In the early 1980s, animator and director Hayao Miyazaki asked Ursula K. Le Guin, the author of the "Earthsea" series, for permission to create an animated adaptation of Earthsea. Le Guin, who was unfamiliar with his work and anime in general, turned down the offer. Years later, after seeing "My Neighbor Totoro", she reconsidered her refusal, believing that if anyone should be allowed to direct an Earthsea film, it should be Hayao Miyazaki. The film was ultimately directed by Miyazaki's son Gorō, rather than Hayao Miyazaki himself, which disappointed Le Guin. While she was positive about the aesthetic of the film, writing that "much of it was beautiful", she took great issue with its re-imagining of the moral sense of the books and a greater focus on physical violence. "vil has been comfortably externalized in a villain", Le Guin writes, "the wizard Kumo/Cob, who can simply be killed, thus solving all problems. In modern fantasy (literary or governmental), killing people is the usual solution to the so-called war between good and evil. My books are not conceived in terms of such a war, and offer no simple answers to simplistic questions."