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Can Hayao Miyazaki Save Disney's Soul?
IronicGrin writes "Even hard-core House of Mouse apologists have to admit that Disney's Feature Animation division has lost its way. After a half decade of pathetic failures (Atlantis) and epic disasters (Treasure Planet), the company shut its fabled Orlando 2D animation studios last year and announced that it was jumping on the computer animation bandwagon. A big motivation for the move to CGI was, of course, the Magic Kingdom's tenuous relationship with Pixar--the source of all of Disney's recent animated hits. But Disney is overlooking a better example of just what its toon team has been doing wrong...right under its nose.
Howl's Moving Castle, which opened this weekend to rapturous critical acclaim, is the third masterpiece from Japan's Studio Ghibli that Disney has released theatrically. Today's New York Times has a feature by A.O. Scott [reg required, blah blah] calling Miyazaki the "world's greatest living animated-filmmaker"; meanwhile, last Thursday, I wrote a column for SFGate.com on why Disney animation, 3D rendered or not, is doomed to irrelevance if it fails to (re)learn some basic lessons from Miyazaki and his cohorts at Ghibli. What do you think? Is Disney destined to fade to black, or can a little Ghibli flavor (mmm....Ghibli) get it back on track?"
Anime sucks, I like to see my cartoon characters move, not float around the screen. Lazy anime animators can't compare to the animators of the 30's and 40's.
I'm going to slide my huge great pole in the tight love canal of a nice hot virgin Jewish (Israeli) girl. Aren't you jealous?
Anime and Japanese animation bear little in resemblance to western animation.
I know this will shock some but... some people think "Howl's Moving Castle" is a flaming piece of crap (which is exactly what I've read some news and media reviews call it). Just because it's anime, I know some of you instantly think it somehow has more merit. It doesn't.
Anime is very narrow-minded, and to be blunt, boring, because everything looks and feels the same. Whatever Disney's doing, they're doing right by not getting involved in the anime fad because you can do so much more outside of anime.
I'm surprised Disney wants to have anything to do with tentacle-rape porn.
"plenty of opportunities for cel animation"
No. There are plenty of opportunities for good writing and skilled artists.
The medium is not the message.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!