Slashdot Mirror
Angry Spirited Away Fans Strike Back
peter_gzowski writes "Anime News Network is reporting that, 'The Japanese consumers in the Kyoto and Hyogo prefectures of Japan have filed a lawsuit against Walt Disney Japan over the red tint on the Japanese DVD release of Spirited Away.' Japanese consumers who purchased the Spirited Away DVD were very disappointed when they discovered a red tint to the film. A hundred thousand consumers complained, but Buena Vista Home Entertainment Japan (a subsidiary of Walt Disney) pretended nothing was wrong with the disc. The original source of news of the suit can be found (in Japanese) at Mainichi. No response from Disney yet."
I took that screen shot that is floating around and just ran it through Photoshop 7's 'Auto Color' options and this is the result!
http://www.digitald.uk.com/storage/s-away-red.jpg
3rd degree burns, while painful for a few days, normally don't even require a trip to the doctor.
Learn your burns. 3rd degree burns can often require serious medical treatment, and in the case of this elderly victim, skin grafting was required.
Further more, she only asked for the cost of medical expenses. Reasonable, I'd say. The lawyer on the other hand saw the potential to get much more, and apparently the judge fully agreed.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
I think it's hilarious that the free market includes buying things and getting shafted, but not going to court to settle grievances. I hate to break it to the capitalist and pseudolibertarian free-trade lovers but anytime you sell something within the jurisdiction of a court, you may find yourself subject to a legitimate lawsuit.
To suggest that, merely by being producers in the market, businesses are exempt from answering for their torts disingenuously implies that they are somehow not a part of the social system within which they chose to do business. If a law was broken I see no reason a business shouldn't have to answer for it.
The market is one avenue for redress, indeed, but that's no reason to utterly deprecate legal remedies.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
I don't know what happened and don't have the DVD but I've seent he original a few times.
Maybe it's a copy protection experiment.
Maybe it's a wierd attempt to (over)compensate for a phenomenon that is real in the still photo world - popualr images and the characteristics of print film make for much stronger red in U.S. film (e.g. Kodak especially when used in people shots) and much stronger blue in Japan.
Maybe it's a massive screwup (no kidding)
Maybe it's an attempt by Disney to hurt Ghibli (wouldn't put it past them)
Maybe it was made with a cutting edge "superior" technology that unfortunately looks like utter crap on most sets and nobody every tried it at home before going to print
At any rate those screenshots look like utter crap in comparison to the original film and what is considered reasonable in Japan.
Here is some screen shots. (in Japanese web page, but you don't need to read to see the picture ;-)
I saw one at my friend's house. It really looks terrible!
--- (The signature is intentionally left blank)
If your CRT/LCD/etc. isn't calibrated to the same white point as the rest of the world, then everything but this DVD would look bad.
Disney just doesn't want to admit they fucked up. Again.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
Now we just have to make sure the manufacturers of plasma and LCD technology don't color balance to match that of current phospher or we're stuck with a red print!
Actually, I get the impression I don't want a plasma or LCD screen now since it'll be too blue/green with my current movies.
So basiclly if you have a 15,000 tv you should have no problems with this DVD. Does anyone else see the flaw in this logic here?
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification