Background: Mamoru Fujisawa (Teng Ze  Shou , Fujisawa Mamoru, born December 6, 1950), known professionally as Joe Hisaishi (Jiu Shi  Rang , Hisaishi Jo), is a Japanese composer and musical director known for over 100 film scores and solo albums dating back to 1981. Hisaishi is also known for his piano scores. While possessing a stylistically distinct sound, Hisaishi's music has been known to explore and incorporate different genres, including minimalist, experimental electronic, European classical, and Japanese classical.
Context: In 1981 Hisaishi, with his new name, released his first album of art music, MKWAJU, and in 1982 the electropop-minimalist album Information. Then, in 1983, Hisaishi was recommended by Tokuma, who had published Information, to create an image album for Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. Hisaishi and the director of the animated film, Hayao Miyazaki, became great friends and would work together on many future projects. In 1985, he founded his own recording studio--the wonder station. Their collaboration has invited comparisons to the collaborations of Steven Spielberg and John Williams. This big break led to Hisaishi's overwhelming success as a composer of film scores. In 1986, Laputa: Castle in the Sky, would be the first feature to appear under the Studio Ghibli banner, and its gentle, faintly melancholic tone would become a familiar trademark of much of the studio's later output. And later, in the 1990s, Porco Rosso and Princess Mononoke were released. As Hisaishi strengthened his reputation as one of the budding anime industry's top musical contributors, his compositions (including eight theatrical films and one OAV) would proceed to become some of the very hallmarks of early anime in the 1980s and 1990s. Hisaishi also composed for such TV and movie hits as Sasuga no Sarutobi, Two Down Full Base, Tonde Mon Pe and the anime Tekuno porisu 21C (all 1982), Sasuraiger (1983), Futari Taka (1984), Hono no Alpen Rose (1985) and Oz no mahotsukai (1986). He also scored the sci-fi adventure series Mospeada (1983), which was later reworked (without his music) into the third segment of Carl Macek's compilation, Robotech. Other films he scored included Mobile Suit Gundam Movie II: Soldiers of Sorrow (1981), Mobile Suit Gundam Movie III: Encounters in Space, (1982), Birth (Basu) (1984), Arion (1986), Robot Carnival (1987), Totoro (1988), Crest of the Royal Family and Maison Ikkoku - Apartment Fantasy (both 1988), Venus Wars (1989), Kiki's Delivery Service (1989), Porco Rosso (1992) and Ocean Heaven (2010). He also did theme song arrangements and composed other anime opening, closing, and insert title theme songs such as Maho Shojo Lalabel (1980), Hello! Sandybell (1981), Meiken Jolie (1981), Voltron (1981), Ai Shite Knight (1983), Creamy Mami, the Magic Angel: Curtain Call (1986), and Kimagure Orange Road: The Movie (1988). As more exposure was given to Hisaishi and the anime industry, his career grew. He initiated a solo career, began to produce music, and created his own label (Wonder Land Inc.) in 1988. A year later, Hisaishi released his solo album Pretender as the first album under the new label. CANNOTANSWER
Question: What made this so successful?

Answer:

its gentle, faintly melancholic tone would become a familiar trademark of much of the studio's later output.