Studio Ghibli set to become subsidiary of Nippon TV
japantimes.co.jp
japantimes.co.jp
Interviewer: "Aren't you worried about [Studio Ghibli]'s future?"
HM: "The future is clear. It's gonna fall apart. I can already see it. What's the use worrying? It's inevitable. "Ghibli" is just a random name I got from an airplane. It's only a name."
The idea that Ghibli as a major production concern would outlast Hayao Miyazaki was obvious nonsense, and you can almost feel the relief of Goro.
Ghibli can stay an icon of a glorious past area, in good hands.
If we are unlucky, someone will use the brand name to start producing (en masse) garbage, selling it to Netflix, and Netflix will be pushing garbage low-quality, hi-speed cartoons.
I would really hate to see the Ghibli version of "rings of power"
maybe one day I’ll forget watching the first third of The Hobbit in 3D
The screenshots from Blade Runner 2 and Dune do look cool though.
But I think he meant for there to be a final one to follow it, and so it closes off somewhat unsatisfactorily.
(Possible spoiler:)
I was a little surprised in my last read through how small a part Duncan Idaho played until I got to the second book and remembered
The Brian Herbert books are very bad.
The SciFi channel had zero budget and it showed; but I think they stuck to the book a lot better; but I don't think I'll ever rewatch them, because the visuals are so bad.
Anyway --- we can always treat adaptations as inspired by rather than based on. I, Robot is a fun action film that name drops the three laws, but is otherwise unconnected to the book. The song retains the name, as they say.
To be honest, it didn't stand a chance with me: BR2 is a movie that didn't need to get made. Someone else in this thread called it "fanfiction", and that's what it is: technically very well made, but pointless fanfiction nonetheless.
But if I had a slightly open mind about it, the inclusion of old Deckard, the chew-the-scenery overacting of Jared Leto (and actor that is always hard to like), and that ridiculous "I'm the best" Luv -- which is miles behind the marvelously inspired Roy Batty -- were the final nail (nails?) in the coffin of this trainwreck of a movie.
The only saving graces are set design, K and the implications about Joi and her mass-produced but convincing displays of affection. The rest of the story is pointless and most of the characters are unlikable and badly acted.
Again, no movie would have satisfied me. I think the very concept of a Blade Runner sequel is wrong and a mistake; but Hollywood must march on, I guess.
I agree Ford and Leto were distractions to the detriment of the film. Would have been fine as an independent original film and not blade runner although the reflections of the original did help highlight the themes.
I do agree there were some good questions asked by the film (just not anything to do with Wallace's "vision" -- boy did this ruin the movie for me!).
> Would have been fine as an independent original film and not blade runner
Yes. I would have received this way better had it been an original film with echoes of Blade Runner (so I would have been spared, for example, the ridiculous execution of clone-Rachael) instead of an official sequel.
I can accept "I'm a director who admires Blade Runner and want to do a film that is a homage to it", but cannot accept "I want to do Blade Runner 2".
For the record, I think Villeneuve is a good director and also think this was a genuine attempt at doing something good. It just happens that it was a bad idea, doomed to fail.
Aliens and Terminator 2 are beloved by fans, but most sequels seem to be either overt cash grabs, or a director trying and failing to recapture what made the first movie special.
> Again, no movie would have satisfied me. I think the very concept of a Blade Runner sequel is wrong and a mistake; but Hollywood must march on, I guess.
I hope out hope that a very special directory/writer team could pull off something wonderful, but in practice you're probably right.
The "fanservicy" stuff in this movie fits really well with the rest of its themes. It's not like Indiana Jones 5 or Star Wars 9, where the directors are just pulling back old characters in the hopes that you'll overlook shoddy writing because you like the characters. K is a well-developed character, without a sense of purpose, identity, or agency, caught in the crossfire of cartoonish and 1-dimensional characters who are just using him to advance their cause. The reprisal of old characters, and the eccentricity of other characters, all of it adds to the feeling that K doesn't belong.
There's so much more that I want to say about it but I'm worried about spoiling the movie to people who haven't seen it. I'd recommend it to anyone remotely interested in it.
I do like K and I agree with you his lack of agency and his helplessness is a plus. Gosling does a good job, too. And Joi is an interesting reflection on manufactured feelings and appealing to consumers who all think they are special.
But seriously it's hard to defend the other, cartoonish characters, who constantly ham it up to 11. Contrast, you say? Maybe.. but you cannot have a movie of bad actors (or good actors acting badly) and expect me to enjoy it.
Also, Roy Batty is so much better an antagonist than Luv (or anyone else in BR2, really) that it hurts. Luv and Wallace are seriously the worst in this movie; every second of Wallace is painful to watch.
Harrison Ford didn't seem particularly inspired, either.
The story is pointless. The movie aimless. The visuals and acting and directing absolutely stunning. As lovely as it was to look at, I'd just like my 3 hours back. The original movie was a somewhat campy but beautiful film-noir sci-fi detective thing that actually didn't take itself that seriously, despite being aesthetically quite serious. The new thing took itself way way way too seriously.
But Dune 1 is amazing. Highly recommended, and I'm a deep Dune nerd (... but not the Brian Herbert crap, that's not Dune) for decades.
It's not the "same" as the book -- it lacks a lot of what's there -- but it's enough of the book and amazing in its own right that it's absolutely worth the experience.
The second one was too, and though it was quite different in tone, I liked both.
Good news about Dune! It's actually a good movie. It's both close to the book and makes the right calls in changing what needs to be changed for the big screen. It looks amazing, too. Give it a chance.
Bad news about Blade Runner 2: it's not good. It looks good, but the movie is pointless and jarringly bad acted at times (Jared Leto, enough said). And I say this as someone who absolutely loves Blade Runner, so I'm not one of the naysayers who found it "boring". It's not boring -- it's bad and pointless. Someone here called it "fanfiction", and that's what it is: fanfiction by a very competent director who doesn't truly understand the source material.
Animation style—eh, it changes, cartoons have been getting more stylized/less detailed since, like, the 80’s. It turns out characters don’t need a million belts and pockets to be compelling, haha.
Theme-wise, Steven Universe is pretty well received.
Yet, here he is in a cutesy setting where rarely anyone is brooding, and somehow it just works. It even feels more true to his character, as the lightness of his personality and others is even more contrasted to the seriousness of the situations they face (similar thematically to old school Teen Titans perhaps), and also makes the argument that Earth influenced him for the better as a child much more compelling.
The stakes are high, but goodness and strength of character prevails. Best animated version I've seen so far.
Then, don’t see it.
Fans need to stop enabling these awful reboots: by withholding their wallets. These IP vampires are only motivated by money, and if we give them money as a reward for milking past franchises, then they will continue to do it.
The entire feedback loop for the media industry has been perverted by tech companies and Venture Capital vampires, and it wasn't in a great place before.
In the case of movies, once you have a ticket or purchase it or even rent it, they've got your money and have learned the lesson that people will pay, regardless of how you felt about what you watched or whether you intend to boycott future productions.
In general, though, I do try to send the signal that I'm not personally a garbage dump for low effort content, by doing a few things:
- No "guilty pleasure" watching of things that I'd prefer didn't exist, i.e. junk reality TV
- Actively avoiding clicking on things that have clickbait titles, especially if they're part of an algo-feed
- Read reviews / get reviews from friends first
- If a streaming show is bad, stop watching ASAP. Stopping at episode 2/10 is a reliable signal for Netflix et al.
And if there's something great that's come out, I'll check it out after a couple of years when the reviews have settled down and all of the parts (I'm looking at you, Dune) have come out.
The point is it doesn’t matter anymore. Someone can take the name and make mass produced garbage, you don’t have to watch it. Ghibli doesn’t mean anything. Let it go. People care too much about keeping everything exactly the same.
This hit hard. Disney bought Lucasfilm. Look at Indiana Jones 5, I don't think anyone ask for it, but Disney made it and it's a major flop.
I think it must be kind of like desecrating a corpse. Maybe watching someone dig up and do something prolonged and unthinkable to the body of your dead grandmother can't undo all the lovely years you had together, but if witnessing that act enraged you, you might find that suddenly every time you see her photo or visit her grave you're reminded of what you saw and that it upsets you all over again.
They may believe that, but it's not true.
Sequels and prequels need to add more drama and action, so happily ever after never ends up being all that happy.
Lucas was at the helm for Return of the Jedi, Star Tours, and the three prequels. I think we can't lay the blame for the Holiday Special on him, but that certainly happened too. There's the Ewok tv movies too, which thankfully I've never seen.
Even if all the Disney Star Wars films are crap, they're just continuing the trend. I prefer to simply believe there are two Star Wars films, and let others believe what they want to believe.
I do think, though, that sequel can make a story worse pretty easily. For example, the combined story of the Star Wars sequels, prequels, and originals is simply worse than the originals alone. When you just watched the originals, you could imagine your own Clone Wars, they could be whatever cool thing you want. Dropping neat-sounding hints and letting the audience fill in the gaps with whatever cool thing they imagine is a classic storytelling technique get a free feeling of depth. Replacing that cool thing the audience imagined with trade negotiations makes the story worse.
Similarly, character arcs are a thing. The protagonists usually win and end up in a happy place, at least in a non-grimdark universe like Star Wars. Making a sequel that says: Actually Luke Skywalker spent the rest of his life failing and ended up as a miserable old grump makes his story arc worse.
You can just watch the original movies and ignore the rest of course, it is after all fiction so getting the whole story doesn’t really matter. But these are huge releases that get lots of press, and I think it is unrealistic to expect fans to just ignore them.
But for new movies to make old movies worse used to be an uncommon attitude I think. I remember in the 90s and 00s, lots of movies had really shitty sequels, often straight to DVD, but nobody talked about these cash grabs ruining the original movie. For instance Aliens 3, Alien Resurrection and then all the AvP crap... some people like these (I think Aliens 3 is defensible FWIW) but a lot of people really don't. Still, nobody talks about Alien or Aliens (e.g. 1 & 2) being ruined by the later movies. Aliens 3 is frequently criticized for the way it killed well-liked characters from Aliens, but that doesn't stop people from still enjoying Aliens. People just choose to ignore Aliens 3. And why shouldn't they, because Aliens 3 is canon? That's just a legal IP relationship, that doesn't matter.
And Disney has dozens of straight-to-vhs/dvd cashgrab sequels of their classic animated movies, people who don't care for them just ignore them and they aren't said to ruin the originals. There used to be a general understanding that sequels are very rarely good, people were pleasantly surprised when it was otherwise and nobody said their life was ruined by a bad sequel. Because who cares about cannon in animated disney movies?
I've seen Lucas's Clone Wars, but if I watch the original Star Wars I'm not compelled to relate it to the Clone Wars movie. By simply choosing to ignore it because I don't like it, I free myself to imagine my own clone wars.
I think new movies ruining the originals is some relatively recent cultural phenomena that was brought on by internet culture's obsession with canon. The existence of popular sites like wookiepedia both evidence it and drive it. If I'm wrong and it's not an overabundance of respect for IP laws that is the root of this, then why isn't bad fanfic also said to ruin the original?
Nowadays studios really lean into the idea of establishing an expanded universe and canon, since then it becomes a recurring revenue stream and all that. So, I wonder if this is an aspect of that trend, just a different way people tell stories and, as a result, consume them.
I think people ignore 90’s disney cash grab sequels mostly because they were so garbage that they didn’t get integrated into the cultural zeitgeist (and also, people who loved Lion King when it came out were too old to care about the sequel).
Stuff like the Star Wars prequels is not quite at that level of badness, might be marketed toward everyone, so it enters the general conversation about the movies. Of course, it is possible to not engage in that stuff, but then, I guess people who are talking about Star Wars in 2023 are interested in the whole thing, right? You can only think about 3 movies for so long, haha. So, I bet lots of people saw them movies, have fond memories, and then moved on, but they aren’t talking about it anymore.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changes_in_Star_Wars_re-releas...
It is the age old problem of recognizing the canon.
You mix other experiences into the soup and he'll say it's ruined.
It's true that his experience has been changed and it's also true that we are allowed to change his experience of the Star Wars brand.
The positivity/negativity of people's reactions is a red herring. They are both valid.
The real danger is when people try to gaslight people who have had a bad experience and then try to fuse/melt people, into yet another new Star Wars themed experience.
It makes you stop wanting to feel anything positive about the brand entirely.
It shouldn't be so difficult to get older generations and younger generations to watch the same product and come off with a positive experience.
Star Wars doesn't do it though, they fragment off the older generations into niche media, trying to recapture the past.
Goro even stated that he only got to know his father through his films since Hayao was never around.
Goro was raised by his mother, who quit pursuing her dream of working as an animator in order to raise him.
Adapting books to film is really, really hard, as is animating, and directing, etc.
Le Guin was critical of the movie, for valid reasons, but I don't think she hated it. Which, being fair, is an accomplishment.
in what way is it any of our business?
in what way what a father does or doesn't leave to his son can be used to determine how much he loves or doesn't love him?
Goro is a 56 years old man, he's beyond middle age, he lived more than half of his life already, why are you treating him like a small defenseless child?
If I created something and I wanted that thing to die with me, the love for my children wouldn't in any way stop me.
Legacy and honor are much more important than nepotism for some.
Also, he's saving Goro from being "the son of Miyazaki that was never good as the father" forever.
He's Goro. He's a different person. He made his own choices regardless of who the father is and owes him nothing.
That's a gift if you ask me.
Anecdotes of 1 are meaningless other than fun stories to share.
I've never been a Jiro fan though, there are many sushi makers in japan that can be considered artists in their craft, but their cultural impact is mehh at best.
Studio Ghibli, both Miyazaki and Takahata, on the other hand...
What I meant is that sushi is still something that we consider a Japanese thing, we know that masters of sushi are Japanese, Jiro being famous only reinforced that notion.
On the other hand Studio Ghibli forced the western industry of animation to recognize their greateness, we awarded them prizes, and now in the west we make products that look and feel like anime and manga. We do not think of Japanese animation of "something for kids", we treat them like Disney.
Comic conventions are full of cosplayers dressed as manga/anime heroes.
Youngsters make meme based on manga, American studios make live actions and animation shows of anime and manga.
It's been a complete game changer, either we like it or not.
or maybe he thinks that Ghibli should not survive him, which is in his full rights.
Goro can open his own studio if he wants to.
What's wrong in being honest?
Goro works are clearly inferior to his father's works on many levels.
He's no amateur, that's for sure, but he's no master either.
Among the best Japanese animation artists, he's probably average.
He's no Takahata, Oshii, Otomo, Anno, Watanabe, Hosoda by a long shot.
Hayao worst rated works on Rotten Tomatoes are "The cat returns" and "The wind rises" and I completely agree on that, with a rating of 88%.
Goro worst is "Earwig and the Witch" that I have not watched with a 28%, "Tales From Earthsea" that I've seen and did not like much with 38% and the best is "From Up on Poppy Hill" with 87%, which was good, but not "Spirited Away", "Princess Mononoke" or "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind" good.
And Nausicaa itself is not as good as a movie as the manga, that is an order of magnitude better!
Have you ever read or heard about the 3 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart children that survived?
No?
You are not the only one.
I see him as a concerned father.
"Don't put yourself in the position of being judged in the very competitive field of Japanese animation, because your works are not as great as you think they are"
It's like being the son of Michelangelo.
Of course everyone of us tells kids that their terrible drawings are sooooo goooood, but they are terrible.
Now, Goro was already 40 years old when his first movie came out.
That's a gross misrepresentation of what happened.
He was asked and he answered honestly.
End of story.
Who cares? Goro works are generally not good if compared with the works of his father, like a 5 years old drawings compared to their parents' drawings.
But this is not the school's play that every parent hates but attends because their children (they assume) care so much about it (I, for example, hated it and never wanted my parents to come and see me fail at something I was never good at and never liked), if you don't like the movie of some director, you can walk away and say "I did not like the movie", nobody dies, nobody should cry.
I sincerely wish more fathers did that, so we would be spared so many bad movies!
There's nothing wrong in being not equally skilled as your parents at something, but for the love of God, why are people so upset about what Miyazaki had to say about the works of his son and (BTW) be completely right about them?
Is it some form of projection with their own father?
Certainly Miyazaki has succeeded in keeping the wheels on long enough that there’s a cadre of people out there that have a deep psychological investment in preserving the legacy.
It won’t be Miyazaki’s Ghibli, but it could be something.
If I see Miyazaki on a poster, I’m going to be interested. There’s been enough Ghibli without him that I know the studio isn’t magic, it’s him. Not saying the non-Miyazaki stuff is terrible, but certainly not the same quality.
Source: I did just that this past New Year.
What did your itinerary look like?
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-09-05/tokyo-...
Weird, I felt the opposite vibe. When I spent 3 weeks during spring over there, as a tourist, it seemed like there was endless stuff to do, see and enjoy. "Touristy" Japan feels like a theme park in itself. And for "proper" theme things, we only did Ghibli Museum.
Don't forget there's also a Ghibli Museum and you have to book in advance.
Maybe you're thinking of TeamLab Planets in Toyosu. It's a must-see too.
Either way. It wasn't "him". It was "them". Their rivalry drew out their best work.
Everybody knows about Grave of the Fireflies, but a few years ago I discovered the more subdued Only Yesterday and found it impressive. It stirred emotions, a true animated movie for adults.
I also enjoyed Princess Kaguya a lot. The art style alone is very different from Miyazaki's style (which I love, of course).
I don’t think there will be a Ghibli analog to Farscape by Henson Productions - quite different in tone and story but still somehow just a bit similar to The Dark Crystal.
https://cinema.wisc.edu/blog/2016/09/06/when-nausicaä-became...
Seems to cover it.
I wonder how he thinks of the future of animation now, after the introduction of StableDiffusion and others.
Well he didn't seem very fond of it even before it was created
No, that's what happens in nature when two different worlds collide. And you accept it, like Lady Eboshi does.
I think Miyazaki's just an old conservative emotional man. He probably doesn't think very hard or rationally about his taste.
Software, in fact, does not.
I wonder his response if he knew it.
("Then you would never get to work for a genius like the great Miyazaki, haha!" Sure, I understand that. That isn't a novel observation: he's far from the only celebrity genius in the world who gets away with abusing their underlings, who's so great and amazing that people are willing to turn a blind eye to their personality issues. They say "never meet your heroes").
There are serious people and unserious people.
But, even in that context, they did a horrible presentation. At least from this clip they appear like full-blown nerds with low EQ who didn't consider what kind of person their senior they will present this to is like. Any fan could have told them HM wouldn't like the animation and it would not reveal what DL can do.
They say it has no sense of pain, and that it's a horror beyond human imagination.
Miyazaki says whoever made it gives no thought to pain, and it's very unpleasant.
That just seems like he was repeating back pretty much what they said to him?
Also, I'm not familiar with Miyazaki's entire oeuvre, but he doesn't seem to be into zombie horror, or 3D? So kinda understandable that he wouldn't be interested in adopting a product where their number 1 demo was zombie horror.
I'd prefer a moment of brutal harshness, packed with rich information like that. Over mealy-mouthed, information-less, repetitive nonsense, any day of the week.
You don't know that.
Not sure how you could confidently say this. Given that most artists and animators already have a disdain for generative AI, it's difficult to believe that the guy most unenthused about technology would love Stable Diffusion. The guy didn't even like CGI.
The problem with AI has been always that it removes from the artist the act the artist finds joy in, the work to create a beautiful final product, and leaves only the most boring and meh parts: contract negotiation, right fights, pay and attribution concerns, etc.
Miyazaki did not say "I love this tech but it doesn't look good enough yet."
He actually doesn't comment on the quality of the animation at all. His comments are entirely focused on how he feels the technique lacks a human-ness that he thinks is important to art. An early effort you would like to see improved does not "disgust" you or make you feel the creators are "insult[ing] life itself."
Of course he could change his mind, but if you don't think his comments reflect a belief at that moment in time about machines creating art, I do not believe you've understood what he is saying.
Hayao Miyazaki is so caught up in his own vision that it seems like he doesn't have much room for appreciation of things outside of it. As such we shouldn't give too much weight on his opinion on things outside the kind of movies he wants to make.
I thought that Japan had some of the most permissive laws in the world for that. (I'm making no moral judgement, only legal)
If what happened was a violation of even that, then Jesus. (I have not looked up this incident at all)
Knowing it will end, knowing one’s own impermanence, is the mark of a true master. さようなら
Well, nothing. The buck ends with Miyazaki and maybe that is okay.
Ghibli has managed to produce movies with an unrivaled charm, but that is not to say other directors don’t make absolutely amazing animated movies in Japan.
Rest in peace mr. Miyazaki and thank you for making the world a better place with your stories.
“I am utterly disgusted,” he says. If you really want to make creepy stuff, you can go ahead and do it, but I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all. I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.”
Worth a watch if you want a laugh - https://youtu.be/ngZ0K3lWKRc?si=JuIRf79ac5X3FogI
The opening scene in the Japanese version is completely quiet except for the sound of engines running, and in the English dub they just added crappy music over the whole thing. In the Japanese version they break the silence with this really startling piano/electronic track. In the English dub they fade it in.
I don’t know who was responsible for that but there’s nothing I hate more than someone ruining something good for literally no reason.
EDIT: To answer your question specifically, I like the original voice actors sometimes and find it makes a difference to how I feel about a work sometimes. I also think subs can convey some contexts that are difficult in speech, especially culture-specific words like honorifics and food that in my experience are often left more untranslated in subs.
Adding dubs lays another layer onto the original artists vision, such as Ghibli with Disney-produced dubs on top. Some will hit right, others won't. Subs are definitely another layer as now you need translators but it's a lighter one than dubs.
I personally don't knock people who do dubs vs. subs. I grew up watching Bruce Lee movies with terrible English dubs and loved them, still.
Hope that makes sense!
You've got it backwards: Voice acting in Japan is far more respected (idolized, even) than the occupation is in every other part of the world.
What I disagreed with is the notion that voice acting being considered a low social status is an abnormality. No, voice acting being considered so highly in Japan is the abnormality.
Much of the better acting comes from everyone living in Tokyo so they can more easily record as a group.
That's why you so often get a very recognizable (and annoying imho) "anime dub voice". It sounds extremely unnatural. I can often tell if something has been dubbed from its original language just by hearing a few spoken lines of dialog! That shouldn't be possible, but it's obvious.
The other main problem I have with dubs is that they are not faithful to the content of the original work. Sometimes they rewrite parts of the script to avoid mouths not matching up with English voices, or to limit the amount of work needed to edit the mouths to match. Sometimes they rewrite the script entirely!
They also tend to make all kinds of totally needless changes. They'll often censor content and dumb down the script (typically by over-explaining everything). They almost always make changes to localize it by removing/replacing cultural references. One of the things I enjoy about consuming media made in other countries is that I get to learn things about those cultures. I like to see artistic works that come from a non-US perspective. I don't want that stripped away.
If you're looking at art made in another language, the ideal situation would be to have mastery of the language it was written/performed in, and that you'd have all the cultural knowledge to fully appreciate the many careful and deliberate choices the creator made. Most of the time, that's just not possible. Translation itself is a lossy process. It means that for you to enjoy it at all, you have to accept that some things are lost. The goal then, should be to retain as much of the original work as possible. That means subtitles and original voice acting. If you watch a dub you are not getting the work the creators envisioned and labored to bring into the world. You're getting something very different and much farther removed.
Excellent example of this is the Ghost in the Shell 4K remaster, which has all new subtitles that are a much more faithful translation of the original work - but you wouldn’t know that if you watched the dub, which wasn’t changed at all.
I'll run them on other things (and they're amazing otherwise!) but when I sit down to watch something good, I have to turn them off or I'll get distracted/spoiled.
More power to the people that enjoy the subbed version though.
This I'll agree is a major problem with subtitles. It's not even just the jokes. I've seen the names of characters shown in subtitles (because they were speaking off screen) long before that character's name was revealed to the audience by the script.
Another major distraction is the trend companies have these days to refuse to provide subtitles and give only closed captioning with all of its extraneous information about sound effects or the highly subjective descriptions of whatever music is playing. It's so obnoxious.
In this way, they didn't spoil the punchline, or who was being talked to. It was a little bit jarring the first time, but by the second time it happened, I had already adapted and was thankful for it.
In the past I watched quite a lot of non-English film (mostly in European languages) and always prefer subtitles. For me, there is a mental synthesis so that it's almost as if I understand the voices directly. This might be a learned skill.
You don’t need to be fluent in Japanese to notice a lot of context that (by necessity) gets left out in a dub. How characters address one another, for example. Also, if you’re trying to learn Japanese then the more Japanese you hear, the better - even if you don’t understand it all.
Not to mention the usual arguments about the original voice acting being a better reflection of the authors’ intent, etc.
I’ll still watch dubs if I don’t want to give something my undivided attention, though.
Most of them. As someone else said, the actual script can change. Attack on Titan had much more juvenile dialogue than the English translation of the Japanese.
But it sounds like a personal preference for you to watch in the language you can understand. I am fine watching foreign films upon occasion.
I used to speak Japanese but I can’t rely on it at all for movies. I’ve forgotten most of it.
Maybe for the same reason me and countless other native English speakers do: because everyone mumbles so much in movies these days. It's impossible to understand actors now. This isn't a problem when watching older movies.
It can make a huge difference. One example of this is the animated Canadian/French film "Ballerina" which got good reviews. The Weinstein Company got the rights to distribute it in the US and they butchered the script adding a bunch of bad jokes everywhere and making unnecessary changes and the resulting film "Leap!" got terrible reviews.
The later Ghibli films (which received proper localization in English) are mostly quite good. They aren't perfect, but increased awareness of Miyazaki in the west (and from Disney no less) meant that it was worth spending the money to do them well. In general they have good writers and voice actors, and demonstrate a respect for the source material.
The earlier Miyazaki stuff, before he was as well known here (like Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind or Laputa: Castle in the Sky) ... well... not so much (I do think Nausicaä was eventually redubbed, though I'm not sure how good it was).
In the book Alpert goes on to relate how he had to baby-sit the entire process right down the final mix in order to keep people from messing with it.
Nippon Television holds exclusive rights to shows Ghibli content in Japan (which could go for a much higher value and viewership elsewhere), but the important thing is the relationship between Nippon's manager (Okuda) for their Ghibli relationship. For years, he would visit the studio day after day, just to hang out with the team and Miyazaki.
Okuda's family and Miyazaki's family went to a retreat together (as they did every summer) and that experience became the basis for Spirited Away. That is why Ghibli stuck with Nippon through the years and likely resulted in this buyout.
From the Kingdom of Dreams and Madness Documentary:
"When producer Suzuki meets a group of new Nippon TV employees, he tells them that they shared a long professional and private relationship with Seiji Okuda from NTV. It was after a trip to the mountains with Okuda and his daughter, that gave inspiration to the movie Spirited Away."
This is basically Steve Jobs selling Pixar to Disney... this relationship is about more than money, it's about trust and stewardship.
The extent to which Studio Ghibli is Hayao Miyazaki was not clear to me. Despite the hundreds of people involved the degree to which he is the origin of art, ideas, quality, and drive is astounding.
It's no secret that 2d animation is very expensive and taxing, and if you make failed movies you risk a studio like Ghibli.
Both Yasuhiro Yoshiura and Mamoru hosoda come to mind as directors that could direct films like that if required, but I don't know how consistent they would be if directing constant movies like it.
Regarding Makoto Shinkai I think his movies are a bit too sadistic, or at least his mentality to be do Ghibli films, directing tragic/NTR movies when he was happily married to an audience of mostly shutins always came to me a bit sadistic, even though his movies are visually beautiful I don't think he matches the style.
There are some French films that over the years have had that touch, but they often lack the narrative component which make Ghibli films magical.
[1] incel guy meets a girl once, he can never see her again because she's on another planet/in a coma/in the past/in Tochigi, he spends the rest of his life being sad about it even though they weren't in an actual relationship
I mean I am not too[0] familiar with Nippon Television. Are they expected to be good stewards of the studio?
[0] read: not at all
It took decades after Walt Disney's death for the end of Traditional Disney Animation
Ghibli Press Release (JP): https://www.ghibli.jp/info/013778/
Submitters: we have deep respect for other languages, but HN is an English-language site, so please submit articles in English: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
But now that I'm thinking about it... seems to be every single company these days. Soooo disappointed with the Witcher. Huge fan of the books and games. The first episode I knew it was gonna be bad. The color grading and general vibe was that of _any_ generic fantasy show on netflix. It wasn't gritty and I didn't get a "eastern european culture/lore" feel more like a "how can we make this appeal to the most people possible by turning all the dials to average." Aggressively middle of the road fantasy from such great source material, ugh.
`Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. `
and
`Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.`
Be better.
Sigh, fine, I get the point; I'll delete the comment. Sorry. You're right, I shouldn't have done that. Even if it was a joke it's always a bad idea to post anything even remotely controversial on the Internet, especially if it can be in any way construed that you might disagree with the hive mind of the site you're posting to. Thank you for the reminder before it turned into a potential flamewar.
Does someone elses crime expunge our own? You mentioned you were scared of being "murdered" which meant you understood the problem of what you were sharing. Just pointing out the comment guidelines is a simple way of keeping hackernews as a good place to have conversations rather than becoming another internet forum.
> Even if it was a joke it's always a bad idea to post anything even remotely controversial on the Internet
I do not think this is true. Humour is a fantastic way to treat controversial topics, but there is a place and a time. Hackernews is many things, but its not the best place to have a one-liner observational humour stand up routine over politics.
No. I never said it does. But I don't see you or anyone else commenting under those other comments in the same way. Perhaps if we're going to chastise one potential rule breaker maybe we should chastise all of them? I agree with you, let's keep HN clean.
> You mentioned you were scared of being "murdered" which meant you understood the problem of what you were sharing.
I just wanted to highlight the fact that it was a lighthearted joke, because many people nowadays tend to take everything dead serious, assume bad intent and get immediately triggered/offended.
From the Nikkei article:
> The older Miyazaki, 82, and Suzuki, 75, have been discussing the succession process for a long time, according to the two companies. Miyazaki's son had rejected the role, saying it was difficult to operate Ghibli alone and that the company's future would be better left to others. Nippon TV, with which Ghibli had deep ties, became the natural candidate.
Additionally, conservative is loaded term it's not really helpful in getting across what they feel without additional description. They're possible old school conservatives but even that probably comes across wrong as how they themselves would want to be described.
I have no doubt that Goro wanted to be his father's successor (why would he have made multiple films under the Ghibli umbrella), but his father clearly recognizes that Ghibli has a potentially larger future than becoming a lesser studio under his son.
his son is simply not good enough to replace him (them, including Takahata, actually).
Let's be honest, dynasties are such an abhorrent thing that we should rejoice Studio Ghibli did not end as one.
It's impossible to gratify all curiosities equally because people differ a lot. That means there will always be something on the front page that you don't find interesting, but also hopefully several things you do.
It's true that the better "stretches" have to do with topics that are little-known and little-discussed, and Ghibli and Miyazaki aren't that.
I don’t believe so, HN should be a place where people talk about tech and academia.
Once you expand the scope, it says “this is what this group of people by majority have decided is Interesting, regardless of the field”. To me that reads as a cult mindset.
I think shrinking the scope allows people to challenge their opinions. When you broaden it, discussions become nothing more than “wow bird house building is really cool, thanks HN!” “I’m glad I found out how to build a tandem bike”
More relevant links: