Princess Mononoke DVD: No Japanese

Robotech_Master writes: "Nausicaa-L list-owner Michael Johnson spoke to Buena Vista and confirmed it...due to fears of reverse-importing and piracy, the August 29 Princess Mononoke DVD will have English and French audio, but no Japanese. I've written an article summarizing the situation and what concerned fans can do about it." Update by Emmett: The link is currently busted (again), but there are some informative posts in the comments regarding this. After seeing Corn Pone films like 'BAD,' I don't watch dubbed anime. Even though I've seen Princess Mononoke in the theater, I'd rather watch it in Japanese. Battle on, Otaku.

Comments

Re:Just goes to show you...

[RichardtheSmith]

The problem is that Princess Mononoke was a HUGE hit in Japan - the highest grossing domestic film in that country's history. A "good" anime-on-DVD allows people to view it either dubbed, subbed, or neither - in other words just plain Japanese.

Since there has NOT been a Japanese-language, region-2 DVD of PM for the Japanese market, the release of a US (region 1) DVD which can be enjoyed in all three ways I just described is problematic to the people who will eventually distribute the PM R2 DVD in Japan.

Here in the US PM only did small art-house-type business - less that $30 million IIRC. So it comes down to pissing off a relatively small market of anime fans, or risking the revenue that will be provided when the most popular domestic film in Japanese history makes it to DVD in its home country.

Then there's the other issue - the fact that the powers-that-be in Japan (Buena Vista Japan to be specific) don't think they can trust the region encoding mechanism to enforce international market segmentation. This is doubly ironic, since the main reason for that nasty MPAA-DeCSS legal fight is (presumably) the DVD industry asserting its rights against people who want to do things like unraveling region encoding.

Hopefully, this is just going to be a Princess Mononoke thing. I think the main thing people are on about (go look at Ain't It Cool News for an example) is that this is going to affect all the other Miyazaki titles (Kiki's Delivery Service, My Neighbor Totoro, Laputa/Castle in the Sky), and NONE of them will get the "proper" DVD treatment (look at "Grave of the Firefiles" for an example of a well-done anime-on-DVD).

Re:Disney cut material anyway - "me too, post"

[Transition Cat]

I've seen both versions. No cuts at all. Disney/Ghibli contract forbids any cuts. However,

• Disney did change Kaya into Ashitaka's sister.
• Some music was replaced with (still pretty good) English versions.
• San's wolf-mother, Moro, was voiced by a male actor in the original (by Gillian Anderson in the dub).
• Some lines were awkwardly translated (eg "I didn't know the Forest God made the flowers grow"), probably to fit lip synch.

....

What An Insult To The Japanese

[Effugas]

This is absolutely amazing.

Princess Mononoke is the most popular Japanese movie of all time, bested only by Titanic in terms of tickets sold in Japan.

Now, I want everybody here to consider this:

The United States, which overall had a surprisingly lackluster response to Mononoke's release in theatres, is going to be getting the DVD version first.

Europe, too, will be allowed a viewable copy.

But not Japan. Those people aren't not good enough for their own movie, whose voice actors(consistently better than anyone the rest of the world puts forth for Power Rangers duty) will find themselves stripped out like so much Soviet Revisionism, replaced with the smooth veneer of Hollywood Stardom.

My respect for the Japanese will actually diminish if only me, a twenty one year old white guy sitting in Silicon Valley, sees this as more of a cultural and sociopolitical slap in the face to the millions of Japanese people worldwide than anything George Lucas could have ever done to incur Geek Wrath delaying the Star Wars Episode 1 DVD "a bit longer".

If there's one nice thing we'll get about this, it's that attempting to regionalize markets--particularly through technical means--just became known as an excuse for depriving a culture of its own heritage, and has been exposed as a dramatically anti-consumer tactic.

Yours Truly,

Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com

Snailmail the man

[Robotech_Master]

You can Snailmail Mr. Jessen, care of Buena Vista. The address is on my article, but since the site is currently scroo'd up (and probably won't be fixed 'til Monday...their support staff seems to be somewhat nonexistant on the weekends), here it is now:

David Jessen
c/o Buena Vista Home Entertainment
350 South Buena Vista Street
Burbank, CA 91521-4691
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For Anime DVD news...

[Shaheen]

Slashdot, while many of its readers are into anime, probably isn't the best place to get news about anime DVDs. I find the following two sites most helpful in documenting daily developments in Anime, Animation and DVD. They also have reviews of almost all the anime that's been published on DVD as well...

AnimeOnDVD.Com
DVD Animania