| 1. | (25 posts) | All Things Laputa |
| 2. | (19 posts) | Nausicaa - Swimsuit Picture Controversy |
| 3. | (9 posts) | How Old is Nausicaa? |
| 4. | (34 posts) | Nausicaa Essay |
We looked at 176 posts by 76 different contributors.
Danger! Flood of messages!
The source of two major threads this week came from a single Evan Talbott post. The first of two rants, "I understand the reasoning behind retitling Laputa as "Castle in the Sky" (Laputa is a Spanish curse word). But that doesn't stop me from resenting it. It just robs the title of all its exoticness. . . Plus, Laputa makes it sound a little more mature, imho. Anyone else feel this way?" I'm not sure if omitting that last question would have made a difference, but replies were fast and furious. Michael Bloss replied, "Well, I agree with you in principle, but I also live in a city with a very large Hispanic population, and I can't imagine many families wanting to go see "Diseased-Whore, Castle in the Sky", so I can see why they made the change." The Nausicaa.net FAQ on the name and Marc Hairston's The Story of a Name page are useful resources on the subject.
Sherman Chan came out swinging at Disney, "Disney removal of the word from the title is just another one of Disney's paranoia and that desperation to try not to offend anyone in the global market. . . Consider the fact that Swift and Gulliver's Travel are well known in the world, what Disney's doing is just plain corporate stupidity." Several Spanish speakers put up a rebuttal, Leo Karch wrote, "Laputa sounds terribly bad in spanish, believe me. FYI, some of the commercial spanish translations of Swift's "Travels of Gulliver" have changed Laputa for "Lupata" to avoid the problem. Being this movie aimed for children makes it even more necessary to make this change."
Antonio Eduardo added, "I didnt find offensive the title until i start reading the comments. . . Disney is just caring about that fact that they could create a malinterpretation among spanish viewers." Marc Hairston basically ended the thread with, "Yes, it's that bad and yes, you don't want it in big yellow block letters on the covers of videocases in the kid's section. That's just asking for trouble. Disney made the right decision."
Evan Talbott's other rant:
I was looking through a friend's Animerica recently (don't know the month, year, or issue number, sorry) and I was looking at the fan art section. This month was a "swimsuit" edition, so all the drawings had people in swimsuits. Well, imagine my surprise when I saw a comely red-headed girl in a sexy one-piece. As I looked down at the caption, I found out it was...Nausicaa! Gah! I mean, she's 14 for god's sake! Yeah, there's a nude scene in the manga but it's not there to titillate the reader...this was. It wasn't enough that she's in a swimsuit (which isn't so bad) but they have to put her in this come-hither pose, eyes closed, and glistening with salt water...call me old-fashioned, but I just find this really really wrong.David Mankins tried to steer people to the list archives, "There was a nice discussion of this topic on this list in 1995" but to no avail. Out of the blue, the artist of the picture, Sergio Castro, wrote, "I made the Nausicaa drawing just to show her in a very unusual (for the character) but not offensive pose. It wasn’t in any way my intention to show her "slutty" or to make any "titillation"." After this point the thread sprinted into flame territory and Michael Johnson (list owner) had to stomp on it twice before it finally withered. The picture in question for your own scrutiny.
One of those off-shoot threads, this one came from the end of the last subject. Julien Bruna wrote, "In one of the mail someone said that Nausicaa is a 14 years old. I don't agree. . . I have just finished the manga (haven't seen the movie) and I can hardly say she's a 14 girl. She is not acting like one. She is facing War, death, hatred, desilusion with such courage. I think she's more like a young woman. She's probably 16-18."
Stefano Marone replied, "Well, in my opinion the maturity of nausicaa doesn't come from the years passed from her birth. . . . In these worlds, very similar to the Europe Middle Ages,which I take as an example, 14 years old girls were adults in evererything... they were already married and had already had at least a children." Kyle Pope chimed, "I wouldn't underestimate the resilience of 14 year old girls. . . war and hardship can force people into adult roles a lot sooner than we would expect in a comfortable modern society. . . Nausicaa is the daughter of the King of the Valley of the Wind. As such she would be groomed very early for the responsibilities she would eventually bear as its next sovereign." Ryoko Toyama added a point of clarification, "Nausicaa is 16, at least in the movie."
Eron Rauch (self-proclaimed "good-for-nothing 19 year old drifting college freshman art major") posted an essay on the Nausicaa manga. The responses as a whole were thoughtful and lucid, unfortunately trying to summerize (some posts were over a page!) is a little tough - not to mention that there are spoilers in almost every post. I recommend buying the manga then checking out the essay and thread. I've got a feeling that this thread will spill into next week.
The opening and ending theme songs to the English dubbed version of Kiki's Delivery Service are available on CD for $7. Tad Morgan noted that the Kevin and Kell comic strip is currently holding a poll for the reader's favorite strip. To check the relevance (which is high) look at the strips and vote! The strip is pretty good, quite a few deus ex machina moments, but overall a very nice read. I spent the better part of 2 hours running through all 900+ strips (my finger is very tired). The Princess Mononoke pages on nausicaa.net are under review for the Onsen Mark award.
The Listserv schedule seems to have shifted to Monday -> Sunday - therefore updates from now on will be appearing on Mondays. Until the next listserv switch anyways.