This fall’s North American box office success of such anime franchises as “Chainsaw Man” and “Demon Slayer” and the vast collection of such titles on offer from Netflix underscore the soaring popularity and international appeal of the Japanese animated art form.

But when it comes to anime, there is but one godfather and undisputed master of that world. The Oscar-winning writer and director Hayao Miyazaki, now 84 years old, is the artist who still towers over any serious discussion of anime. And his films, from “My Neighbor Totoro” and “Ponyo” to “Spirited Away” and “The Wind Rises” are still the exemplars of the best anime, a corner of film dominated by artistically inferior and far less demanding franchises with mass production TV production values.

“The Worlds of Hayao Miyazki” is a lovely new appreciation of Miyazaki’s art and touchstone films in book form, a breakdown of the myriad influences that this artist absorbed before making “Kiki’s Delivery Service,” “Howl’s Moving Castle” and “The Boy and the Heron.”

Nicolas Rapold, a former editor in chief of “Film Comment” magazine, has written an “unofficial” and “unauthorized” biography that isn’t a conventional “biography” at all. “Worlds” touches on some of Miyazaki’s life story and folds bits of biography in with the scores of literary and animation origins and origin stories he tapped into to create his work. The new book is an illustrated biographical monograph compiled without much in the way of fresh access to Miyazaki or his animation house, Studio Ghibli.

We learn of the filmmaker’s youthful love of early sci-fi writer Jules Verne and how that helped shape the “steampunk” settings and production design of works like “Future Boy Conan,” Castle in the Sky” and “Howl’s Moving Castle.” Rapold may try to correct that “steampunk” label, but Miyazaki was most fans’ introduction to that world.

Miyazaki’s World War II childhhood and his father’s work for a fighter plane parts manufacturer informed the aviation-centric “Porco Rosso” and his fanciful “Jiro dreams of Zeroes” biography of a Japanese fighter plane designer — “The Wind Rises.” There are academic theses and New York Times “think pieces” on Miyazki’s obsession with flight, some of which Rapold traces back to an oft-mentioned favorite book from his youth, “The Little Prince.”

Miyazaki wasn’t just reading, digesting and adaptation variations of characters, fantasy themes and settings from “The Little Prince,” “Alice in Wonderland,” “Pippi Longstocking” or “The Secret Garden.” Like Disney corporate practice to this day, he’d take colleagues on scouting trips to quaint, historical European cities and towns to inform the backgrounds of his often Euro-centric stories.

Rapold labels Miyazaki’s ability to absorb and re-think themes, ideas and characters into new stories “magpie tendencies,” and these manifest themselves in forms that render seemingly “foreign” fantasies like “Ponyo” somehow familiar.

That’s just a Japanese “The Little Mermaid” with younger characters and more modern and more Japanese concerns and considerations.

I’m not much of a fan of fantasy fiction or films. And using Miyazaki as your benchmark is a great way to dismiss the vast majority of anime as boilerplate mass production piffle, from under-developed derivative stories to under-animated execution.

But if you’re going to have standards, “The Japanese Walt Disney” is a great place to set the bar. His creative process, style, influences and the ongoing impact he has have been covered elsewhere, in a very fine TV documentary “10 Years with Hayao Miyazaki,” for instance.

“The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki” adds to that appreciation. It’s a beautiful book, filled with images from those inspirations and how Miyazaki re-imagined them, and a grand overview of the touchstone TV and film works of Miyazaki’s career. Even a casual Miyazki fan will be transported back to those films, gain insight into their themes and the creative process. That makes this new publication a great gift idea for the anime or animation fan on your holiday shopping list.

“The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki: The Influences and Inspiration Behind the Iconic Films.” By Nicolas Rapold. Frances Lincoln Publishers. 224 pages. $35.