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REVIEW: Kiki's Delivery Service BD+DVD


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Fronzel



Joined: 11 Sep 2003
Posts: 1906
PostPosted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 12:54 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
The closest it comes to a villain is a brief delivery to a girl who doesn't appreciate her grandmother's herring pies.

Miyazaki said something quite interesting about this scene which is printed in The Art of Kiki's Delivery Service:

Hayao Miyazaki wrote:
In her line of work, Kiki's experience is hardly unusual. Kiki learns the hard way how naive she's been. She though she'd be appreciated. But that's not how the real world works. She has to deliver the goods because she's getting paid. You'd be lucky if you have a nice client. Of course, she doesn't say this in the movie [laughs]. I like the way the potpie girl talks. It's very honest. She keeps insisting she doesn't want a herring and pumpkin potpie. She really doesn't want it. Misunderstandings like this are very common, but they're hard on a girl like Kiki.

This is really clever. It goes deeper than something like "not everyone is nice". Kiki had been hoping the girl would really like the pie (and in a shallow movie, she'd get invited into the party), but why should she be expecting such things of other people? That's actually a pretty self-satisfied way of thinking.
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MetalUpa1014



Joined: 24 Aug 2013
Posts: 283
Location: USA
PostPosted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 1:09 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
It's also an immensely safe movie. In contrast to Ghibli's prior films, there are no exploding airplanes, no invading armies, no harrowing visions of wartime Japan, no innocent scenes of a family sharing a bath…nothing that would offend anyone beyond the thinnest-skinned megachurch bluehairs who see the devil's face in Lego playsets.


That's funny, because what you described actually did happen.
http://www.imasy.or.jp/~fukumoto/n/nshow.cgi?20697.

"Hayao Mizazake." Further proof that these religious fundies don't even bother to do their own research. Everyone is entitled to their religious beliefs, but it baffles me to no end that "witchcraft" is still a controversy with things like this and Harry Potter. What, are we still living in the 1600s? It's fiction, it's pretend. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Kiki's Delivery Service. Sorry, but if you genuinely believe that this is going to harm children, you are nothing short of an imbecile.
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TurnerJ



Joined: 05 Nov 2004
Posts: 481
Location: Highland Park, NJ
PostPosted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 1:19 pm Reply with quote
A lot of people have their own stories about how they got into Anime. For me I had previously assumed that Anime was nothing but violence and overemphasis on sex. I was turned off by Akira because I had mistakenly rented that film at 13, not realizing what a violent, gory experience it was. I stayed away from all Anime since then…

That is, until I saw this movie in 1998 when Disney issued it on VHS. It was the movie that introduced me to the genius that is Mr. Hayao Miyazaki and I've become a fan of his since then. This is a very sweet-natured tale without being overly saccharine or cheesy. I don't know how Miyazaki was able to pull this off, but that he did so is testament to his talent.

I also grew up with the dub with Kirsten Dunst and Phil Hartman, and so I was disappointed to discover his ad-libs were gone from the latest 2010 DVD release. I wasn't a fan of the added in incidental music Paul Chihara did for this film (the rescore of Laputa, on the other hand, blew me away), but even though I agree with removing Jiji's line at the end of the film that Disney added in, the Disney dub just doesn't feel right altered. That and the sound mix of the actors on the newest remix is terrible. Half of every one of their lines sounds like they're talking through a fan. The 2003 DVD doesn't suffer from this problem, fortunately.

It seems like the reason why these changes were made was because there were purists who railed against the dub. Oh sure, it was successful and sold a million copies on video, but there still are detractors of Kiki's dub, mainly for Hartman's ad-libs. That's why they were removed. Why bother changing a dub just to appease the purists who wouldn't watch said dub to begin with? I just don't see the logic.
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nargun



Joined: 29 Mar 2006
Posts: 924
PostPosted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 1:25 pm Reply with quote
"part Adelaide"...

Adelaide, South Australia

Hobart, Tasmania

It's an easy mistake to make. Kind of like confusing Los Angeles with San Francisco.

[Hobart's a small town built on a sloping site next to a rather large river, with lots of preserved georgian buildings from sandstone. Adelaide is a modern town built on a pretty flat site miles away from the water.]
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EricJ2



Joined: 01 Feb 2014
Posts: 4016
PostPosted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 2:02 pm Reply with quote
Fronzel wrote:
Hayao Miyazaki wrote:
In her line of work, Kiki's experience is hardly unusual. Kiki learns the hard way how naive she's been. She though she'd be appreciated. But that's not how the real world works. She has to deliver the goods because she's getting paid. You'd be lucky if you have a nice client. Of course, she doesn't say this in the movie [laughs]. I like the way the potpie girl talks. It's very honest. She keeps insisting she doesn't want a herring and pumpkin potpie. She really doesn't want it. Misunderstandings like this are very common, but they're hard on a girl like Kiki.

This is really clever. It goes deeper than something like "not everyone is nice". Kiki had been hoping the girl would really like the pie (and in a shallow movie, she'd get invited into the party), but why should she be expecting such things of other people? That's actually a pretty self-satisfied way of thinking.


No, Miyazaki's right: Sometimes you do your best--especially for a good customer--and end up with a snotty customer who doesn't appreciate it.
The Disney dub emphasizes it with "I hate Grandma's stupid pies!", and Kiki has the door slammed in her face with a stung look of "But the old lady was so nice... Sad "

Fortunately, Jiji's not-nice enough to say it, but then cats are allowed to. Razz

TurnerJ wrote:
It seems like the reason why these changes were made was because there were purists who railed against the dub. Oh sure, it was successful and sold a million copies on video, but there still are detractors of Kiki's dub, mainly for Hartman's ad-libs. That's why they were removed. Why bother changing a dub just to appease the purists who wouldn't watch said dub to begin with? I just don't see the logic.


Back in 1997, with fans, Disney could do no RIGHT.
We were still two years away from "Disney buried Princess Mononoke in theaters because they were jealous!", and--fresh off of Lion-King-isn't-really-Hamlet--believed that Eisner-era Disney was out to "destroy" anime once and for all.
To this day, you'll still find fans who rail that Mrs. Osono serving Kiki the more kid-friendly cocoa instead of coffee was "destroying" and "doing a 4Kids job" on the dub, let alone Hartman's Jiji.

(And frankly, I thought Hartman's Jiji was perfectly in character, one of the best examples of a US actor making a dub character distinctive without going against the original voice.
There were complaints about the last scene, when Jiji meows for the reporters in Hartman's voice, suggesting that Kiki can still hear him, but then, some of us preferred the idea that she still could, no matter what Grumpy-san thought.)


Last edited by EricJ2 on Wed Nov 26, 2014 2:09 pm; edited 1 time in total
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whiskeyii



Joined: 29 May 2013
Posts: 2242
PostPosted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 2:06 pm Reply with quote
I'm a little ashamed to admit that this was one of the very last Miyazaki movies I saw (The Wind Rises notwithstanding). I must've been at that age where I was "too cool for that kiddie stuff". I only saw it later as an adult, and I was pleasantly surprised at how good it was! I only wish I'd seen it sooner. ^^;

I have to say, I only saw the dub, and while I liked most of Jiji's lines, some of it felt too...Digimon-esque? Like the dubbers were afraid of silence. It worked 99% of the time, but at other times, the 1% felt somehow jarring to me.
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Crisha
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Joined: 21 Apr 2010
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 2:24 pm Reply with quote
This is the first Miyazaki movie I saw. My elementary school started teaching foreign languages in 4th and 5th grade to prepare students for Junior High and High School. Amusingly enough, the language they chose was Japanese despite the fact that this language was not an option in Junior High (grades 6-8) and students had to wait until High School to have the option again. My elementary school eventually changed the language to Spanish after I left.

Anyways, I took Japanese in 4th and 5th grade. In 5th grade, our teacher wanted to introduced us to anime and showed us Kiki's Delivery Service (the English dub). I fell in love with it. Kiki and Whisper of the Heart remain my favorite Ghibli films to this day.

Mentioning my dissatisfaction with the re-dub from the 2010 release feels like beating a dead horse at this point. The 2003 DVD English dub release is my preferred way to watch Kiki, and I probably won't be buying the movie again until my current DVDs fail to play (I should make a digital copy) or until a new release includes it, unfortunately. I will be contacting Disney about this so that hopefully in the future if they choose to release Kiki again they will include that version.
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Greg Aubry



Joined: 10 Feb 2006
Posts: 224
Location: Detroit, MI
PostPosted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 3:13 pm Reply with quote
There's distortion in the English dialogue track, particularly when Kiki speaks loudly, that makes it unlistenable once you notice it's there. Fortunately the Japanese track sounds great, and the transfer is very nice.
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st_owly



Joined: 20 May 2008
Posts: 5234
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
PostPosted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 3:47 pm Reply with quote
This has always been one of my favourite Ghibli movies. Perhaps because it's adapted from a kids' book, it reminded me of reading Enid Blyton and the like as a kid, which I did a lot of. The review pretty much sums up why I like it so much. I've not seen this in ages, I may have to go and get a copy and watch it again.
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publicenemy333



Joined: 21 Feb 2011
Posts: 563
Location: Los Angeles, CA
PostPosted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 3:49 pm Reply with quote
This is one of the first Miyazaki movies I ever saw. I borrowed VHS copies when I was a little kid of this and Totoro from my Japanese neighbor. Absolutely love this movie.

Curious, does this release have Dubtitles?
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Angel'sArcanum



Joined: 02 Sep 2010
Posts: 303
Location: Toronto, Ontario
PostPosted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 4:12 pm Reply with quote
Another one of my favourites from Miyazaki. I used to watch this film all the time when I was 5 (prior to knowing anything about anime of course) and I would rent it from the video store CONSTANTLY because I had this weird habit of receding to very comfortable and optimistic movies whenever I saw something scary, so whenever I would see the horror section of my local video rental store so close to the kids/animation section, I would quickly nab it for the umpteenth time and ask my mom to rent it and this became a regular thing for a short while. Oddly enough, a few of my other friends in high school who we'd only met by that point also constantly rented the film around that age as well, so it was a strange coincidence. After all those years though I had all but forgotten everything that happened in the film, and I got to rewatch it in a stream a little while ago and it was surprising how it ended up being one of my favourites after how many years have past and I've grown. I definitely need to pick up the Blu-Ray, such a delightful film.
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Looneygamemaster



Joined: 21 Jan 2012
Posts: 192
PostPosted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 5:34 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
Curious, does this release have Dubtitles?


I recall reading that original video releases had dubtitles...but from a Streamline dub that was never produced. I don't know about this one, though.

It's been a while since I've seen it, but I really like Kiki's, even though it's one of Miyazaki's more "ordinary" films. It's really sweet.

I'll now take a potentially unpopular opinion and say that I'm glad Disney reverted the changes they made to the movie for the dub. It's mostly a good dub, but Disney seemed to want the typical American "wisecracking talking animal," with Jiji, and this movie really is not the place for that. The changes honestly hurt the movie, especially the ending.

Admittedly, though, it is a little uncomfortable erasing part of Phil Hartman's last performance.
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toddc



Joined: 23 Jul 2007
Posts: 164
PostPosted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 6:38 pm Reply with quote
publicenemy333 wrote:
This is one of the first Miyazaki movies I ever saw. I borrowed VHS copies when I was a little kid of this and Totoro from my Japanese neighbor. Absolutely love this movie.

Curious, does this release have Dubtitles?


It's definitely not straight dubtitled. The subs match the English dialogue for some lines and diverge from it for others. The subtitles seem to be accurate, but I can't say for sure. They could be the Streamline script, which I've never seen.

The subtitles in the new Blu-Ray and DVD are a little different from the older DVD release, though. For example, the kid who gets Jiji as a present is called Ketto in the older subs and Ket in the new ones, while a "Baka!" line from Kiki is translated as "Jiji!" in the new release and "Don't be stupid!" in the older one. That sort of thing.

nargun wrote:
"part Adelaide"...

Adelaide, South Australia

Hobart, Tasmania

It's an easy mistake to make. Kind of like confusing Los Angeles with San Francisco.

[Hobart's a small town built on a sloping site next to a rather large river, with lots of preserved georgian buildings from sandstone. Adelaide is a modern town built on a pretty flat site miles away from the water.]


Some bits did remind me of Adelaide, but Hobart probably fits it more, considering that's where Kiki's bakery is.
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EricJ2



Joined: 01 Feb 2014
Posts: 4016
PostPosted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 6:59 pm Reply with quote
toddc wrote:
It's definitely not straight dubtitled. The subs match the English dialogue for some lines and diverge from it for others. The subtitles seem to be accurate, but I can't say for sure. They could be the Streamline script, which I've never seen.


There are a few ways of recognizing the Streamline:
When they get their first sight of the town on the train, and Kiki wonders if they have a witch of their own, Jiji's "Maaa....neee" was Streamlined as "Howww...should IIII know?"

Streamline also seems to be the source of that one annoying translation when Kiki worries she'll have to eat pancakes "mainichi, mainichi, maiiiii-nichi!" if business doesn't pick up.
Although my old fansub VHS back in the day correctly translated it as "Day after day after dayyyy!" the Streamline version had Kiki worrying that pancakes would make her "fat, fat, faaaat!" Oh, that Carl. Rolling Eyes
Although that also turned up in the old Disney script, so that's hard to tell.
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toddc



Joined: 23 Jul 2007
Posts: 164
PostPosted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 7:53 pm Reply with quote
EricJ2 wrote:
toddc wrote:
It's definitely not straight dubtitled. The subs match the English dialogue for some lines and diverge from it for others. The subtitles seem to be accurate, but I can't say for sure. They could be the Streamline script, which I've never seen.


There are a few ways of recognizing the Streamline:
When they get their first sight of the town on the train, and Kiki wonders if they have a witch of their own, Jiji's "Maaa....neee" was Streamlined as "Howww...should IIII know?"

Streamline also seems to be the source of that one annoying translation when Kiki worries she'll have to eat pancakes "mainichi, mainichi, maiiiii-nichi!" if business doesn't pick up.
Although my old fansub VHS back in the day correctly translated it as "Day after day after dayyyy!" the Streamline version had Kiki worrying that pancakes would make her "fat, fat, faaaat!" Oh, that Carl. Rolling Eyes
Although that also turned up in the old Disney script, so that's hard to tell.


The Blu-Ray has Jiji's line subbed as "I don't know." The "Fat, fat, FAAAAAAT" line is there in the subtitles instead of "Day after day after day," however.
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