Forum - View topicREVIEW: Only Yesterday (Dub)
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twilightmidna
 Posts: 16 |
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Only Yesterday is one of my favorite movies. It also happens to be a movie I think never should have been dubbed. I particularly.love the ending song and sequence. When the film was being made animators attended the voice recording sessions and modeled their animation on the actors facial movements. I am hugely excited that Only Yesterday is finally getting a US release though and I will buy the Blu-ray when it is available. If it is showing in your area go see it.
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twilightmidna
Posts: 16 |
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Haterater
 Posts: 1727 |
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@ TurnerJ
I agree. Mainly the wording about some of the review is kind of rubbing it the wrong way to me. Might not have been intended, but kind of feels that way. Like I heard that argument many times of a dub not fitting this such and such anime due to this and that, but end up liking it ever much so. I guess also because I'm not bothered by live-action dubs of things. |
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MarshalBanana
 Posts: 5395 |
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Saffire
 Posts: 1256 Location: Iowa, USA |
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koinosuke
 Posts: 273 Location: Fukushima, Japan |
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I wouldn't just say Only Yesterday is one of the best anime films ever made; I would say it's one of the best Japanese or animated films, period. I have to say I agree with this review quite a bit on a few different topics; I think that being animated really does give the film its own hyper-verisimilitude that just wouldn't exist if it was in live action. I also agree that this is a movie that just wouldn't feel the same dubbed; it would be like dubbing an Ozu film. That said, I look forward to checking out the dub at some point just to hear what it's like -- I look forward to hearing Daisey Rider's take on Taeko, even though my go-to version of the film will always be the original.
In some ways this film being given a theatrical release feels bittersweet. It's fantastic that it'll finally reach a wider audience in America and I love seeing all the great reviews from mainstream sources, but the idea that this may well be the last time a "new" Ghibli film receives a theatrical release is fairly depressing to me. I'm still holding out hope that Ghibli isn't gone for good; it just feels like too much of a blow to animation and Japanese film in general. |
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Joe Carpenter
 Posts: 503 |
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I saw this when it aired on Turner Classic Movies a little over a decade ago as part of their "Ghibli marathon", I'm afraid I don't remember a whole lot about it (it was a decade ago) but I definitely remember being impressed at the time and I'm very much looking forward to seeing it again.
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thecritter
Posts: 68 Location: Northwest GA |
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Multiple issues here:
I first saw Only Yesterday around 2000 in a bootleg set of Ghibli anime that I innocently bought thinking it was an authorized import. As much as I loved all the Ghibli works up to that point, Only Yesterday was my favorite of the set, pretty much for all the reasons Justin stated. I've been waiting for over a decade and a half for the USA release of this wonderful film. Slow, deep character studies are a particular favorite of mine, and this is one of the most satisfying ones ever. It also impressed me for an unexpected reason: this was the first anime I ever saw where Japanese people looked Japanese and not European. [rant] As for the dub, I'll reserve my opinion until I watch it and rewatch the sub. I know that Disney hasn't handled the dubs for several films, and I'm quite happy about that. Most of the Disney dubs were utterly tone-deaf, using actors with big names for prominent roles. Some of the 'big names' were horribly inexpressive (Billy Bob Thornton, Gillian Anderson) or so distressingly over-characteristic (Patrick Stewart) that they distracted from the film. But even using professional voice actors is no sure cure; tone-deaf voice direction and casting mismatches have become so maddeningly common that I often find it difficult to listen to dubs at all, so I must admit to being generally prejudiced against them. [/rant] I saw my first anime almost 54 years ago and have watched hundreds and hundreds of titles (mostly since Robotech reawakened my interest in 1985). I unhesitatingly put Only Yesterday in my personal top 4 or 5 anime of all time. |
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Animechic420
 Posts: 1730 Location: A Cave Filled With Riches |
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The only names I recognizes are Tara Strong and Laura Bailey.
All the other names are completely unknown to me. 
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TurnerJ
Posts: 481 Location: Highland Park, NJ |
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Perhaps I wasn't really reading correctly. Nonetheless, I've always found the Disney Ghibli dubs to be fantastic (except for The Wind Rises), and at the very least I'm glad it's at least watchable. |
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Mohawk52
 Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
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NearEasternerJ1
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@TurnerJ
It's absurd not to compare dubs to the original Japanese version. A dub is a derivative work and as such is liable to comparisons and rightly so. Whether or not a dub is better or worse can only be achieved by comparisons. Even when looking at a dub on the basis of its script, it has to be compared to the original source material in order to judge its quality. It is an absurd claim to suggest that dubs can stand on their own two feet. That would be paradoxical. |
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omiya
 Posts: 1834 Location: Adelaide, South Australia |
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Funnily enough, the Qantas safety videos on flights to and from Japan have the English version as live action and the Japanese version as anime. I just want to see "Only Yesterday" on blu-ray, having felt that the artistry was better than what DVD quality could show. |
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TurnerJ
Posts: 481 Location: Highland Park, NJ |
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I disagree completely. To me that's a very, very narrow way to evaluate a dub. While there may be some deviances from the original, as long as its well acted and executed overall, and minor deviations from the script and differences in casting choices are acceptable to me. Which is not to say that I approve of 4Kids style choices of edits, but I feel that evaluating the dubs by comparing the actors to their Japanese counterparts is really not as fruitful as made out to be. Because Japanese and English voice acting are of different standards, of course things won't translate. That's why I feel that it's more important to judge the acting on its own instead of comparing to the Japanese versions, especially if the Japanese version could potentially be badly acted (yes, there are such things). It's not paradoxical to me to think that a dub can be evaluated on its own turf. I feel that too many well made dubs are unfairly dismissed because of this practice. Even without the need to compare dubs to the Japanese version, there still can be poorly made dubs just as much as there can be poorly made Japanese versions. It goes both ways. It should be all about preferences. I personally have always preferred dubs, and I always will. It doesn't have to be a 1:1 copy, nor even perfect to be enjoyable. That to me is very limiting to me as a viewer. I'm just not one of those people who is interested in holding the Japanese version up to a standard that would be impossible for a dub to live up to; that's why I want to give them a chance without feeling the need to make comparisons. In other words, to me what matters is not how the dub compares, but how good it is in its own right. If I like the dub there's no need for me to see it in Japanese. I mean, I CAN sample the Japanese version out of curiosity if I want to, but I'm not afraid to admit when I've seen a bad dub either. For instance, I just recently sampled the old Bubblegum Crisis OVA dub, and I have to agree that it is indeed a very embarrassing mess. |
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