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!

Comments

Was at the screening on Friday

[nyamada]

Porco Rosso was stunning and the english dub was really quite decent.

If any of you get the chance, please try to see Miyazaki's work on screen -- I've seen Porco Rosso before on DVD and it's about 10x better on film --

Re:Was at the screening on Friday

[nyamada]

1) It's not Miyazaki's last work -- it was released in Japan in 1992. He's currently working on "Howl's Moving Castle", which is slated for release in Japan in July.

2) The audio was fine -- were you at the same screening I was? -- rich, convincing stereo sound --

Has Studio Ghibli ditched Disney yet?

[WIAKywbfatw]

Because I would like to watch one of their productions without selling my soul to the Most Evil Corporation from Hell.

Re:Has Studio Ghibli ditched Disney yet?

[MooCows]

There are some Region 2 releases with English subs, like Nausicaa

You'll have to import them from Japan though.

Re:Has Studio Ghibli ditched Disney yet?

[WIAKywbfatw]

i agree that disney has turned into a money greedy corporation, but i am curious. anyone familiar on when exactly this took place? what was it like in the 50s? 60s?

I can't tell you when it took place but I can tell you that my feelings about Disney have less to do with their marketing and willingness to put their characters on anything that can be sold for a profit and more to do with shit like this.

Let's face it, George Lucas, Peter Jackson et al don't exactly spurn marketing and sales opportunities but I've never heard of extras playing stormtroopers or uruk-hai having to share smelly, diseased jock-straps and other "previously enjoyed" underwear.

Re:Has Studio Ghibli ditched Disney yet?

[F34nor]

They became EVIL when they undermined the US Constitution with the Sunny Bono Copyright Extension act. The creation of intellectual oligarchy is by far their worst crime.

Re:Has Studio Ghibli ditched Disney yet?

[Bloomy]

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.

Re:Has Studio Ghibli ditched Disney yet?

[WIAKywbfatw]

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.

Disney dismay

[Snart Barfunz]

I wish there were some way for these to be released through another studio - somehow the Disney association devalues them for me. But it's great news that the dual language DVD is coming out. 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.

Re:Disney dismay

[_bug_]

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.

Re:Disney dismay

[Wyzard]

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.

Re:Disney dismay

[Robotech_Master]

The reason anime lips don't often sync to the Japanese dialogue is that, in many to most cases, animation over in Japan is dubbed exactly the opposite of how it is over here. In America, the voice track is recorded first, so that the animation can be perfectly synced to the mouth movements. In Japan, the movie is animated first, leaving about what they think is enough mouth movements for the dialogue, then the actors have to match their words to the movements as best they can (and most Japanese directors aren't terribly finicky about this. For an example, watch the Japanese making-of documentary on disc 2 of Spirited Away...there's a bit that covers the voice recording--and it's done in a movie theater style auditorium, with the actors matching their movements to the animated images on a big screen!

Pretty light on details.

[andih8u]

So who's going to be distributing this? Will it be a major studio with wide theatrical release? Or a quest to find a theatre that's playing it? All in all, they'll still find out that US audiences in general still won't be interested in it as most people still regard anime as "cartoons", so a theatrical release will be a money loser for them.

Re:Pretty light on details.

[nyamada]

Disney is distributing this -- they have a deal with Studio Ghibli for all their works, I believe.

I believe that it will _not_ get theatrical release in the US, but will be released straight to DVD, as was "Castle in the Sky" and "Kiki's Delivery Service". More's the pity.

Re:Pretty light on details.

[aardvarkjoe]

I'm told Tenku no Shiro Rapyuta has the same flaws. So did Mononoke Hime, ...

You were told incorrectly. There are two sets of subtitles on the DVDs; one is for hearing impaired (literal transcription of the English) and one is a translation of the Japanese, which often differs from the English dialogue quite a bit -- Especially in the case of Laputa, the only Ghibli movie so far which I think that the dub was poorly done.

Ghibli releases

[platypussrex]

If you are not familiar with Ghibli, these are some of the finest animated movies out there, and some would even argue some of the finest movies of any kind. Disney did Spirited Away for the US market, so that's what the Disney comments are about (which have been modded off-topic in some cases... mods with no clue).

Interesting to compare the dubbing done by Disney to the subtitling done by various fans. I have seen at least three sets of subs, all of which vary a bit depending on the translator. Sometimes Disney's dub makes sense, and sometimes it is just plain strange. Hopefully the new realeases will be better translations, although personally I prefer to hear the original language and read subtitles.

Re-relase Totoro Please!!!

[kyoko21]

I have about 7 region 2 Ghibli DVDs. They are cool. Except for Totoro. The english subtitles were not actually done by Ghibili, but instead, they are the actual scripts for the english audio tracks. The english audio tracks were ok, but unfortunately, the english audio track has added lines in places where there moments in the scene they felt "too quiet" so they added lines in. So when you watch the DVD with the Japanese audio and the english subtitles, you would see lines that you have no audio for. (BTW, this was done by Disney...blah).

Please Ghibili! Re do the Totoro DVD!!!!

WHEW!

[JeanBaptiste]

I first read that as 'the future of Gigli US releases'

got a little freaked out for a sec there...

"You are so lucky..."

[mekkab]

"You get to watch John Lasseter's sicophantic introduction to every Miyazaki DVD over the course of an entire year!"

(this joke will only make sense to those who have seen the Disney Ghibli releases)

Good news bad news

[chiyosdad]

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.

Re:Studio Ghibli all region DVD collections

[meringuoid]

I realise this is /., and I realise what we usually think about large corporations and copyright, especially Disney, but seriously: this is Miyazaki we're talking about. These are pirate.

So speaketh the man with divx versions of every last Miyazaki film. But I'm buying legit DVDs as they come out, conditional only on there being a decent literal subtitle...

Ghibli and Miyazaki

[yulek]

Miyazaki is just one of the founding members of Studio Ghibli. He's become somewhat of an icon here in the U.S. and as such is attributed as the creator of all Ghibli films.

Grave of the Fireflies was directed by Isao Takahata who also did Pom Poko, Yamada and Only Yesterday for Ghibli.

Miyazaki is definitely the driving creative force at Ghibli but it's important to give credit to Takahata. Grave of the Fireflies is one of the most powerful animated films ever made.

Why is everyone so happy?

[dancingmad]

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.