| 1. | (17 posts) | "Sen" on DVD |
| 2. | (6 posts) | US "Mononoke" DVD Sucks |
| 3. | (6 posts) | Miyazaki's Vision of Power and the Feminine |
| 4. | (7 posts) | Four "Grave of the Fireflies" Questions |
We looked at 131 posts by 61 different contributors.
Wow! A multi-thread week! A ton of messages, but a good portion were of the "me-too" variety.
I posted details on the "Sen" DVDs, "The DVD will be available in three packages. . . Regular edition (4,700 yen). . . Limited edition collector's edition (15,000 yen) - (10,000 units). . . Limited edition DVD player bundle edition (19,800 yen)- Comes with Ghibli DVD player (Chihiro edition)"
A picture of the DVD player.
Showing the kind of fanatical love marketers dream on, Albert Brown wrote, "DVD.......DVD PLAYER....MUST HAVE!. . . I WILL fly to Japan just to get one."
Oliver Ho noted that a bundled DVD player is not a new idea, "http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/av/docs/20011019/buydvd11.htm
This is the link for the Snow White DVD player.
Similar to the "Sen" one.
Mickey Mouse remote.
Outputs:
Yahoo Auction Japan going rate is from 20,000 up.
Original price was 18,800 + 5%tax
Standard remote.
4 Simple buttons on the machine.
RCA Audio
RCA Video
Coaxial Digital audio out. (grrr no optical!)
Noah Selsby commented, "At $150, this is probably good for people who don't have expensive TVs, but I would advise against it for those of you with HDTVs. There is no way that player has progressive scan at that price. . . Also, I'm beginning to think it is not really wood, but rather a plastic that is "swirled" with color to make it look like wood. That picture of the Snow White one (which I am assuming is plastic) seems to be too similar to be coincidence."
Oliver replied, "Its design for kids, of course it won't be design for HDTV, progressive scan etc. I don't think there are many kids with HDTV or plasma screens ^_^. . . Its design so that a young child can operate it, which is why there are big simple push buttons etc.
But as a collector I'll probably pick one up any way.
Thomas Hardjono wrote, "The color quality/accuracy of the US release of the Mononoke DVD is awful (I think). I have watched Mononoke 4 times at the cinema, and the US DVD is nothing like the Cinema. . . Question is: should I just forget about US release DVDs (like Mononoke) and just buy the Japanese import DVD? Is this quality degradation simply negligence, crude work, or intentional?"
Lee Johnson replied, "although there is a noticeable difference in colour levels when looking at the Japanese and US DVD's I wouldn't exactly call the US transfer awful (vibrant might be a better word). . . the UK Mononoke DVD has colour balance levels similar to those on the Japanese DVD release. Again this may be due to differences in black levels between US NTSC and UK PAL signals (as the print used for the UK and US DVD's will have been the same one)."
Slithy Tove added, "I think the 'vibrancy' comes from the fact that the R1 transfer is more full-spectrum.
Incidentally, does anyone else think the R2 images look just a little sharper than the R1's?
I've never seen MH in a theater, and which is more true to the theatrical print I don't know. It's even more unclear which is more true to the director's vision. I'm not automatically going to accept the theater version as the 'right' one, because so many theater presentations are so poor.
Susan Napier wrote an essay titled "Miyazaki's Vision of Power and the Feminine" for Newsweek Japan. For the Japanese-impared, she posted an English version with these notes, "Okay, here's a cut and paste of my essay. It went from being "too academic" in the first draft to "too lightweight" in the second and finally in the third draft, they had me distill some of my thoughts from my anime book down into 800 words. As I said, it was an interesting experience. I look forward to comments"
Only one person posted comments on the essay, but Robin Casady used up over 250 lines in reply. The comments are interesting, but too long and varied to try and compress. Read the original - Read the reply.
Marc Hairston wrote about screening "Grave of the Fireflies" in the freshman Intro to Humanities class at UT-Dallas, "Since I was helping with the discussion I didn't take any notes so this isn't going to be a detailed report like last time when Nick posted his notes. But this turned out to be the best discussion the class has had all semester. The students really got involved with the film and over the course of the hour I'd say that over 2/3s of the 120 students in there made some comment about the film. . . Anyway in the course of the discussions they and I came up with a few new questions that haven't been covered in the archives that I
want to throw out.
1. Are the ghosts of the children only in the movie, or was that a story element in the novel too?
2. Lots of discussion about why the aunt was so mean to the children, but they noticed that she was cold to them even from the very beginning. Why was she like that from the start? (Was this another backstory element in the novel that wasn't explained well in the movie?)
3. A lot of the debate was about whether Seita *could* have found work even if he had tried. Were there *any* jobs a 14 year old could have gotten at that point given the state of Japan? (This goes to the motives of Seita and why he didn't try to do anything other than take care of Setsuko.)
4. The woman who meets the children at the shelter when their mother is hurt and later helps them get to their aunt's home. She is never
identified so we assume she is some family friend or neighbor. Who is she? She was the only person in the film who showed any genuine
concern and compassion for the children, so the question came up why Seita didn't turn to her for help when they left the aunt's home?
Taking the low-hanging fruit, I answered question #1 (by quoting the FAQ), "Takahata usually recreates the world in the original manga or novel perfectly. However, the ghosts of the two children were Takahata's creation, and they don't appear in the novel."
Steve Underwood posted answers to the other three questions, "I saw no reason for any background to her attitude. I have know quite a few mean spiritied people, a lot like her. I thought she was just that kind of person, full stop (or period for our US readers :-) ). There may, of course, be more to it - I think the children were more affluent than the aunt before the troubles started, so her attitude might be jealousy - but I didn't see any *need* for greater complexity in the story to justify her behaviour. . .
I don't know the regulations in Japan, but at that time the basic school leaving age in the UK was still only 14. Seita was of working age, and choose not to work - surely with so much trouble around him there must have been a big demand for any capable hands to help? He seemed rather lazy to me. . .
I thought she was just a neighbour. I don't think they refer to her in familial terms. You might expect a decent neighbour to help you through immediate peril, but you wouldn't generally turn to someone like that for long term assistance, would you?
Ryoko Toyama answered questions #2 and #3, "Actually, I never felt that she was so mean. It is understandable that under such a hard condition, she did not have enough time, food, or care to spare for the children. And it's not like Seita was a kind of kid you want to help.
Maybe this is because I know that the author wrote the book to lessen his guilty feeling about his sister's death. He admits that he made other people in the book look bad to justify his behavior. (He also admits that he did not give his sister enough food because he was so hungry and he sometimes hit her to stop her crying.)
The children's father was a Navy captain. That means they belong to the elite class and had some privileges.
For example, the aunt said that the Navy track came to move the children's stuff to her house. Car (or rather, gasoline) was a great luxury at this time of the war. (It was almost the end of the war, and since Japan has to rely on imported oil, there was sever oil shortage once Japan lost the command of the sea.) After that she opened a can and exclaimed, "Real butter!" (luxury as well). In both cases, I could hear a little bit of jealousy in her voice.
Setsuko did not want to eat the food the aunt gave her, because she wanted to eat rice. Again it was the almost the end of the war and people were thankful if they had anything to eat. Setsuko was used to better food because she was a family of a Navy captain. Of course Setsuko didn't know that, but I could see why the aunt got irritated. . .
Most of kids at this age worked in factories. The work was organized by school. (Children in the same class worked in the same factory. Instead of studying, they worked.) And Seita explained that his school and the factory he used to work were burned.
But still, he could have helped his aunt around, or could have asked farmers if there were any small job available.
Marc came back with some clarifications, "it seemed to us that she was distant from the very beginning, so this started a discussion of whether she disliked them from the start or if she started out sympathetic and then changed. I knew (and pointed out to the class) from an earlier posting of Ryoko's in the archives that while she was referred to as their "aunt", she was not their father's sister, but rather a more distant relative. . . So the question came up in my mind if there was something else culturally that a US audience might not pick up on, or something else in her back story that was in the novel but not the movie, that might be a factor."
Sharon Westfall closed the thread with, "My feelings about the Aunt was that she took them in under obligation to help family, because the mother was only incapacitated temporarily. She was not well to do like Seita's family either; in her house, everybody works for their keep. When she found out that Seita was hiding the fact that his mother died, not only did the obligation turn permanent, but he wasn't being truthful, nor earning his keep. That other man that lived there wasn't a relative either, right? She was obligated to feed and house him because he was helping the war effort.
So Seita's singing and happiness to entertain Setsuko while everyone else was feeling hopeless, became irritating. Even when she tried to
scold him into wising up, he still didn't catch on... he just spent money to buy his own stove, like a spoiled brat rich kid flashing his money.
Oliver Coombes spots a positive "Spirited Away" review from the "Sight and Sound" UK magazine. Joe Curzon gives his impressions of the "Porco Rosso" DVD, as does Lee Johnson. "Sen" crosses the 30 billion yen mark.
None this week.
