Favourite Miyazaki film

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

spirited away's big spectacle sequences feel bigger & more overwhelming to me than mononoke's

maybe that's because the baseline is lower though!

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

bcz no copy in the house

get one forthwith, and the next two, and join me in the earthsea thread to discuss the greatest hegelian thesis/antithesis/synthesis in literature.

my wife announced to us all that she'd never seen Spirited Away despite it being one of the kids' favourite films growing up!we're not sure how she could have been always out of the room when it was on, going to rectify it later

Watched Nausicaa & Mononoke in quick succession. I really wanted to like Nausicaa more, it looked fantastic and I was instantly drawn into its world, however although most of his films drop you into the middle of a unique and fully realised world it usually serves as setting to a more universal story - even when it's as integral as in Spirited Away things are rarely explained, you just have to take them as they come. By contrast this had too much exposition and the story, especially the climax, relied too much on the invented quasi-mystical ecology. Also it was too damn long and at some points it seemed like 'young girl yells at giant insects: the movie'. Some great moments though, especially the giant at the end.

Also within the first few minutes I thought 'wtf this looks like the work of Moebius'; turns out Miyazaki directed it "under Moebius' influence" (his (or translator's) words, apols to mark s). Great interview between the two of them here: http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/interviews/miyazaki_moebious.html

Mononoke was also too long, also featured a protagonist overly fond of yelling, this one way more annoying than Nausicaa. Even though she was eeeeeevil the Lady Eboshi was much more likeable, as was the mercenary monk, though of all the Engish dubs I've seen/heard so far Billy Bob Thornton's voice is the only one I've thought was really out of place. The eldritch Forest Spirit was great and the "I'm going to show you how to kill a god" scene was awesome. I couldn't really get behind the more conventional aspects, a lot of dashing around on horseback (or elkback) with no real sense of peril.

and re: kiki from upthread:

kiki is a way more anxiety-inducing watch than it should be

yes! i am perhaps unusually anxious about lateness/missed appointments but dropping the package in the forest/dithering around at the old lady's and missing the party gave me palpitations.

> Also it was too damn long

it's only about 40% of the book(s). i think it was made after volume 2 and it ended up as 5 volumes. this or laputa is probably my favourite.

> Mononoke

english text by neil gaiman. terrible violent thing.

> kiki is a way more anxiety-inducing

that propeller-bicycle at the end looks like a deathtrap

lady eboshi is not strictly evil, that's part of the point

it's always hard to convert an epic manga series into a watchable movie... nausicaa does a pretty good job imo, considering what a feat that is... on the other hand, akira, while a fun movie, feels like a trailer compared to the manga it's based on

lady eboshi is not strictly evil, that's part of the point

she's not an ahem cartoon villain, sure. i don't think caring for the people of irontown or even the lepers are huge points in her favour though.

this seems like a good thing to lower your blood pressure
https://ghibli.fandom.com/wiki/Iblard_Jikan
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xpn1g7

rewatching ARRIETTY (2011)

i love how much she adores her dad and is excited by his skills and him being deadpan stoic back at her

Have vented on this before, but find Arrietty almost impossible to watch, in large part because of the UK English dub. Also #1 daughter watched it a lot as a 4 year old and took to addressing me and her mum as "Mother?" and "Father?" in that piercingly insufferable middle class tone, often while we were wheeling her around Streatham Sainsbury's.

i'm watching it subbed so luckily this isn't an issue

as a uk english person who used to read the uk english books i thought it was fine except for the boy. was a bit of a shock at first but then a relief from all the american dubs. olivia colman was pretty good.

wild theory: Shou (the boy) is actually pregnant...

Don’t be silly

rewatching LAPUTA (1984) as i break down to make some room in my flat

tentative critical observation so far: tintin is one visual ancestor (see also KIKI) and YELLOW SUBMARINE another

tintin ancestry comes in by way of lupin iii surely

maybe yeah

The dub version of Kiki that's on Netflix is the one with the terrible corny music and the extraneous OTT Phil Hartman dialogue that was eventually pared down. Sucks for folks who will know this version best.

oh we watched it the other day and u remember thinking I didn't remember all that stuff

The dub version of Kiki that's on Netflix is the one with the terrible corny music and the extraneous OTT Phil Hartman dialogue that was eventually pared down.

I've never seen it before so don't know what to compare it with, but it doesn't have the "I can talk again!" line at the end that forks rails about.

https://www.quora.com/Did-Hayao-Miyazaki-really-say-that-anime-was-a-mistake?share=1
Some really funny stuff in here, sure some of you have heard it already but there's some stuff I didnt know. I think he's right about a lot of things but it's often a bit too sweeping. I've heard that he doesn't even like his work being called anime.

I used to think that all japanese animation was called anime but apparently that's not the case. I would like to know if anyone could clarify this.

ponyo (the only good film) is now on netflix

obviously i am watching it, i will always watch it

anime as the term is used in the west just means any animation produced in japan

I can't remember who it was that said differently. Might be something like the way people said gekiga is not manga?

when lisa and sosuke are fleeing the tsunami in the little pink car and ponyo is running on top of the storm fishwaves is the most exciting scene in cinema history sorry if this offends