Favourite Miyazaki film

just carefully rewatched the credit-still sequence -- may go back and break it down to some extent (= frame by frame) -- but while a baby (and at one point 2 x babies) do appear alongside the girls, mei in particular, they never appear (that i could see) (will recheck 2moro and take proper weeb-studies notes unless someone else does first) with the mother, and in the very last frame we see the 2 x girls in bed with the mother, who is reading to them. everyone looks happy but i would not say she looks 100% recovered…

my provisional pre-rerewatch conclusion is that *if* the arrival of a baby is being implied, it is nonetheless somewhat *ambiguously* (indeed deniably!) implied: in most of the credit stills with the baby (or babies) there are several other children too, the rest of whom must be from other families

if the totoros are spirits of growth and life, and come out of the forests help the girls at the moment when the parents aren't available, then the best proof of the totoros' efforts would probably be the girls growing into healthy, older, socially integrated beings... and the photos at the end of the movie (with happy M and S) might prove exactly that?

what are the best Miyazaki films to watch with younger kids (~ages 4-7)?

The mom is in the hospital bc that is where she is a viking

Ponyo, Totoro, Howl. Ponyo makes perfect sense to kids, IMHO, and less sense to adults. All Miyazaki (except maybe) Totoro can be scary/overwhelming. Most of the dubs are serviceable, but not great.

Maybe The Cat Returns too. Am I wrong or is it a sequel to Whisper of the Heart inasmuch as it's (SPOILER ALERT) the story Shizuku writes at the end of that film?

Now where's those paragraphs I wrote somewhere in this or another thread about how Kiki is really about the onset of puberty?

― Fuck the NRA

just watched it for maybe the fourth or fifth time and I came to the same conclusion

as much as i love every miyazaki film, my personal top 3 are princess mononoke, laputa, and nausicaa.

the only one i haven't seen yet is the wind rises. i've heard a lot of conflicting opinions... what did you guys think?

btw, this isn't a film, but miyazaki's 1978 tv show 'future boy conan' is absolutely incredible!

kiki was pretty good! will do either laputa or the wind rises next weekend i think

Now where's those paragraphs I wrote somewhere in this or another thread about how Kiki is really about the onset of puberty?

I just thought of Kiki as a really great portrayal of burnout. But I should really watch it again.

albert: thanks for the textural insight; it's interesting as I obviously don't read Japanese.

also, mom was totally pregnant:
http://i.imgur.com/nbESEbK.png
http://i.imgur.com/IMrwHBb.png
http://i.imgur.com/OzgGjhd.png

people can be sick and then later, also, be pregnant

Yes! This is also a reasonable reading of the film! In any case, the question of how to balance your own needs with that of your family and your community are really at the heart of what totoro is about in any case. Mei and Satsuke are adjusting to maturity and new responsibility and that process is not seamless. the imaginary friends that help them come to terms with those difficulties were tremendously familiar to me as a kid growing up in the sticks who also talked to mysterious invisible creatures.

and re: kiki from the netflix thread:

its subtext is a tale of a young woman going through puberty and losing power. Remember, Kiki gets sick and then can no longer communicate with Jiji / control the broom / access her power. Until then, she's had opportunity to see pathways to maturity in the independent young woman in the woods and the older woman who bakes and sees the foolishness of immaturity in the bratty grandkids. When she accesses her power to save Tombo (that "Fly" always gets me goosebumps), she is leaving behind her childhood and recognizing that her greatest days lie ahead.

So here's my beef: in the Japanese version, when Kiki is mobbed and Jiji (who has found his own leap forward in maturity by falling in love with the cat next door) jumps out at the film's end and loudly meows. Miyazaki is telling us that maturity means that you lose a little of the magic of childhood, that everything has a price and a tradeoff. It's an important moment that speaks of repercussions and growth. In the English dub, Disney has obviated that lesson by having Phil Hartman's Jiji jump out and say "I can talk again too Kiki!" It's a sign that they've completely missed the point of the film.

a quick glance at the wiki suggests they dialed this back somewhat for the rerelease on home video but GKids in-theaters version (to the best of my experience) retains the original dub. the quoted section below also brings up my loathing of what Disney does to the almost always excellent music: they fuck it up.

"There are a number of additions and embellishments to the film's musical score, and several lavish sound effects over sections that are silent in the Japanese original. The extra pieces of music, composed by Paul Chihara, range from soft piano music to a string-plucked rendition of Edvard Grieg's In the Hall of the Mountain King. The original Japanese opening theme is "Rouge no Dengon" (ルージュの伝言, Rūju no Dengon, "Message of Rouge"), and the ending theme is "Yasashisa ni Tsutsumareta nara" (やさしさに包まれたなら, "Wrapped in Kindness"), both performed by Yumi Matsutoya (credited as Yumi Arai). The original opening and ending theme songs were replaced by two new songs, "Soaring" and "I'm Gonna Fly", written and performed for the English dub by Sydney Forest.
The depiction of the cat, Jiji, is changed significantly in the Disney version. In the Japanese version Jiji is voiced by Rei Sakuma, while in the English version Jiji is voiced by comedian Phil Hartman. In Japanese culture, cats are usually depicted with feminine voices, whereas in American culture their voices are more gender-specific. A number of Hartman's lines exist where Jiji simply says nothing in the original. Jiji's personality is notably different between the two versions, showing a more cynical and sarcastic attitude in the Disney English version as opposed to cautious and conscientious in the original Japanese. In the original Japanese script, Kiki loses her ability to communicate with Jiji permanently, but the American version adds a line that implies that she is once again able to understand him at the end of the film. Miyazaki has said that Jiji is the immature side of Kiki, and this implies that Kiki, by the end of the original Japanese version, has matured beyond talking to her cat. More minor changes to appeal to the different teenage habits of the day include Kiki drinking hot chocolate instead of coffee and referring to "cute boys" instead of to "the disco".

However, when Disney re-released the film on DVD in 2010, several elements of the English dub were changed, reverting more towards the original Japanese version. Several of Hartman's ad-libbed lines as Jiji were removed, and Sydney Forest's opening and ending songs were replaced with the original Japanese opening and ending songs. Additionally, Jiji does not talk again at the end, implying that Kiki never regains the ability to talk to him, and many of the sound effects added to the original English version have been removed. The English subtitled script used for the original VHS subbed release and the later DVD release more closely adheres to the Japanese script, but still contains a few alterations. Tokuma mistakenly believed the Streamline dub was an accurate translation of the film and offered it to Disney to use as subtitles. As a result, several additions from the dub appear in the subtitles regardless of whether or not they are present in the film."

I just thought of Kiki as a really great portrayal of burnout. But I should really watch it again.

― Lily Dale, Saturday, February 22, 2020 10:05 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

same! it works that way too

I said this upthread:

Kiki says towards the end of the 2nd act something along the lines of "Flying is fun until you have to do it for work". If that's not a farewell to adolescence, I don't know what is!

Her conflict mostly details her transitioning into adult responsibilities: Choosing a career, independence, sustenance, overcoming lack of motivation and social awkwardness.

There's probably something to be said about her transition into womanhood as well but I will leave that to someone else.

― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Tuesday, July 30, 2019 9:31 AM (six months ago)

yeah i agree with all that.

the dub of Kiki we want he'd last night was okay but felt oddly timed in places. especially noticeable were bits where people laughed out loud at no discernible joke

we want he'd? Think I need a translator

This thread made me have a look for any Ghibli related Podcasts to ease my commute, the one I did find was a bit dry, Ghibliotheque.

Was hoping for some insight but they can't even say Miyazaki's name correctly or many others, I mean if you're going to do a high profile podcast on a subject you should perhaps spend a day learning how Japanese vowels work.

What was interesting tho' is Whisper Of The Heart came out on top in their rankings, I might have to revisit.

I'd put Whisper Of The Heart in the second rank of Ghiblis, i.e. still better than most things but not an A-lister compared to Kiki, Laputa etc.

Did they pronounce his name my-yuh-zarki or something?

Blank Check have a full series on Miyazaki that they finished about 6 months ago maybe? I'd highly recommend it.

just snagged this; will have a go.
http://www.nausicaa.net/wiki/Ghibli_Artisan_-_Kazuo_Oga_Exhibition,_A_(Japan_BD)

seconding on the blank check miyazaki series, it's good

blank check series was overall good. ep-by-ep some were good, some (e.g. totoro) landed a little awkwardly. they have more knowledge than a total neophyte to ghibli, but not a lot of context for thinking about anime otherwise (cagliostro ep was best in this regard), and tend to focus on plot, character and auteur versus form and technique. but they brought out some recurring themes i hadn't thought about before, and made me give another think to some that i underrate (e.g. howl's). also was the nudge I needed to finally watch Porco last summer! which was lovely.

Last Ghibli we watched at home was Laputa, and at one point Nora (5) gasped and said "this is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen".

She's kind of grown out of Totoro, which makes me sad - watched it several times very happily when she was 3-4. She still loves Ponyo, though, and Casper (2) is also transfixed by it.

She was a big fan of Kiki for a long time, and The Cat Returns, too. She loved Howl's, which I'd not really clicked with. I think the slightly unhined-from-narrative-expectations ones do work better with kids in that respect.

Question is, which dubs are on Netflix? I kind of assume the most recent ones?

Obviously these days with the kids we always watch the dubs - the differences are minor enough to not stop you getting the overall effect.

I'd have Totoro, Laputa, Kiki, and Spirited as my favourites. Bunch I've not see that I'll hopefully correct as they come onto Netflix.

God, Miyazaki loves airplanes.

podcasts maybe not the greatest medium for exploring the visual dimension, which to me is the most under-examined? (i mean i'm sure there's actually ppl busily examining it, i'm just not aware of them)

it's just such an incredibly rich terrain of hints and allusion and echoes, from classic kidlit inc.the endless micro-moomins popping up to the travel posters mentioned above, to herge and serge clerc, to who knows what else (inc.actual japanese and far eastern stuff i know nothing about).

i would read the fuck out of a giant expensive catalogue essay on same, someone shd hire me to sub-edit such a thing and pay me nicely to do a grand job

i am not a parent but, perhaps there is something in knowing that, even if they've grown out of the films for the moment, they will likely come back to them at later points in their life seeking (as 20 and 30somethings do) a comfort and safety you helped bring to their young lives. and then discovering to their surprise that things like Kiki and Totoro actually speak to them as adults about things that are emotionally meaningful and valuable to them right then. could make for some really good conversation-starters down the line, and either way it's a good thing you've given them. versus many of the movies i adored as a kid that it turns out are beautifully constructed for a 10 year old (and maybe even "a few jokes for the parents!") but have very little to offer, really, later in life.

xpost hmm fair points! i just remember being let down b/c griffin is a huge animation nerd, dropped out of animation school etc., and when they've talked about pixar or genndy tartakofsky, he's launched into explanations of animation principles, "squash and stretch" etc. whereas here he seemed to stay distant from that stuff, focusing instead on his own late-in-life journey of miyazaki discovery. which was fine enough but especially in the context of thinking about career arcs and "blank checks" i would have expected some notice to, like, how Laputa is a big-budget spectacular epic of relentless and laborious animation, and how Totoro is, comparatively, made on the cheap (but still achingly beautiful of course). i think he just doesn't know much about anime and didn't want to be a dumbass by getting out his depth but it's an area i thought could have been cool to get into, oh well.

https://66.media.tumblr.com/9ee6493e78495d35b98dd75743a793c5/tumblr_nqun7aAb4G1up42jgo7_500.gifv

I'm looking forward to this -

https://www.stonebridge.com/catalog/sharing-a-house-with-the-never-ending-man-15-years-at-studio-ghibli

I should really watch these subbed, but I'm always worried I'd be missing out on the beautiful animations

watch em twice!

i am not a parent but, perhaps there is something in knowing that, even if they've grown out of the films for the moment, they will likely come back to them at later points in their life seeking (as 20 and 30somethings do) a comfort and safety you helped bring to their young lives. and then discovering to their surprise that things like Kiki and Totoro actually speak to them as adults about things that are emotionally meaningful and valuable to them right then.

This is how I feel about the classic children's books I grew up with, and Miyazaki's films are one of the few things made for children in recent years that seem to have that same layered quality. (Although I never went through a phase of rejecting my favorite kids' books; I reread them periodically as I got older and found that the best of them continued to speak to me but in ways that kept changing.)

We watched Totoro at my daughter's request and aside from the doctor's written diagnosis you see briefly on the telegram, here are some other things I noted that are glossed over in the subs:

+ The father mentions that the country air near their new house will be better for the mother to get healthy when discharged.
+ The mother has been in the hospital for one year, and has been discharged once but had to be readmitted almost immediately. This is why Satsuki freaks out when she gets the telegram: she thinks that her mother will never be coming home from the hospital (or worse: that she will die there).

The Disney dub/subs from what I remember are pretty bad ("soot gremlins"... wtf) but they do a better job of pronouncing characters' names more accurately.

So Nora decreed it was my turn to pick the Friday ‘pizza and film’ film, and I put Totoro on - they were both rapt pretty much all the way through (5&2).

And no, she’s not pregnant. No way. Mei is the same age and the baby is standing in the credits, so at least 18 months would have had to pass for gestation, birth, and a year of development. The baby - like all the other kids in the credits - is just a friend.

They’re watching it again this morning. So she’s totally not grown out of it.

It’s cool that more people are watching Totoro.... and spending time with the pregnant mom

this is starting to feel like one of gregg turkington's theories

spirited away and princess mononoke now on netflix, i need never leave the sofa

a good thing abt tales of earthsea is it made me reread the first three books

only good thing to say about that movie probably (haven't/won't see that)

we watched Mononoke on Sunday. I will still say Spirited Away is my #1 Miyazaki, and possibly the best movie I've ever seen, but Mononoke is unfuckwithable, original in every frame, subtly plotted, making the case for it over Spirited Away would be easy to do.

i probably will now rewatch it at some point: as weak cover versions of strong books sometimes can it puts in yr mind things you hadn't really thought abt, like actually how spartan cultural life seems to be in the book version of the archipelago (spartan not being a mode ghibli handles well, le guin is fine with it)

any version of Earthsea where Ged isn't dark-skinned is p fucked up tbh

hard agree. haven't seen any adaptations - if Ged is light-skinned it really takes some of the punch out of the white blond people being the scary primitive Other.

I don't feel like I ever got the hang of Princess Mononoke I have to say.

Maybe having been introduced to Miyazaki via the one-two punch of Spirited/Howls left me with expectations of all his films being bonkers maximalist masterpieces, so coming to films like Mononoke and Totoro later on left me slightly underwhelmed as they're a lot more understated.

a good thing abt tales of earthsea is it made me reread the first three books

why not tehanu? a) it is used in the film; ii) it's the best one.

weird i would consider princess mononoke way more of a bonkers maximalist masterpiece than spirited away

spirited away takes place in a bonkers otherwordly place but has a very understated time in it imo

otm, whereas Mononoke has like six factions, heads getting lopped off all sorts of people, no definite villains except maybe the local lord besieging Irontown, and the dang forest spirit, the weirdest guy of all