MML Traffic #15 for week 3 - August

• Mailing List Stats For This Week
• Introduction
• Threads Covered

  1.	(3 posts)	Did you see Him?
  2.	(5 posts)	All About Purple Worms
  3.	(7 posts)	Shopping for Studio Ghibli Swag
  4.	(10 posts)	Mononoke and Blockbuster
  5.	(37 posts)	Mononoke Philosophy

• Quickies
• Conclusion

We looked at 82 posts by 37 different contributors.

Introduction

    Yikes! A 37 message thread is hard to boil down, hopefully you'll get a glimpse of what was going on.

1. Did you see Him?

Mark Yates posted this tantalizing tidbit, "I was up a famous tall office building (Umeda Sky Building) in Osaka, and was just leaving the viewing platform when I am convinced he walked past me!. . . I have no idea why I didn't stop to ask, I was too worried it wasn't him, but now I'm as good as conviced." Ryoko Toyama cast the thought in doubt, "According to the Production Diary at the official Ghibli site (http://www.ntv.co.jp/ghibli/), Miyazaki-San was asking staff "What does the Dragon's whiskers look like?" on 5th. So he was at the studio, which is in Higashi Koganei, Tokyo. It's possible that he went to Osaka later that day, but considering how tight the schedule for "Sen" is, I don't really think that he has time to do go anywhere else than the studio"

2. All About Purple Worms

Robin Casady asked, "I'm not sure I completely understand the meaning of the purple worms of rage. . . I don't quite see the logic over who has it and who doesn't. . . San and Ashitaka do not seem to get this rage through anger, but through noble deeds. However, it is implied that the boars both got it through anger." Julio Bruna posted an absolutly huge reply (even in edited form):

Fisrt We need to make a little study of shintoism. The god in MH come from an old shintoism belief. . . The shintoism talk of nature's god. But in shintoism those god have no concrete representation. So Miyazaki change the belief, he change it at another point, I'll warn you. . . those god are called kami (translated by gami), and when those kami make a fault, a bad action or something like that they became affected by tatari (in MH that's when they get their brown worms). . . When they are under this curse they are called "tatari kami" (or gami) translated by "demon". According to the belief, only kami can be affected by a tatari. IMO humans can't be affected but tatari kami can contaminate them (just like in the film, and just like a basic curse).

Now we'll get into the real thing.

In MH Miyazaki show (very weel) the balance between Hatred and Compassion in the characters (humans and god). Those are two feeling that each characters let express them alternatively. . . To be affected by tatari, god must make a mistake, a fault, but in MH they just let their strong feelings get out, such as fear, hatred and anger. . . There comes the reason why Nago and Okkoto became tatari kami. . . they were both both hurt to death by human's weapons. . . This pain his what make the two boars let their strong feelings go out, they must have develop a real fear and a great hatred for the humans (the cause of the pain). So the two boars can't handle such feelings and then can't avoid to be affected by tatari. . . Moro who find the way to don't let those feeling take over her, don't become a tatari kami. . . Now just take a look at the humans. . . I will take Ashitaka. Since he's cursed, when he let his anger go out, we can see his brown stain growing. Ashitaka is interesting because we can see when he express anger. When he let his anger going out, he got real strengh but the pain inflicted by the curse is growing too. . . at the end when ashitaka and san *both curse* hand his head to the shishigami, their stain grow really quickly, I think this can be explain because they feel a great feer, seeing those "ectoplasm" comming near them.

3. Shopping for Studio Ghibli Swag

Mark Yates put forth a number of shopping tips for public consumption:

Mitsukoshi Mae (above Mitsukoshi Mae tube stop on the Hanzomon line) a massive department store has Totoro's and catbus, plus some dust bunnies on 3rd floor.

Tokyo Tower, 3rd floor of building under Tokyo Tower has a massive Miyazaki Totoro merchandise selection. Hundreds of Totoro items. I spent around 48,000Y (400 pounds, 650 dollars!) at these 2 places! Beware! But this is a must visit location! . . .

Sakuraya(sp?) cd/video/rental shop in Shinjuku. . . The store has a massive anime video rental selection (1000 tapes?) and the biggest anime CD selection compared to HMV Shinjuku, and Virgin which has little/no anime in any of its Tokyo stores. . . .

Also if you want extra cash while in Japan, Citibank is the only one we found that worked with our cards, and was open 24/7. And take the excellent "Lonely Planet, Tokyo" guidebook - worth it's weight in gold!

4. Mononoke and Blockbuster

Sharon Westfall probably got many people excited with her subject line only to start with, "No, not there yet.. sorry. ^_^" She continued, "I went in to the Kahului Maui store today, and was distressed to see it missing from the Coming Soon board. So I asked the clerk at the register if it was going to be available here. . . she looked it up on the computer and it showed that 4 copies were suppose to be available at the store on August 29th. . . Such a bummer to those of you who will only see the video (formatted to fit your TV screen) and not in the theaters. I don't think the impact will be quite the same on TV. . . I don't know if 4 copies of PM indicate they anticipate better interest" Marc Hairston replied, "Four copies per store is a good number for an "arthouse" film. Usually they only get one copy per store. This shows that Blockbuster expects it to do fairly well."

Related enough that it didn't merit a seperate header was this question from Ketcha, "Is Princess Mononoke only to be released at Blockbuster?" Zach B wrote, "No, Princess Mononoke is not a "Blockbuster Exclusive" (like some movies they do have for rent)." Marc added, "my local independent video rental store has a flier for coming attractions and it lists Mononoke on it. It's not a Blockbuster exclusive, but since Blockbuster accounts for over half of the video rental stores (here in Dallas it's almost 80% or more) in the US, seeing them push Mononoke, even a little bit, is good news."

5. Mononoke Philosophy

Sophia Rogers started the Thread of the Week© with, "After thinking about PM for a while, I realized that the Animal Gods didn't seem to be fully rational..they were sort of amoral. The Deer God, the god closest to the center of things, seems the most completely "animal" of the Gods. In spite of his divine nature, he apparently doesn't have the ability to talk or understand his situation. When he loses his head and becomes a monster, I think it is not a willful decision on his part but merely instinct. . . It occured to me that perhaps the humans are different (and bad) BECAUSE they possess a moral code which they are constantly breaking, because they possess reason but are always irrational. . . I'm wondering if anyone has an opinion about my analysis?" Of course, her last remark was totally unnecessary <G>. The thread followed a semi-cascading pattern, so I'll try and guide the conversation along those lines.

To the "humans are different (and bad) BECAUSE they possess a moral code":

Robin Casady wrote, "I didn't see the humans as different than other animals in Princess Mononoke. The mob of apes confronting San and Moro seemed to have the characteristics of a mob of humans. All parties, save Ashitaka, were operating strictly out of self interest."

Andrew Osmond wrote, "Given her times, I always saw Eboshi as something of a saint. Okay, she sucumbs to hubris in the end, but hey, she's a human pushing herself to extremes."

Michael Wojcik wrote, "This is the complement of standard arguments about the relationship of intention and agency to morality, no? If you can't be good without the capability to be bad, then conversely you can't be bad without the capability to be good."

Steven Kim wrote, "It's hard to say that the humans in Iron town were breaking a moral code when they are just acting on instinct to preserve themselves. Animals have claws, fangs, fur, speed, strength - but what do we have? Other than our brains, we're just naked, feeble animals with very little protection agains the elements or predators. . . a thousand years ago, nature would probably kill you - the elements, disease etc., hence nature was the enemy and humans waged war on it. . . The only people who I think are clearly breaking a moral code are the samarai who go about pillaging, squabbling and grappling for land and power."

The next twist in the thread came from Steven, "There is obviously no clear cut delineation between good and evil in Mononoke". Seems like an innoculous statement, but when Sharon Westfall replied, "Hmmm.. if that's the case, then Miyazaki failed again. I don't think he meant for people to take one side or the other, He wanted people to think like Ashitaka, and see all sides with eyes unclouded" the thread took a hard left.

Steven replied, "I wouldn't say that Miyazaki failed - even those people who pick sides appreciate the complexity of the situations. I think it's natural to pick sides; a work that is perfectly balanced is as simple and unrealistic as a work that is totally biased i.e. good versus evil."

Sean Gibbons wrote, "a lot of people are so used to absolutly Pro-nature media which protray man as evil, that even though in Mononoke each side has it's severe faults, people are more likely to "root" for the nature side. I even went into the movie rooting for nature, and it messed my mind up when I reliezed that the nature side wasn't so much of the good side that I expected it to be."

Robin wrote, "I agree, the film was from Ashitaka's point of view. I think the film title confused some people into thinking it was about San and her struggle against evil exploiters of nature."

Sharon closed this mini-thread with, "I think Miyazaki wrote the conflict specifically to be vague, specifically to not have an apparent good side/bad side, because real life conflicts are that way, too. He's anti-"one sided". But if the audience comes away feeling the film was pro-environmental, that wasn't the message. Or, if the audience comes away feeling, "What's the matter with Ashitaka? Why didn't he chose one side or the other?" the audience didn't get it."

IronMouse's gigantic post (880 words) spawned several threads, here's one the start of one, "Maybe I'm exaggerating here (and Eboshi probably wouldn't let it go this extreme), but San would most certainly be killed. She may end up being mauled, miamed, shot, torn from limb to limb, cut to pieces and end up having her head stuck on a pointy stick like some trophy (after all, the humans saw San more of a manifestation of nature than a human)."

Kari Lehikoinen replied, "These people have a society, which everyone tries to protect. San is a clear threat to their society. She simply attacks and tries to kill their leader, Eboshi. If it was the other way around, I think San would do the same to them (the possibility is mentioned twice in the movie)."

Andrew wrote, "In addition to Kari's points, remember that San and her wolf-clan had been responsible for the deaths of many of the women's friends and loved ones. It's not as if the Tatar-Ba people are acting from simple bigotry. (Point on Ashitaka: he's an outsider, and has the choice about who to 'cast his lot with,' as it were. Being Ashitaka, he chooses both.)"

Robin wrote, "Eboshi would kill San at the first chance she had. San's whole purpose was to kill Eboshi. They were not dueling for sport."

The thread really got muddled at this point, Nausicaa got tossed into the mix, along with a comparison of rabid dogs and San's attack on Eboshi.

Quickies

    No Quickes! No one posted a nice tidbit or two.

Conclusion

    Here's hoping for some nice tidy 5-10 message threads next week! If you own a Playstation Chrono Cross deserves a look.

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