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First, to Jose Cruz: Serial posting is generally not tolerated. Please combine responses to multiple posts into one post in the future.

Jose Cruz wrote:

Roger Ebert had decent taste among American film critics, being able to walk through his prejudices a little bit more than other critics and recognize artistic talent in a work of non-western popular culture. Though, overall, he was not a specialist in animation and I wouldn't actually give much weight to his opinion on any anime film.

Then I assume that you don't care about his glowing evaluation of Royal Space Force or his extremely high opinion of Grave of the Fireflies, then?

Roger Ebert may not have been a dedicated connoisseur of anime, but he did know animation and he understood anime well enough to recognize its premier efforts.

And I think you give American animation too little credit. There is nothing "second rate" about many of its "kiddie movies."

pachy_boy wrote:

Every viewing, I'm watching a town of industrialists trying to wipe out the forest spirits via genocide, to take their lands and natural resources. And the forest spirits resort to the countermeasures they do for the purpose of saving themselves and their homeland. .

Except from the humans' perspectives, they're trying desperately to build a life in a very dangerous world, and all these bloody giant animals are killing anyone who invades their territory. What do you think the people would do, or even think they should do? One thing I like in the film is the early reference to a village wiped out by a mudslide. It's a reminder that a state of true 'natural balance' would be viewed by most people as a hell of arbitrary suffering, and that any 'good' person would seek to change it.

Jose Cruz wrote:

TurnerJ wrote:

I also think it's interesting to see that Miyazaki is not particularly fond of other forms of Japanese animation and thinks of it as "junk". That part I don't quite agree with him about because there are other non-Ghibli works that I have enjoyed as well (Lodoss, Nadia, Fullmetal Alchemist, Sword Art Online, the list goes on and on).

If you think Sword of Art Online is great your tastes in animation are not the most "refined"...

And you're the judge of refined culture?

How about you start learning how to read. I'll help you start of, get a dictionary and look up the word "enjoyed".

Key wrote:

EricJ2 wrote:

Again, most of the praise comes from people who'd hypnotized themselves into praising it when it came out, from later-generation folks who had a copy pushed into their hands from the first folks, or--everyone, all together now--folks who didn't realize Ghibli had MADE any movies before 1999.

Yeah, no. Stating that you don't like the movie is one thing, but you're crossing a line when you start implying that you couldn't be in your right mind if you praised the movie. Just accept that other people genuinely saw more in it than you did and move on.

No, just saying that--like Hatsune Miku on David Letterman, or any new anime licensed to Cartoon Network--we were expecting a little too much of it in the hopes that it would be the First Big Mainstream Break. Disney certainly was, and we can guess the fans' reason, but Disney bailed too early.
The more you hope, and the more it clearly isn't, the greater chance that Denial is going to set in. (Hence the "hypnotism" joke, ie. something you believe after telling yourself enough times.) How could it be dull, it was supposed to change everything!

You could show any Ghibli to a new audience, but PM disturbed, confused, repelled, and possibly bored them straight out of the gate, and no argument that "It's the epic depiction of a conflict with complex universal motivations!" was going to pull that out of the fire. And if you think it could...it's been fifteen years, you can stop now.

TEPopka wrote:

It's fine not to like this movie, but to say that people only like it because they hypnotized themselves into liking it is just dumb. You don't think anyone who likes Princess Mononoke has ever thought about the reasons why, or is actually telling the truth when they say they find it to be an enjoyable movie? I could just as easily say anyone who doesn't love it is just being a contrarian to look cool, but I would be just as wrong.

Yeah, I think when the person said "hypnotized" it was a bit of a stretch, but I think they may be touching on the kind of cultural mystique and 'other-ing' brought about by Miyazaki's growing presence in the West, and it is a bit too abstract for me to totally rationalize since I wasn't affected by it along with only getting scattered ideas about it occurring in places.

With Lasseter's vocal endorsement of Ghibli (particularly Miyazaki), Ghibli films starting to be co-distributed by Disney in the West and Spirited Away winning an Oscar, it seemed like the films were kind of being assimilated into Western culture in a way, running a fine line between exoticism and social acceptance which normally hinders a lot of anime in particular. I've heard some people throw around "I don't like anime, but Ghibli movies are cool" in different places and with varying degrees of knowledge of the medium, and 90s-boom aside, it seemed like others were starting to casually warm to traces of anime coming into pop culture (in this case, a very limited scope) while they kind of distance itself from the rest (typically the stuff that hasn't been promoted by big Western companies like Disney and such) and it might not be due to the more grounded expressions and lack of weird anime tropes in Ghibli films (but it might also be that case).

I think what he was touching on (and some vague sentiments I poke around) is that it has kind of blossomed into a bit of special biases towards Ghibli films with its small but distinct presence in Western culture, which I guess could be evidenced by the disparity in Ponyo's reception between anime fans and movie critics (at least, before some retrospective or something), as it seems the former kind of brush Ponyo aside in favor of other Miyazaki/Ghibli films (whether they had theatrical releases and larger followings in the West or not, but having a broader knowledge of Ghibli's filmography) while the latter sees it as kind of a luxury or something different as it is foreign, technically aligned to a different medium, Ghibli films are released years apart and (to a smaller degree) it is a vibrant (and again foreign) animated picture now brought into the "mainstream" which could tint the lenses a bit. Then again, there's so many extenuating circumstances and uncertainties to this idea that it can't really bear much fruit; most anime aren't put in the spotlight because they are longer series that don't get much syndication here and don't get bigger promotion, a lot of anime films aren't as inclusive (attached to a bigger franchise), simple and pure difference of opinions amongst reviewers, etc.

Again, I really can't say though because it is a more abstract idea I don't entirely grasp and it hasn't really affected me personally. Really I was always just curious about the kind of circumstantial camps different groups and perspectives seem to fall under with stuff like this but didn't think about it too strongly.

In short: I see where some people are coming from with Miyazaki's presence somehow persuading audiences into embracing most of his other works having won them over with stuff like Spirited Away, but it's too broad and strange to entirely agree with.

That aside (also in tandem with it a little bit lol), I genuinely think Princess Mononoke is one of Miyazaki's best, and for that matter, it seems my favourites of his films are probably the most "orthodox" or widely acknowledged ones in some areas, but PM just has some cool world-building, rich visuals, nuanced themes and characters, great action and pacing and is just a very sumptuous and wholesome package. I feel it is one of Miyazaki's most tightly knit and engrossing titles in his oeurve.

EricJ2 wrote:

we were expecting a little too much of it in the hopes that it would be the First Big Mainstream Break.

Not that I'm particularly interested in validating your usual unfunny grandstanding with attention, but who's "we"? I was around back then and nobody I knew really thought Mononoke's limited theatrical release would be a huge deal. People who were already anime fans were excited for the chance to see it in 35mm and complain about the dub but that's about it.

Quote:

Disney certainly was, and we can guess the fans' reason, but Disney bailed too early.

No they didn't. It was handed to Miramax, released into arthouse theaters, then vanished after a few weeks. It wasn't some unceremonial dumping but they didn't pour tens of millions into P&A. Mostly they dealt with fans trying to make double-sure Harvey Weinstein wasn't going to hack the guts out of it and ran that petition to make sure there was a literal sub track on the DVD.

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How could it be dull, it was supposed to change everything!

Again, this is entirely in your head.

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And if you think it could...it's been fifteen years, you can stop now.

Completely bizarre misconception of the public attitude toward this film when it came out, resulting in strange, harsh, insultingly dismissive attitude toward everyone who enjoys it now. Take your brain in to the mechanic, you have some wires loose.

EricJ2 wrote:

No, just saying that--like Hatsune Miku on David Letterman, or any new anime licensed to Cartoon Network--we were expecting a little too much of it in the hopes that it would be the First Big Mainstream Break. Disney certainly was, and we can guess the fans' reason, but Disney bailed too early.
The more you hope, and the more it clearly isn't, the greater chance that Denial is going to set in. (Hence the "hypnotism" joke, ie. something you believe after telling yourself enough times.) How could it be dull, it was supposed to change everything!

You could show any Ghibli to a new audience, but PM disturbed, confused, repelled, and possibly bored them straight out of the gate, and no argument that "It's the epic depiction of a conflict with complex universal motivations!" was going to pull that out of the fire. And if you think it could...it's been fifteen years, you can stop now.

Okay, this articulates your point much better.

I think you may be overstating how much that was expected to be a breakthrough hit, though. I've heard said that Disney didn't realize what exactly they were getting in PM and were shocked when they found out. They knew it wasn't going to be a breakthrough hit, which was why it was released to arthouse theaters only in most areas (I saw it in one myself) and ultimately was advertised very little. The online community was still in its nascent stage at that point, so I can't say for certain how widespread this was, but based on the people I talked to/magazine articles I read, few expected much from this one as a trend-setter even though they hoped it would. It was just, thematically and tonally, too much of a departure from most American animation, and while a certain subsection of the population will jump at that, the bulk won't.

Still, there was a more concerted effort to get select anime movies into theaters after that point, where there wasn't before, so it did succeed in a minor way.

It's also pretty common for people to say they don't like anime except for Cowboy Bebop. There are probably other factors but I think mainly it's just that the most popular Ghibli movies resemble the kind of European fantasy that a lot of western animation is based on, the same way Cowboy Bebop takes a lot from western cinema.

I don't really see how saying people were in denial is any better than saying they were hypnotized. Saying that people were justifiably disturbed or bored by a long, dour movie makes sense, and is probably a perfectly valid explanation for why it didn't gain as much popularity in the west as something like Spirited Away. But I have no idea how that leads to the conclusion that the people who did like it were in denial.

Quote:

The decision to cast Gillian Anderson as barking wolf god Moro remains the most baffling choice, but it isn't so distracting as to take you out of the film.

Why is this baffling exactly? I had the opposite reaction when I first heard the Japanese track in which Moro is voiced by a man. Granted, watching the English dub exclusively for over ten years and having finally seen the Japanese only recently, I have always at least implicitly thought of Moro as a goddess. However, if I remember correctly, isn't Moro explicitly referred to with the feminine pronoun (i.e. as a goddess) in the film, even in Japanese?

Although my wife and I still habitually watch nearly all Ghibli-cum-Disney films in English, I am disappointed about the nearly-dubtitles on this release, especially when Disney is ostensibly in possession of a perfectly good subtitle track. If I recall, Disney's Castle in the Sky BD was also somewhat marred by this same oversight/poor artistic decision.

Jose Cruz wrote:

I don't recall him citing any North American animator though.

I recall him saying a couple times that he deeply admired Frederic Back, a french-canadian animator. I think he also said he wanted to do the kind of shorts\passion projects that Back did now that he is retired from feature film.

I recommend everyone really interested in animation to watch this (well, even if you're not): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTvYh8ar3tc

His other shorts are also very good, though some might be linked to our culture a bit too deeply to be easily understood.

Jose Cruz wrote:

TurnerJ wrote:

I also think it's interesting to see that Miyazaki is not particularly fond of other forms of Japanese animation and thinks of it as "junk". That part I don't quite agree with him about because there are other non-Ghibli works that I have enjoyed as well (Lodoss, Nadia, Fullmetal Alchemist, Sword Art Online, the list goes on and on).

If you think Sword of Art Online is great your tastes in animation are not the most "refined".

Hey, there's no need to insult me.

Norbie wrote:

I apologise.

Why are you apologizing?
It was Jose Cruz who insulted him.

I thought that your previous post actually supported TurnerJ.

I think that one of us lost track of who was saying what to whom. Smile

Jayhosh wrote:

EricJ2 wrote:

Again, most of the praise comes from people who'd hypnotized themselves into praising it when it came out, from later-generation folks who had a copy pushed into their hands from the first folks, or--everyone, all together now--folks who didn't realize Ghibli had MADE any movies before 1999.

Then why don't you explain to me why I, having not heard of this strange Studio Ghibli a day in my life, watched Princess Mononoke and was completely entranced?

Well, maybe it was because--

Quote:

Like I said, Princess Mononoke was the first Ghibli film I ever saw, not to forget my first anime in general.

--Oh, uh...okay. Confused

So i started a conversation. Ok. I actually wasn´t crazy about Mononoke´s ending at first but now find it to be the best solution possible to the story and Ebert was a fan of anime before it was cool. Have a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9WEyuMq0Yk

EricJ2 wrote:

--Oh, uh...okay. Confused

I am afraid that I am not sure of your meaning.

Are you implying that the reason why he liked Princess Mononoke was that it was his first anime?
If so, that makes no sense to me.

Or are you saying something about your previous comments?

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REVIEW: Princess Mononoke BD+DVD