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The Future of Ghibli US Releases
ChibiOne writes "Nausicaa.net is reporting very interesting news regarding the US release for the works of (Hayao Miyazaki's) Studio Ghibli. Steven Alpert (VP at Tokuma International, parent of Studio Ghibli) spoke after the screening of "Porco Rosso" in New York and revealed several new release plans.
AnimeOnDVD has a complete report."
It says "every Ghibli feature film should be released in the US by the end of next year" as well as a widescreen re-release of Totoro. Here's hoping!
...let's hope the great job Disney has done so far continues. In particular, no matter what, do not buy the Fox 'Totoro' - everything about it sucks.
Sad treatment for a movie acclaimed by many as one of the best movies of all time.
I prefer to watch Miyazaki's movies in Japanese with English subtitles, rather than hearing voices which don't fit the characters, or lip-synch properly.
I agree with you in the sense that I like watching the with the original Japanese and English subtitles, but you've got to be kidding me on that lame lip-sync excuse.
Any decent anime that's been dubbed within the last 10 years has gone through some excruciating processes to get the English dialogue to sync with the lips. More so, I dare say, than the original Japanese dialogue would. There was an especially interesting situation with Neil Gaiman writing the English script for Mononoke. Some of the script had to be rewritten (by others) to get the voices to sync with the lips.
A few years ago I was given a VHS copy of Serial Experiements Lain vol2 which had been manufactured without subtitles for whatever reason. So it was an English box but only the Japanese audio track. I watched it anyway, having already seen the series, I figured it'd be interesting to actually watch, and not read. It became obvious very quickly how the Japanese dialogue did not sync with the lips.
I started turn subtitles off on a few other series I have on DVD and started noticing this was not unique to my copy of Lain.
I think a lot of English-speaking viewers have this misconcieved notion that an English dub won't lip-sync well whereas the Japanese version does. However, I don't think those who feel that way ever took the time to actually look at the lip syncing. They were probably too busy trying to read subtitles.
Perhaps a few years ago the voice acting on the majority of anime wasn't as good as the original Japanese track. Perhaps this is still true. Japanese voice actors do seem to get more emotion out of their voices, although there are certainly many bright spots in American dubs.
The English dub for Lain, I thought, was very well done. So much so that I actually prefer the American dub over the original Japanese. The same goes for Lodoss War. Cowboy Bebop, on the otherhand, I can't stand the English voice cast. I don't think anyone but Aoi Tada could ever do the voice of Ed. The same goes for Escaflwone, Akira, Nazca, etc...
Point is this: lip syncing isn't an issue, and to make it one is just a lame excuse to make up for having no reason at all to stick with Japanese dialogue other than simple personal preference. There's nothing wrong with that, btw, you don't need to make excuses for that.
Secondary point is this: English dubs can be pretty good* and you ought to give them a chance.
*Ignore the whole Gillian Anderson as Moro, the English director for Mononoke just totally missed on that one.
...if you have a chance, try and see Porco Rosso in Spanish or, even better, in Italian dub. It adds to the spirit of the movie so much.
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FWIW, the dubs are pretty good. I prefer to watch most anime in the original Japanese (notable exception being the Kenshin TV series -- I like his English voice better) but it's nice to know that if you want to watch a movie with people who aren't used to reading subtitles, you can set the dialogue to English and not worry that the quality will be lacking.
The US release of Spirited Away includes a second disc which contains, among other things, a look into Disney's work in adapting the movie. They were very careful about preserving the meaning of the dialogue in translation, only making small changes in places where the American audience might otherwise misunderstand. For example, when the injured Haku drops the stolen magic seal, the protective spell comes out of it in the form of a little slug-like thing. Some people in the translation team got confused at first because the slug-like thing looks a bit like a seal (the animal) so they changed "seal" to "wooden seal" in the dialogue to make it clear which object is meant. Especially after watching that, I don't think the Disney name detracts from the release at all.
I'm told Tenku no Shiro Rapyuta has the same flaws. So did Mononoke Hime, but at least Gaiman's translation was close enough that it didn't annoy much. It's just the moments where nobody's talking, yet the subtitles keep on rolling...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Now, I love Ghibli as much as most people, and it's great that more people will be exposed to it, but I'm not looking forward to the consequences this will bring. Imagine what would happen if these movies attain the popularity they deserve in the states. Will hollywood producers say, "we should stop putting out utter shit, and think about ways to improve the quality of our films to match and surpass Ghibli films", or will they say "holy cow, people are into that bug-eyed japanese shit? We better ride this fad out and milk it for all it's worth"? You're going to have an army of clueless directors using "anime-style animation" to tell mediocre stories about uninteresting characters, and they're going to ruin a perfectly good artform.
Disney did Spirited Away for the US market
As well Mononoke (dub script by Neil Gaiman, no less). Mononoke (Web site, DVD), IMHO, was his finest work, and anyone who has not seen it should rush out and grab the DVD.
Trademarks of these films tend to be: children (usually girls) as main characters; flight as a major theme (both magical and realistic, often in the same film e.g. Kiki's); powerful older women (both good and evil); technology as a force of decay or at least at odds with nature.
I would say that his films are the finest examples of children's storytelling to hit the big screen. So much so, in fact, that even jaded adults often find the films captivating and meaningful.
They're not raccoons.
I've heard they've been behind more copyright extensions than just that one, though that may have been read here on Slashdot, so grain of salt.
What's more galling is that I read they held off on releasing the Jungle Book in the late 60's until Kipling's copyrights expired. And their "reimagining" of Treasure Island as Treasure Planet makes me want to use misuse "raping and pillaging" of the public domain the same way they misuse piracy to describe copyright infringement.
Why is everyone so elated about this? I picked up the three movie set of Laputa, Spirited Away, and Kiki the day they came out as I love Studio Ghibli's movies. And frankly, Disney screwed them up real nice.
The packaging is substandard. Those of you with Region 2 DVDs know, the Japanese DVDs are much better put together. The menus are beautiful watercolors, the DVD covers look real nice. Unlike the American DVDs, which look pretty cheap.
Additionally, Disney put in a lot of crap on Laputa and Kiki, including commercials for one or the film. I can see a small anime company feeling the need to do something like that, Disney ought to know better.
Despite that, there weren't many decent extras on Laputa and Kiki discs. Some crap with the American voice actors, but nothing of real interest. Sen to Chihiro had a great Japanese documentary on the creation of the film, though.
But the big bugaboo with the three discs is that, at least on the release I got, there were major typographical and grammatical errors. For example, several times as combinations are shown as a;. Other typos and mistakes are abound.
I love these films, I wish Disney would show them some respect. They're nto shovelware, they're beautiful creations of art.
I hope the rest of the Ghibli canon (including Umi ga Kikerou, Ocean Waves) is treated better.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
Ok you're missing the forest for the trees here.
1. Disney is one company, one cadre of workers right? So if they are evil to their workers (which is debatable but I will accept your premise for this argument) then it is a local problem for the board and the shareholders to work out.
2. Disney is responsible for the hygiene of their workers and if they place them at risk they are opening themselves up to lawsuits by their employees. This is a self-correcting issue.
3. Disney is being dumb if they skimp on laundry only to pay out the ass for healthcare.
Now on to the real issues of evil.
1. This country was founded to fight oligarchy and concentration of power into and unreasonable small group of people.
2. This country was founded on the free exchange of ideas.
Disney is a corporation. This means the officers have limited liability. Since the 14th amendment was read as giving human rights to property they now have free speech. This means they have more rights than an individual. Strange case in a country devoted to the individual and individual rights hunh? So they are able to be Evil without any real threat of going to jail for it. So then can
1. Use that evil behavior to generate money.
2. Use that money as a form of political speech.
3. Use that speech to pass a law that it totally anathema to the ideas of the framers of the constitution.
In effect they made themselves an oligarchy based on IP. In this case a chicken scratch on a pierce of napkin by Walt. Copyright was invented so that people didn't starve to death after writing a novel and having it stolen by printers. It was extended so the widow and kids didn't starve too. Walt's fucking dead and his kids are millionaires. Disney deserves no more than the original 7 years dictated by the framers. To make matters more offensive Mickey Mouse is as much as symbol of the US as the American flag or Apple pie, HE IS PART OF THE PUBLIC DOMAIN! We have paid for him a thousand times over. He is our property. What makes this all the more offensive is that Disney is devoid of original ideas, all they do is mine the public domain for material, which they then copyright and prevent others from using it. If they weren't a soulless corporation (back to the rights of the individual) then I'd say they're hypocrites.
If you disagree with me you don't understand what the revolutionary war was actually about and what we won by it. I frankly don't worry too much about what Disney does to its workers because that part of law is well covered by local, state, and federal laws and is overseen by OSHA as well. But when a corporation starts fucking with my rights and the constitution its go time.
Now if they'll just redo the english dubbing of Castle in the Sky and get some voice actors that don't make you try to scratch your skin off, and get rid of that uber-cheesy non-stop TADADA! music that drones ENDLESSLY, I'll be set.
Especially after watching that, I don't think the Disney name detracts from the release at all.
While I can agree that many newer english dubs (WHR, Noir, and Haibane Renmei come to mind) are rather good, Disney's dubs are not amoung them. I'm sure others can generate a more complete list of Disney doing a terrible job, but I'll stick with one particularly glaring example: the opening of "Castle in the Sky".
Watch it with the translated subtitles on, but the English soundtrack. There's an awful lot of dialogue, but no subtitles to match? Are the subtitles broken or something? Try the beginning again with Japanese language. Nobody is saying anything. The dub has new dialouge spun out of whole cloth. This isn't a creative interpretation of what was being said, changing the word structure to get the lips to sync, or even a sloppy job. This is purposeful and deliberate mangling of Miyazaki's work.
Perhaps the flak Disney took for these changes (and others in Mononoke-hime) convinced them to remain more faithful to the original script in Spirited Away, but I don't trust them. I'll listen to a little bit of the English dub just to see the quality of the voice acting (which, is of higher quality than usual, but not as good as the newer stuff ADV or Bandai is putting out) and to see if I can match voices to famous actors, but that's it. Watching the entire thing when I can't be sure if what I'm hearing is genuine or mangled isn't worth it.
That, and Disney is just evil anyway. Well, Michael Eisner's Disney is at least.
If you watch it with subtitles, the whole ending sequence was wildly redone for the english dub.
The english version left me somewhat confused- it didnt really sync up well with what the characters were doing. I had to rewatch it with subtitles.
I think disney had a problem with the ending: perhaps they didnt like the way that the good guys and bad guys werent clearly delineated towards the end, so they chose to make yubaba seem more spiteful and adversarial to the last. (and chihiro strangely overbold)
Sorry, but I missed the bit where the workers getting screwed were more concerned with some copyright law than they were with their own health.
If I remember correctly, Disney doesn't allow its workers to join unions, and we aren't exactly talking about the best paid jobs in the world, so your legal restitution route is all but useless most of the time. To people concerned with putting food on their kids' plates, keeping a steady job and not getting fired for being a troublemaker are more important issues than whether or not copyright lasts for death plus 70 years, 90 years or even a million years.
People in the real world have real world problems. The rights and wrongs of copyright laws aren't often among them.
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