Slashdot Mirror
Disney Aquires Sen to Chihiro, Lasseter to Dub
peter_gzowski writes "Disney
has finally announced that it will be bringing Miyazaki's anime masterpiece Sen
to Chihiro (Spirited Away) over to North American theaters. Sen to Chihiro is
the most successful non-U.S. produced movie in the world. It has grossed about 30 billion yen ($226 million U.S.), which is more than Titanic (the previous record holder). We can expect it to be here around July."
John Lasseter of Pixar fame is lined up to consult on the dub. No voices
yet confirmed, but John: I'm available and willing.
This review contains some spoilers, don't read it if you like your movie surprises.
Actually, Titanic had a worldwide gross of nearly $2 billion. Sen to Chihiro still has some catching up to do.
I'm sure it's a better movie, but the statement that $226mil is a bigger gross than Titanic is ridiculous. Here's some actual numbers. Note that Titanic grossed close to $2BILLION worldwide. Almost an order of magnitude more!
Perhaps what the poster meant to say is that it has grossed more in Japan. And as usual, the rest of the world scratches its head in puzzlement over Japan's antics.
Although this movie has made more than Titanic In Japan, Titanic has grossed 1.8 trillion dollars worldwide. That's a lot. Cartoons do not have the same wide appeal in the United States (or the rest of the world) as they do in Japan. The highest grossing cartoon ever, The Lion King, made less than half of Titanic worldwide.
"Otaku" does not mean hard-core anime fan. This is a mis-use common amongst American / western anime fans. Otaku is a word used to refer to someone who is REALLY into something, a fanatic, someone obsessed with something.
I have lived in Japan for the last 5 years. I have met people who take pictures of trains. They are otaku. My friend jokes that I was an origami otaku when I spent a few weeks making origami during all my free time at work. My (Japanese) wife says her boss is a computer otaku. This is a lighter joking way to use otaku, but it can be applied to any kind of hobby. The word in no way carries any connotations that are exclusive to manga or anime. An 'otaku' is someone who is a little strange.
Most of the perfectly normal Japanese kids I have known who enjoy reading manga and watching anime are NOT otaku. I have heard of a guy who had finished high school and hadn't looked for a job - he stayed in his room all day with the door closed reading manga, only leaving the house to buy more manga. That WOULD be a manga otaku.
Now about this story... I am really excited to hear that Sen to Chihiro will be available in English. I recal seeing the trailers for this movie for months while in the theatre to see other movies. It looked wierd but wonderful and the author is legendary.
Neil Gaiman, author of The Sandman comics, wrote the english dialog. Apparently, he had to spend a LOT of time making sure that the mouths matched up with the words he was writing in, so it's understandable that most low budget dubs don't bother.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Literally "otaku" is "[your] house". It's a personal pronoun meaning "you," but quite formal, cold, and distant (see note). People who use "otaku" to mean "you" outside its normal usage pattern (essentially certain types of sales situations) are socially challenged individuals who have difficulty connecting with others. Since this social trait frequently coincides with an intense interest in something other than people (like anime or trainspotting), it's a hallmark of nerdiness, and so "otaku" has come to be the name for such people.
Note: This shift in meaning from noun (house) to pronoun (you) to noun (nerd) is not unusual in Japanese pronouns. There are about 80 well-known ways of saying "I", about a dozen in common use, and countless more in literary/historical use.
Let's consider a case in point: young boys refer t themselves as "boku," which originally meant something like "manservent." Since people often refer themselves and others by their roles, "boku" would indeed once have been a word for onesself, in certain circumstances. At some point in the past hundred years or so, it shifted from roughly "squire" to to a general word for the squire-like self, i.e., a young bou. Interestingly enough, the word "boku" can also mean "you," when used by someone else to address a boy; for example, his mother may call him that. (In English, we have the opposite -- parents call themselves what the children call them.)
Another example is "kimi," which originally something like "prince" (I think), but is now a warm and close "you" for certain social standings, perhaps like the French "tu" but with more restrictions on social use, age of participants, etc.
A related word for you is "kisama." But don't use it! Even though the "sama" suffix is an honorifi (a step more monorific than the well-known "san") using the resulting "kisama" to an individual is an invitation to a fistfight.
Japanese is a fascinating language, and has had hundreds of years to evolve nuances of meaning and usage in pronouns, nouns, and verbs expression relationships between people.
It's a very important fact since it's the first time that an animated movie which, moreover, happens to be a japanes animated movie won such an important prize. I don't know how many of you US based folks (I'm italian and I live in Italy, at the moment) heard of this movie festival but it's a pretty important festival here in Europe and the movies which get the prizes are usually considered to be high quality movies. I hope this will help animated movies to exit from the ghetto where they are (childish movies) and start being considered only movies; moreover I hope the prize will help the anime to be considered normal movies and not porn or low quality movies.
Ok, enough for the rant now,
Andrea
PS some more rant ;) I submitted the Berlin Prize story some weeks ago but it didn't make it to the main page, don't know why though. Sic transit gloria Slashdoti.
Alright. I don't call Hacker Otakus "Otakus". I call them "l33t Hax0rz". I don't call Otaku Ravers "Otakus". I call them "candyravers". I don't call Renn Faire Otakus "Otakus". I call them "Fucking annoying SCA people".
Primarily in English-speaking culture, "Otaku" came from and tends to stick in the domain of anime. The only people that tend to use the word, in North America at least, use it in a reference to Anime fanatics. And anybody who overextends the name understands that its bridge into this culture is from the Anime fans. As a result, on the most part, the only people who complain about Otaku only being used with reference to Anime fans are, in fact, anime otakus.
I'm a Rocky Horror Picture Show Otaku. But I never really refer to myself as that (Usually I stick to "Rocky Horror Freak").
And yes, I realize how ethnocentric that attitude is, but the fact that this board is in the English Language kinda limits the jargon in this case. In the english language, the jargon term "Otaku" refers to a hardcore Anime fanatic.
Except to Otakus.
*runs to see if this is actually in the jargon file anywhere*
Crap. Someone wanna bug ESR about this?
Karma: Non-Heinous