Rock wrote:
I need to see that at some point. I was getting into Studio Ghibli early in the pandemic and then took several weeks to get through Tales of Earthsea before losing interest.
Hopefully you're aware that Tales From Earthsea is not a film by the famed Hayao Miyazaki, but by his son, Goro Miyazaki. I haven't seen it, but I gather from your experience that it's none too impressive. Studio Ghibli makes a lot of movies and plenty of them are fine, but the ones directed by Hayao Miyazaki are the ones to prioritize; those are the masterpieces, the ones that make Studio Ghibli a household name. My two absolute favorites are Nausicäa of the Valley of the Wind (Kaze no Tani no Nausicaa), and My Neighbor Totoro (Tonari no Totoro). Those two along with Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro) and Princess Mononoke (Mononoke Himei) would be my personal top recommendations as absolutely crucial viewing, though Castle in the Sky (Laputa), Kiki's Delivery Service (Majo no Takkyuubin), and The Wind Rises (Kaze Tachinu) are every bit as deserving of equal praise. Those are the cream. Still, Castle of Cagliostro is a lot of fun, and the others are various degrees of "not bad." The only ones I haven't seen are Ponyo and the brand new one being released this month, which I am very much looking forward to: How do you Live?
I recommend making these your checklist:
Nausicäa of the Valley of the Wind
My Neighbor Totoro
Spirited Away
Princess Mononoke
Castle in the Sky
The Wind Rises
I'm torn about whether to go ahead and put Kiki's Delivery Service and Castle of Cagliostro on that list. They're great, too. I love Kiki's Delivery Service. but the ones on that list are just such fucking masterpieces.
Now it just so happens that I've just come across by pure coincidence a particularly awesome fact I absolutely must share. I was looking at this YouTube video showing the difference between the original Japanese cartoon Gattchaman and the horribly sanitized/dubbed English release of the same cartoon, Battle of the Planets. The butchering of Japanese shows and movies in the English–speaking world is all–too horribly common, and I'm frequently frustrated by how hard it is to get unadulterated Japanese movies and shows. Lots of Japanese titles, and not obscure ones, mind you, are only available in the original Japanese language in Region 2, and sellers even refuse to ship those to us. This was even true for Ghibli movies well into the 2000s at least, and it may even still be true for some of their titles. Anyway, in the Comments section of that Gattchaman/Battle of the Planets comparison video, I found the following comment with regards to the editing of Gattchaman:
They did similar to "valley of the wind", remixing the order of some things and cutting others until it's original meaning was lost. It also caused many of the japanese animation studios to refuse to allow their titles to be licensed in any form here in america for a number of years.
I did a double–take. Pfffwhaaat??? My favorite Miyazaki film? Then I looked it up. It's true. Ho-lee shit. All this time I thought it was just overly restrictive Japanese IP laws keeping Japanese titles out of Western hands, but at least part of the picture seems to be that creators got tired of American studios raping their art. Valley of the Wind was first released in North America and UK as "Warriors of the Wind," heavily edited down to 95 minutes, with a watered–down narrative and a poster featuring all–male characters that weren't even in the movie.
Now here's the cool factoid I wanted to share:
After Valley of the Wind got raped into Warriors of the Wind, Miyazaki adopted a strict "no-edits" clause for further foreign releases of Ghibli films. Years later, when Miyazaki's producer Toshio Suzuki heard that Harvey Weinstein wanted to edit Princess Mononoke, "to make it more marketable," Suzuki sent Weinstein an authentic katana, with a simple message. "No cuts.”
