressed in general.

Origin

10 Years with Hayao Miyazaki is a four-part documentary series directed by Kaku Arakawa and released on March 17th, 2019, by NHK.^[1] Filmed between 2006 and 2016, it offers a look at the daily life and creative process of animator Hayao Miyazaki during the making of films like Ponyo and The Wind Rises. The series captures Miyazaki's struggles with aging and perfectionism.

A segment in the documentary shows Miyazaki sitting at his desk wearing a beige apron. He then takes a break from his work to place a cigarette in his mouth, take his glasses off, and lean back in his chair with his hands above his head.

The earliest known memetic use of the scene is a January 18th, 2021 post on the Instagram^[2] page @stepbackjumper3434. The post gathered over 1,000 likes in four years. The caption on the post translates to, "I want to use the NBA League Pass on the computer web version to watch Nick's magic result. Login page keeps showing the request failed. Please try again later. So I switch to the web without trace mode. The screen is dark or can't see me."

Spread

The image continued to gain traction online in subsequent years and often came to be used by internet users trying to depict work-related stress or exhaustion. On May 28th, 2021, Tumblr^[3] user bandydear posted the image in response to a post that read, "There's an influencer couple somewhere remodeling my dream victorian house into a suburban minimalist nightmare right now."

On May 20th, 2022, Hard Drive^[4] magazine used the image of Miyazaki and spliced it with a train scene from Spirited Away. The headline read, "Report: Hayao Miyazaki Disappointed You Smoked Weed When You Watched ‘Spirited Away’ That One Time." The image came to be used in subsequent iterations of the meme.

On April 17th, 2023, X^[5] user @Radstads tweeted the image of Miyazaki with the caption, "Just accidentally “LMAOO’d” in one of my “😂😭🤣” friends groups." The tweet gathered over 4,000 likes in two days.

On January 28th, 2025, an unknown Redditor^[6] posted a meme featuring Miyazaki looking stressed to /r/memes. The meme read, "DeepSeek getting 50 millionth prompt about Winnie the pooh china." The post gathered over 900 upvotes in thre months.

On February 16th, 2025, X^[7] user @natemcgrady tweeted, "cursor after I send “still broken” for the 15th time," gathering over 17,000 likes in two months.

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References