| 1. | (20 posts) | Grave of the Firefiles and History |
| 2. | (8 posts) | Amazon.com Downgrades PM DVD Status |
| 3. | (7 posts) | Anime in America, Minnesota Redux |
| 4. | (6 posts) | Nausicaa as Movie and Manga |
We looked at 59 posts by 36 different contributors.
After a few 100+ message weeks the MML slacked off a bit, whew! This issue is early again, but I doubt anything is missing.
Hitomi Gehrig started (inadvertently) a wild thread with, "My question is now: Can I go to the pics with them or should I first better give them some history lessons?. . . I don't want to make them anti-americans. But when I first saw Hotaru no Haka... I think you know the reaction." I replied, "The war is really an aside. There's no need to be steeped in Japanese History to understand the film." David Athay warned, "My big concern about showing this film to people is that it can really kill a night because of the heavy mood it leaves." The flood of messages started when Christian Link posted, "I would HIGHLY recommend a lesson in Japanese atrocities before showing the film to someone. Otherwise they may get the wrong impression." This sparked a number of responses, some debating the Japanese bias Christian brought up, others like Jee Hoon Lee downplayed the concern:
And it actually happens to be a good question, although it's not something that anyone can reasonably expect to be answered in a 2 hour movie about two Japanese children. Movies aren't made in a vacuum, and neither should all of them be political mouthpieces for one view or another. If there weren't other movies about Japanese atrocities or if this one happened to be an overtly didactic sermon that "the Japanese people were innocent victims", then maybe I'd have cause to complain. But there are and this isn't.The thread then turned to other war films and eventually died out.
Tom Foster was the first to report that Amazon.com send out this notice, "We are sorry to report that the official release date for "Princess Mononoke" has been pushed back indefinitely." Michael Bloss chimed in with, "The last thing I heard was that the release had been pushed back till mid to late summer of this year, as fan pressure was strong enough for them to add the subbed version to the DVD." To this Marc Hairston replied, "You know, this is an excellent example of how rumors get started. Because an incomplete info sheet was sent out to the retailers (listing only English) there were a lot of upset fans. . . Near as we've been able to tell, the fan input has had absolutely *zero* effect on Miramax's decisions." His last comment spawned a new thread covered next.
After Marc's comments (see last thread) Eron Rauch wrote, "I find that comment interestingly poignant. I've been doing research about the future on anime in America and besides learning that fans are generally to biased to be reliable sources and that academics are too uninformed to be counted knowledgeable or have a tentacle porn fetish... I used to believe it was the fans that more or less dictated the direction of the anime niche market, but the more I study the matter, the more I believe that the companies pigeonhole themselves by not being willing to take chances on more shojou or classic anime (ie- cross demographic or artistic appeal)." David Athay put a different spin on Eron's comments, "I think the reason Miyazaki's films and some of the other more literate anime is so slow to hit the market in the US is that it is much harder for the importer to deal with. . . As most of these groups tend to gear to the lowest common denominator they tend to shy away from anything that would be challenging." It's not all doom-and-gloom however, Justin Leach wrote, "From what I have seen from friends in the industry we should be seeing the new batch of "AmeriME" within the next few years(even from the big name studios)." The subject of why Minnesota was used as the test market for Princess Mononoke came up (again). The usual reply was put out by David Mankins, "It's long been believed in marketing circles that the upper Midwest is *very* representative of the United States as a whole."
After some discussion about the manga and movie, Noel Vera concluded, "My point is, a lot of images from the anime pop up now and then throughout the story, as if Miyazaki had the film in mind while working out the rest of the manga." Miyazaki had (mostly) completed what's in the first volume of the Perfect Collection when he made the movie. Jason Brinkerhoff wrote, "It's a shame more people don't realize this because I've read several highly critical reviews of nausicaa from people who believe that the movie was a poor excuse for a movie adaptation of the manga. I like to look at them as seperate entities using similar characters and plot. . . a book is an entirely different thing than a movie/series so these things shouldn't really be compared on that level." David Athay added, "I agree. . . You really have to separate the two and allow a director\animator\whatever the license required for them to put their interpretation of the work to film and then enjoy it for what it is."
Michael E. Kerpan posted a reply to Andrew Osmond's article about Joe Hisaishi. All films now have their Japanese characters along with the English and romanji - they're not on the Films page, but it's a good starting point.
That's it for this week, drop me a line if you have questions/comments.