| 1. | (25 posts) | Piracy, Disney, and Ghibli |
| 2. | (7 posts) | "Princess Mononoke" DVD in the UK |
| 3. | (20 posts) | Son of The Unquotable Thread |
| 4. | (10 posts) | What's a Ghibli Film? |
We looked at 104 posts by 33 different contributors.
A week dominated by two distinct topics. Both topics not new, one spilled over from last week and the other is the Always Enjoyable Disney thread.
The Disney thread started off as an observation from Yakko Hudson Saotome, "Was just watching "The Screen Savers" on TechTV. . . there's a regular feature called "Martin (the twisted-listers)'s list" which usually comes near the end of the show. . . When he showed the source for his list on the computer monitor, it displayed a list of movies. At the top, #1 was listed none other than "Kiki's Delivery Service"!" Yakko later posted detailed instructions on finding the list.
Interesting, but not the sort of thing that inspires mass posting. That all changed after Alex Ingram wrote, "I would guess that people who have seen Mononoke and wanted to see more Ghibli are taking matters into their own hands. Someone remind Disney that the concept of delaying releases just causes piracy to snowball these days..."
Michael Johnson followed up with, "A well written postal letter describing the demand for what amounts to pirated versions of Ghibli films, with publicly available and easy to find evidence of this demand, should make a good argument in support of a more aggressive and effective campaign to release Ghibli films."
Things really started rolling with Bruce Franklin's message, "I doubt that Disney would regard this as a reason
to release more Ghibli films for a couple of reasons:
1) The majority of requests are for films already available through legitimate commercial releases. If they're ripping off KIKI and MONONOKE now then there's little doubt they'll rip off any future releases.
2) Demand on Gnutella is little indication as to how well these films would sell to the general audience. Disney has long had their own set of tools for figuring this out and are unlikely to be swayed by anecdotal accounts of Internet piracy.
Alex replied, "Sure, but any letter we write is about saying what we feel, no what Disney wants to hear. It is a point that they should be challenged on. . . The challenge that Piracy is starting to show is that the fans can in some cases produce a higher quality release than the likes of Disney can. What this means is that the releases of Ghibli films will just be ignored if the fail to have the correct sub/dub features and decent picture and sound quality. One duff disc and the entire thing is off. Sizeable delays will just annoy people, there is no logistical reason for Disney to delay, and that angers a lot of people. . . It seems sad that in this modern age the giant Disney is unable to work out some method to actually sell it's product to a slightly less that mass audience at first. . . If Disney are too stupid to see the market for the trees, then they don't deserve the licenses in the first place."
Bruce wrote, "My brother and I subtitled KIKI ourselves (we used a professional translator for the script) and the end result was far superior to Disney's effort. . . The only people that are angered are the fans who constitute a small minority of the market Disney sells to. The vast majority don't even know these films exist. They're not asking for them and won't care if Disney never releases them. And Disney has a good reason for delaying or even cancelling any future releases. It's called money. . . It wasn't a "slightly less than mass" audience that went to see MONONOKE in America. It was anime and foreign film fans who happened to be the only people wanting to see the film in the first place. This is called a niche market. A company doesn't get to be a giant by catering to niches.
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Licenses are not a matter of deserving them. Disney paid for them and within the bounds of their agreement they are free to do whatever they want. That includes not releasing anymore films because they're dissatisfied with the ROI from the ones they did release. . . I've shown Ghibli films to a lot of people. After I get the tape back I've always asked if they want to see more of Miyazaki's work, if they'd be interested in buying a DVD release of it or going to see it in a theater. In almost every case they are not interested. While they enjoyed it as something different they don't want to see any more Ghibli films. One was enough and they only watched it because it was free."
Alex replied, "So it shows that us fans are actually better at this than the company which is meant to service our needs. That shows you that everything is screwed up currently. . . Sooner or later they will realise that there is money to be made selling to minorities, sure it takes a different method, but it can be done. . . I'm not predicting massive success, I'm saying I know that there is a moderate audience who want to see it. . . They've already made the investment, what harm is there in releasing the product, even by just making the current Japanese releases Region 1 as well as 2 or even region 0, then selling them in the apropriate places. . . they could probably sell their license to a real anime company who'd at least be willing to do something."
Hanno Mueller chimed in, "Uhm, you forget the fanboy component of this argument. OF COURSE, a loyal fan will use much more care and thought for his favourite pet project. The problem is that not every "professional" involved with a project shares this love for the particular project of the week. Companies must find employees who are as enthusiastic about a project as the fans. This doesn't always work out. (Hey, Disney - hire one of us, will you guys? :-)"
Is everyone here? Since the thread used massive amounts of quoting some quotes might seem out-of-place. Try "reading between the lines".
Lee Johnson wrote, "In the present time w/ the situation of piracy and what-not, any company who were afraid of piracy to such an extent to avoid releasing anything, would fail. It's catch 22. Disney are more concerned about Piracy more than any of their competitors - they have several anti piracy methods and their videos always condone piracy. . . Disney are not wrong, they have such a dominance over the industry that they only want to succeed. They are obviously treading carefully after the apparent failure of Mononoke in the States. It's sad that Disney, a company with global dominance and a bank balance of a few hundred billion/trillion/centillion/whatever cannot go out on a limb and spend a few pennies on these films. . . I said this a year ago: All Disney need to do is title the films "Disney Presents, Studio Ghibli's [Insert film here]", do a little marketing, and they would be set up."
Bruce replied, "It costs a lot more than a few pennies to dub, distribute and promote these films. Shareholders don't reward going out on a limb unless you come back with a pot of gold and there isn't one here. . . A Disney insider told me that had it not been for the requirement in their contract MONONOKE would never have been released in theaters or on DVD. Most of the executives thought the film had no market in America. But since their real market was Japan this didn't matter. Anything sold over here was considered gravy. . . as I pointed out, it's not that simple. This would only work if you had a pre-existing audience. Unlike Pokemon there is no such audience. Most people have never heard of Ghibli, don't know what it is and don't care."
Lee shot back, "So, Disney bought the *world wide* rights to these films so no one else could?. . . Disney have the money, power, notoriety and reputation to assist in a change in this attitude. If not them, then who else?"
Chris Wallace attempted to tie things together, "Both Disney and Ghibli knew that Japan would be the primary market for these films. While the "Studio Ghibli Retrospective" currently touring the world has evidently done very well, they are targeted at arthouse theatres and film festivals - the very environments that "encourage" films such as these - smaller budget, story-driven, non-effects-laden films that do not require a massive advertising budget to get folks into see them. . . those who claim that Disney did not spend enough marketing "Mononoke" and that is why it failed to make a hundred million are kidding themselves. Disney would have spent $150 million on marketing it and it still would have been lucky to clear $5-10 million at the theatre.
Why? Cause it is not about the marketing, it is about the *market*. As Bruce Franklin noted in his message, the United States does not have a pre-defined market for films such as Ghibli's. . . Many then ask "so why did Ghibli choose Disney if the economics did not make
sense for Disney to release them outside of Japan"?
Because I think neither Disney nor Tokuma Shoten/Ghibli *care* about these films being widely released outside of Japan.
In the past, I have been of the opinion that Ghibli and Disney entered this deal specifically for the market outside of Japan. However, the more I see things (and have informal talks with old friends within Disney) it may very well be what Bruce has said - Tokuma Shoten wanted these films released *in Japan* to the widest possible audience *in Japan*. And for that, well Disney makes a lot of sense. . . Disney knows how to sell to the faithful. Even though it is about a given that any animated feature or OAV from them is going to sell extremely well in the United States since they have the market cornered, they still spend money on hyping that already built-in "fan loyalty".
Disney bought these films knowing there was a market in Japan for them as big as the market in the US for Disney's own fare. And, being good capitalists, they approached Tokuma-Shoten for the rights to re-release them all. And Tokuma-Shoten, also being good capitalists, realized that Disney was the best fit for selling these films in Japan. . . I think Tokuma-Shoten also cares little. They know full-well these films will never be more than niche-sellers in North American and Europe. Any money they spent to prepare and sell them in those markets would be less than they would bring in on sales. I do not know if Viz or AnimeEigo or other companies tried to land them. If they did, obviously TS was either not interested or wanted too much money to make the deal worthwhile for the US companies to enter into the deal.
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I agree with Bruce's contact that "Mononoke" never would have been considered by Disney for theatrical release. It is just polar-opposite to everything Feature Animation does. . . Perhaps Disney marketing hoped if "Mononoke" flew, it would help "Castle". And perhaps Disney marketing was afraid that to release "Castle" beforehand would give families the impression that all-Ghibli films were cute and cuddly like "Kiki" and "Totoro" were. And I can imagine the horror in their eyes at that thought would have been equal to the horror in the parent's eyes when they took their kids to see "Mononoke". . . So now what does Disney do? They pretty much have to let "Castle" go out,
most likely as a VHS/DVD release, just to recover the cost of producing it and hoping that maybe they can break even. But as for the rest of the films.
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As for those who have claimed that Disney bought these films to deny them access to the rest of the world, I do not agree. I do not believe Disney views these films as such a resounding threat to their domination of the world animation market that they need to be "buried". If they did, they would not have waited till 1999. When "Kiki" busted the box-office in 1989, Disney would have acted and tried to land it.
Hanno spun, "The main problem with all this bickering is: After all these decades of professional show business, there is still no way to *guarantee* a hit. But at least there are ways to try. . . There are more talented boybands out there than "Backstreet Boys". There are better plays out there than "The Producers". There are funnier movies than "Dumb and Dumber". And still some make it and some don't.
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BUT I STILL DO NOT personally believe that "Mononoke" was *destined* to fail outside Japan, as Chris/Tiger Wallace seems to suggest between the lines. . . Disney has the resources to try. If Disney had done all this and "Mononoke" failed, we wouldn't bicker here about their marketing. . . As a counterexample, I can not complain at all about the marketing for "Titan AE". This is a movie where the marketing department did everything right, but the movie finally did not deliver"
Chris replied, "I did not mean to imply that "Princess Mononoke" was destined to fail in the United States. I honestly hoped it would do well. . . What I was trying to state that an all-out marketing blitz in the tens of millions of dollars range would most likely not have done more than double an already "poor" take. . . I am just beginning to think that many of us who thought the purpose of this deal was to get these films in every metroplex in North American and Europe might not have been incorrect. The real purpose may have been to insure that these films sold well in their home market, which also happens to be their core market, and that any plans to release them in NA/EU were secondary, at best, and dependent on such actions making fiscal sense.
Honestly, this issue is much too complex to be simplified to statements such as "If Disney marketed it, it would have sold" or "Americans are clueless boobs who cannot appreciate these films for what they are". Frankly, both statements play a part in the failure of Ghibli films to make a strong and profitable showing outside of Japan, but the dynamics are many and varied and while this list has done an excellent job of touching on many of them and even trying to link them all together, I am not sure we will ever be able to come up with a Single Unified Theory on why or why not films we cherish are not appreciated by the vast majority of the general populace.
Hanno wrote back, ""Titan AE"'s marketing and it's clever trailer - shown before Star Wars Ep 1 no less - sparked huge interest among my friends (few of them animation fans or even movie lovers, just casual cinema goers). The movie THEN fell flat because word of mouth was that it was a poor movie.
"Mononoke" had excellent word of mouth, but no appropriate initial marketing campaign to create enough initial interest in the casual movie viewer. Few of my friends, even those who had seen it on my DVD, even knew that it was in German cinemas.
Chicken and egg.
Hanno also posted an interesting tidbit on the rights situation, "For what it's worth: I recently learned from a Buena Vista Germany spokesman that BV Germany is an independant entity, not directly related with Buena Vista International.
He insisted that BV Germany is *not* part of the "world wide" Disney/Ghibli deal.
They have to aquire distribution rights on their own. And I was told that after "Mononoke", BV Germany does not intend to aquire the rights to other Ghibli movies for the German market "in the longterm future" (quote).
All this was told to me in a phone call, so the usual doubts apply and I may make a fuzz about a throwaway comment. Nonetheless, if it *is* true, I wonder how many other market regions are "not part of the Disney/Ghibli deal".
The End. For this week. Expect another round in the next issue.
Alex Ingram spotted a listing on the BBFC website for the "Princess Mononoke" DVD. Since the link the BBFC is incredidly long, I created a link on the frontpage of MML Traffic.
Lee Johnson speculated, "BBFC rating: Certainly no less than a "12". I wouldn't be surprised at all if BV caught The BBFC on a bad day, resulting in a "15". MH contains one of the three BBFC dislikes - Violence involving animals (The other two are Drugs and rape). The irony would be that, in the last 3 months in the UK anyone with a Television could switch on the news to see animals being shot, burned and buried, en masse.
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DVD: I have a bad feeling that the DVD may lose the Japanese track in the trip overseas. The DVD will be for Europe, not just for The UK, so we may see the usual plethora of European language subtitles (usually about 15 different tracks) and the upgrade from NTSC to PAL resolution will seriously affect disc space (especially so on a 2 hour film (would the PAL speed up be enough to negate this?)). We could see one or all of the European dub tracks being added to the disc, and i very much doubt the French track will be ditched."
Alex replied, "I would expect it to get a 15, and I have no doubt that the likely imposition of such a rating was a major factor in the decision not to release MH cinematically in the UK. . . would it be worth sounding them out to see what their plans are?"
Lee wrote back, "having reminded myself of some of the more graphic sequences I would be surprised if it gained anything less than a 15 rating. The opening 5 minutes are more than enough to send a BBFC representative into a panic. This is an interesting dilemma for BV - they cannot cut any of the films (contractually speaking) yet ultimately, the BBFC have all control over the content of releases in the UK. If BV spoke to the BBFC about cuts required to meet a 12 rating and/or the BBFC imposed cuts for it to gain certificate in the UK how would the situation be interpreted by Tokuma?
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No. The UK release will be for BV to test the water of the "not anime fan" UK market. . . They will be well aware that the majority of
anime fans in the UK, who can, will have already imported it from the US. If there is any uproar from UK fans, the scale will be laughable in comparison to the Boycott form the US one a while back."
Mike Arnold, Andrew Osmond, and Ilan Nguyen kept up the thread from last week. Always facinating, yet hopeless to quote. Andrew posted an off-shoot message entitled "Nausicaa politics etc" that is a pretty good read (if you've read the manga).
Inspired by the previous thread, Michael E. Kerpan wrote, "Is there, in fact, such a thing as a "Ghibli film"?. . . is there really a meaningful artistic category that can be called "Ghibli films". "Ghibli films" could be conceptually viewed as one of two different abstractions: the _union_ of the works (and artistic vision) of Miyazaki and Takahata or, alternatively, the _intersection_ of same. (Picture visual of two interlocking circles). I personally think that looking at "Ghibli films" as the "lump sum" of Miyazaki's and Takahata's works and vision is not likely to be useful, unless the two actually have a great deal in common.
1. Miyazaki usually works at "domesticating" or "naturalizing" either foreign materials (or at least settings) (Laputa, Kiki, Porco) or
investigating broadly humanistic problems (Nausicaa, Mononoke). Takahata is most interested in exploring issues from a fundamentally Japanese perspective
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The differences between Takahata and Miyazaki seem far more significant than their similarities.
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2. Miyazaki has a relatively uniform visual style which is inherently realistic, no matter how fantastic the setting may be. Takahata deploys a variety of styles
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3, Takahata's work is closely connected to classic non-animated Japanese cinema (Ozu, Naruse, Mizoguchi) in both overall directorial style and character treatment. . . Bottom line: it might be possible to consider Miyazaki outside a specifically Japanese context, but this would be almost pointless to do when you look at Takahata.
Andrew Osmond replied, "Michael's question reminds me of what Wittgenstein once said about games. . . Here's the extract from my old textbook, commenting on Wittgenstein:. . . Wittgenstein... concludes that we cannot find anything common to all games, but only a "complicated network of similarities" which "overlap and crisscross" in the same way as the resemblances between people who belong in the same family. "Games," he says, "form a family."...
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I would argue that Ghibli films - and indeed Miyazaki films, and Takahata films, and perhaps Disney animated films, and films by numerous 'auteur' directors - might be thought of in a similar way to games. I do think there's a visible continuity between Ghibli films, but that's not to say I could 'identify' anything common to all of them (except obvious things like their all being animated).
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Looked at this way, the question becomes whether the Ghibli films are really _distinctive_ as a group; whether, for example, one could extend the criss-crossing similarities to many non-Ghibli films. Could you imagine Ghibli making a film like Akira? Would that fit into the 'overlapping' group? What about Perfect Blue? Or Honneamise? Or Night on the Galactic Railroad, or Kenji's Spring? I don't know... for me, there's a feeling of distance between all these films and what Ghibli does.
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I wouldn't say the separation is complete, though. . . Despite what you say, I still think of Takahata's first three Ghibli films as having a fairly realistic framework that's occasionally broken, most frequently in Pom Poko. . . Yamadas... well, that's another kettle
of fish."
David Mankins added, "Another difference: Takahata's films are uniformly elegiac, while Miyazaki is generally more optimistic (though _Porco_ might be an exception, and supposedly a big chunk of _Totoro_'s appeal for the Japanese is its evocation of the same countryside that is lost in _Pom Poko_ or to which Taeko returns in _Omoide poro poro_)."
Michael posted a substantial reply to Andrew's comments, "I suspect there is some intangible "something", but can't quite put a finger on it. Is there, perhaps, a negative distinctness - they are similar in some fashion by all being noticeably different from just about everything else (in
the realm of animated features)?. . . I think there might be a real (but maybe not huge) difference in the way, Miyazaki and Takahata treat children. My sense that with Miyazaki (so far), one is more an observer of affectionately-portrayed children. With Takahata,
things seem to be portrayed more from a child's (youth's) perspective.
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I would say that, with the exception of Pinocchio, which was based on an extremely didactic source, most Disney films are not didactic. They may have bland moral messages, but these are almost like coatings to make them more respectable for adults, rather than an underpinning for the work as a whole. (E.g., Bambi, a wonderful film, but the point "hunters bad" is pretty simple-minded). . . OTOH, I see the Ghibli tendency to both ask for reflection and, perhaps, to give at least a bit of a shove in a particular direction as a characteristic that Miyazaki and Takahata share -- and which sets them aside from most of their peers.
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The dream sequence in Nausicaa _does_ use the same type of meaningful stylistic shift that is more commonly used by Takahata. I don't count stylistic differences between credits and main body as being the same thing, though. Miyazaki definitely displays stlyistic variations _between_ films, but except for Nausicaa has not used _internal_ stylistic variation as a major element of form."
Michael commented on David's post, "I would say that Takahata's films usually involve nostalgia, but are not elegaiac (in the sense of mourning loss -- except for Fireflies and Pom Poko). Goshu may not even be nostalgic. Only Yesterday and Yamadas deal with contention between past and present (and perhaps future), but in a positive fashion. I would say nostalgia plays a major role in much of Miyazaki as well"
Andrew replied, "Hmmm... not sure of the distinction. In what way does Totoro 'observe' children, _rather than_ taking their perspective? (Of course, it may do both.) One might even argue that Takahata is more the observer. In the case of Fireflies, the viewer comes to criticise Seita's actions even while empathising with them."
To which Michael wrote, "My feeling is that we are observers, but I'm not certain if I can give a convincing verbal rationale for this, though. In Fireflies and Only Yesterday, the characters talk to us. We have no access to interior thoughts in Totoro, beyond observation of actions and guessing what thoughts lie behind these. In Totoro, Miyazaki is at his most Ozu-like: no flashbacks, no explicit narrative voice, and only externally-seen characterization. Totoro is among the most Ozu-esque Ghibli productions, along with Whisper and the Yamadas. . . In Fireflies, I think we see things (to a considerable extent) from the viewpoint of the _dead_ Seita (and the live post-war author who didn't really die like his character did). Thus, we have a view point which is both empathetic and self-critical."
Tom Wilkes spotted a "Princess Mononoke" DVD review in the "Stereophile Guide to Home Theater" and another blurb in "Widescreen Review". Scott Ryan explain Kamikaze. A massive Miyazaki retrospective is taking place in Japan. Darn. Michael Johnson (with help from Theo Hua) put up the Mononoke trailer tossed around a few weeks ago.
Finals are almost over, so the next issue _should_ be on-time. But don't quote me on that!