| 1. | (3 posts) | Is "Sen" Inscrutable to the non-Japanese? |
| 2. | (5 posts) | "Castle in the Sky" Review |
| 3. | (23 posts) | Can't Stop the "Sen" Juggernaut |
| 4. | (14 posts) | Teaching Anime |
| 5. | (4 posts) | I Want my Anime Music Videos! |
We looked at 101 posts by 48 different contributors.
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Interesting query from Hanno Mueller, "I try to avoid spoilers when reading about "Sen", but what I understood so far is that it is very much rooted in Japanese culture, possibly even more than "Mononoke", and that it is probably tough to understand for a non-Japanese audience. Is that so?"
Ryoko Toyama replied, "The simple answer is "No."
There are several things that you probably need some knowledge (such as Dragon being a god of water in Asia), but with clever translation, there won't be any problem, and I believe that it is a easier sell in the US compared to Mononoke. Actually, I can just imagine some people complaining that it isn't "Japanese enough.". . . The biggest problem of the film to be sold in the US is, IMO, that it's more
than two-hour long. Actually, you don't feel that it's so long, but distributor would think otherwise
Mike Arnold added, "I don't think the film is much more rooted in "Japanese culture". In fact I would guess that a lot of non-Japanese viewers might think "Mononoke Hime" looks more "Japanese." "Sen" kind of looks "Japanese," and kind of "Chinese," and kind of "western," but it's also a fantasy world full of made-up gods and characters with magical powers. . . Toho says the movie is more "Japanese." A couple of weeks ago I and some other list members translated a few of the essays that are on the Toho "Sen" web site. They made repeated mention of how "Japanese" the new film will be, and how it will be different from the "multi-national"/"un-national", "western-style" movies Miyazaki used to make. Miyazaki has said that "Sen" is supposed to be a movie that's relevant to Japanese people living in contemporary Japan."
Emru Townsend reported on the English dub of "Castle in the Sky" that screened at the Fantasia Film Festival, "The dub:
Pretty good, somewhere between Kiki and Princess Mononoke. That is to say, the voices were well cast (Dola is a little shrill at times, but whoever played her -- does anyone have the credits? -- found the balance between avarice, tough love, and a big heart) and generally well acted (Mark Hamill spins his Joker riff into a calculating, slightly fey Muska), but some of the incidental voices were a little too Robotech-y, with unnaturally gruff voices and the requisite random guy yelling out something fairly obvious.
Most annoying was the tendency to add dialogue where there was none previously. Little of it was patently offensive, but some lines were there strictly to make sure the audience wouldn't get lost -- as if they couldn't wait a minute or two for everything to become clear.
[. . .]
The music:
I'm of two minds here. I like the orchestral re-working of Joe Hisaishi's original score, but I wish there wasn't so much of it. The two worst offenses, IMHO: the entire scene where the kite enters the cloud layer that protects Laputa (I've always liked that there was no music in that scene, and that one moment of absolute silence), and the tender moment when the awakened robot reaches out to Sheeta on the tower (unlike the original, the music doesn't reflect Sheeta's recognizing the robot's protective nature).
The audience:
It should be pointed out that this audience was, by default, inclined toward something like Laputa. . . there were many more children in
this crowd, even compared to the screening of Catnapped a few years back (of course, the latter's subtitles may have had something to do with that).
One thing I noticed was that the children often reacted to the movie audibly. Not yelling or howling (memories of Balto), but with gasps of delight and awe, and sighs of relief. (During the scene where Pazu and Dola rescue Sheeta from the fortress, the girl next to me was clasping her hands together tightly the whole time, covering her mouth.)
[. . .]
Marc Hairston answered the "who played Dola" question, "Cloris Leechman (best known in the US as Phyllis, Mary Tyler Moore's landlady in the old "Mary Tyler Moore Show" and in the movie "The Last Picture Show" for which she won an Oscar for best supporting actress)."
Ryoko Toyama asked, "Was there a dialogue at the beginning of the film, where you see Sheeta and Muska through the window of the airship? Disney wanted to add lines there, while Miyazaki-San didn't, saying that "In the air, it's very quiet, you don't hear anything." I wonder who won in the end."
Emru replied, "Yes, there was. Something along the lines of:
Man in Black: Eat something. You'll feel better.
Sheeta: I'm not hungry.
Muska: Leave her be.
Disney: 1 Miyazaki: 0
Marc also spotted a review on Ain't It Cool News.
What? _TWO_ "Sen" threads? Yup, plenty of "Sen" to go around. Mike Arnold posted a 238 line bomb of a review, no quoting since I'm trying to stay pure. Mike also posted a message about the experience of attending the movie, here's a clip, "I made my way up to the concession stand. It was chaos. In true Japanese style, there was no line. People were crammed together from all sides up to the table, where 3 or 4 employees scrambled to keep up with the purchases and questions. "Crowded? This isn't crowded," I overheard one of them saying. I squeezed in somewhere with only a few people in front of me, but those people weren't moving or buying, they were just picking things up, fiddling with them and putting them back down again. It took about 10 minutes to get past, and I had to push and shove in order to not be shoved out myself."
Andrew Simmons spotted a Yahoo! news article with some "Sen" box office numbers. Ryoko Toyama posted figures from Nikkan Sports, with comparisons to other film openings. (Later corrected when Captain Comic pointed out a shifted decimal point).
Joe Monson commented, "Well, people in Hiroshima are doing their part: we (my wife and I) went to see Sen on our way out of Japan, and there were big lines for every showing according to the people at the box office. The showing we were at was either sold out or very close."
Marc Hairston wrote about the DLP projection system developed by Texas Instruments.
Noah Selsby posted the Most Serious Question, "Does Sen end with plain credits or does it have story through the credits like Nausicaa, Kiki, Omoide, etc?"
Joe replied, "It has pics through most or all of the credits (I don't remember if the pics went through the ending of the credits, but I think they did)."
Ryoko wrote, "No "extra story" like "Kiki." Just image illustrations of the world of "Sen" by Miyazaki-San."
Mike added, "Like Ryoko said, no story, just 'image' pictures in the background. That "theme song" for the film plays during the credits, which I think might be something new for a Miyazaki film. Usually the important song plays sometime during the film too."
A lenghty thread comparing "Sen" with "Alice in Wonderland" took place, but it's a spoiler-filled minefield. Enter at your own risk.
Susan Napier (after much prodding from Marc Hairston) posted her thoughts on teaching anime at the University of Texas, and Harvard, "I have to tell you that in my 17 years of teaching, the anime course was probably my most challenging teaching experience. I was constructing the course from the ground up--no nice textbooks out there, not a lot of scholarly material, and very very few other courses like it in the country. . . more unique I think to anime, was the interaction with the students. I have never REMOTELY taught a course in which the students were so INVESTED in the subject material. Just to put it in perspective: If you're teaching a course on Shakespeare, you don't usually have students arguing passionately with you or with each other about why you didn't include "A Winter's Tale" in the syllabus.
[. . . ]
Well, I was just slightly surprised to find that it was -----"Totoro". This was particularly true of the UT group but Totoro was also very much loved at Harvard. In a way, I was very moved. Here were all these hard boiled anime fans (70% male) many of whom had forgotten more mecha than I have ever seen, yet overwhelmingly they wrote about how much "Totoro" meant to them. I was particularly pleased that a number of people who HADN'T seen the movie before became great fans of it.
[. . . ]
Now I'm getting ready to teach my next anime course here at UT and I'm confronting an awful decision. I really need to include some more recent material and have decided to put in "Revolutionary Girl Utena" and perhaps "Rurouni Kenshin" as well but that means dropping something else and I'm afraid that may well have to be one of the Studio Ghibli ones. So which one should it be? Any advice or suggestions would be much appreciated! Also any comments on anime teaching in general.
First off, comments on what film to drop.
Michael Wojcik replied, "If you have to drop one of the three Ghibli films, I'd recommend _Princess Mononoke_. I love that film, but given _Totoro_'s popularity with your students and the opportunities for discussion that the disparate reactions to _Only Yesterday_ provide, they seem the pedagogic favorites. Also, _PM_ is widely available for rental, so students who haven't seen it can easily seek it out on their own; that's probably less true of _Totoro_ at this point, and certainly _Only Yesterday_ isn't easy to find in the States."
Chris Kuan wrote, "I'd (sacrilegiously?) drop _Totoro_. Unless you are using it as bait, there is less there (IMHO) for pedagogic purposes."
Mike Arnold mused on what films to keep, "I think Omohide Poroporo is a good choice. Ponpoko would probably be my second suggestion for a Takahata film because it's so tied into post-war Japanese history. For a Miyazaki film, it might be good to pick something that reflects the various themes he has challenged throughout his career. Mononoke Hime is great and it was a huge success, but it is a demanding film and I agree with the others who think it might be better to rent privately. If it were an open choice I would probably vote for Nausicaa. Otherwise I think you should stick with Totoro. (I've spoken with a few adult men here in my office and in the area who said they saw MH, but just couldn't understand what the point was supposed to be.)
[. . . ]
Now on to other topic, Michael also wondered, "I'm curious how much of a role critical theory (film, textual, or what have you) played in your classes. Did you include theoretical readings on the syllabus? For the long papers at Harvard, did you ask for theoretically-informed readings?"
Susan replied, "I did use a very solid book on animation by Paul Wells, "Understanding Animation," which I used to try and prove my contention that animation is a medium in itself (this is still under contention by some people). In my own lectures I referred to Todorov's theory of the fantastic as regards Totoro and talked about the literary and artistic technique of defamiliarization in regards to Princess Mononoke.
Hope this doesn't sound too academic and boring. Some students wanted a lot more theory. Others hated it, wanting to know why I was "tainting" their favorite anime with all this heavy scholarly stuff. Oh well.
Mike wrote, "I tend to advocate more theory use. Responsible use. ;-) Maybe it would be helpful to look at what kinds of sources the Japanese scholars and writers are using, and see if there's anything useful (in English) there to draw from. . . There is also a vast selection of books on Japanese film history in English and again, in the interest of history, I think there's something to be gained there."
Susan also posted details of what exactly is shown, "Someone asked me what kind of anime I was showing that people would think Omoide Poro Poro wasnt' "Typical anime". Glad you asked. Besides the anime on my syllabus which included a lot of "classics",, "Farewell Yamato", "Akira", "Ghost in the Shell", "Barefoot Gen", "Ranma 1/2" --and these were shown at night during our two hour film sessions--I also showed a lot of clips from a fair variety of works. I showed a LOT of Ghibli stuff, needless to say. For my section on Apocalypse I showed a fair amount of "Nausicaa", for my section on the war I showed some of "Grave of the Fireflies"--that went over big, of course, actually so did "Nausicaa", and at Texas I showed a bit of "Ponpoko"(it wasn't available at Harvard). I also showed snippets from "Roujin Z" "Memories" "Astro Boy" and also "Wings of Honneamise" at Harvard.
Probably my biggest mistake was to show "Legend of the Overfiend" at Harvard. They HATED it. But I thought it was important for them to see what people meant when they talk about "tits and tentacles" and I also had a very decent scholarly essay on it, still an unusual thing in anime teaching these days. Next year I'm going back to "Wicked City" though.
Marc closed the thread by pimping a weekend workshop he'll be attending in Minneapolis (earn college credit!).
Jeff Stetekluh noted, ""Memories Dance," is an anime music video by Vlad Pohnert based on Studio Ghibli films. It was the winner of the Best Drama category at AnimeExpo 2001. "Memories Dance" is available now for download." Caution to non-broadband users, the video is over 60 MB.
Marc Hairston posted some thoughts and a related article, "A lot of folks on this list are familiar with the two "classic" fan music videos by Bobby Beaver ("C-Ko") and Bill McBee ("Roadbuster") that used Miyazaki films: "Nausicaa" and "Laputa" set to Sting's "Fields of Gold" and "Kiki" set to The Police's "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic". IMHO "Magic" is still the single most perfect anime fan music video ever made. . . Anyway, thw weekly alternative paper in Houston Texas just did a story about ADV Films, and as a sidebar did a short piece on Bobby and talked a bit about those videos (along with his other work)."
"Sen" appears in the prestagious Japanese cinema magazine Kineam Jumpo (no, I've never heard of it either). "Princess Mononoke" confirmed for the UK.
See you in. . . a few days!