Forum - View topicAnswerman - What's With The Multiple Versions of Kiki's Delivery Service?
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Sailor Sedna
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I've seen the original Disney dub and the Japanese version (not the Streamline one yet) and frankly I don't care what music track is used nor what language as I think both are equal to enjoyment and quality.
I heard it wasn't Ghibli themselves who weren't satisfied with the changes, but Ghibil purists (and those people can be annoying  ), and Disney made the changes to satisfy those people, but I dunno...
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EricJ2
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No, Justin nailed it, it was Ghibli, and the "No additions" rule. If it had been "Ghibli purists", they would have changed that one infamous thing that, back in 1997, convinced every Disney-paranoid Ghibli purist anime fan that The Rat Was Out To Rule The World, and would, quote, "do a 4Kids job" on every movie afterwards, including Mononoke...Probably because they were "jealous" of Ghibli, and evil Michael Eisner had secretly made the deal to sabotage and undercut their "competition". What, you don't remember what that one thing was? Or maybe you weren't there, two decades ago? If you were, think back--Remember (dun-dun-dunnn!) ...the CUP OF COCOA??? 
Yes: 1997 anime fans, back at the birth of mainstream anime dubbing, were not enraged about the new songs, or about Phil Hartman's additions. They were in full, murderous, Petition-Online frenzy over the fact that Mrs. Osono served Kiki a more plausible and kid-friendly cup of "cocoa", than the "coffee" that was clearly right there in the subtitles. It said "COFFEE", Disney, how dare you try to fool an undiscerning generation of our US children for your own profitable gains!--Are you saying that children aren't allowed to drink it in Europe??
(Oh, did I mention this was twenty years ago?) |
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TurnerJ
Posts: 481 Location: Highland Park, NJ |
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I personally find the claim that Ghibli would be disapproving of the alterations questionable, to be honest, because a book of the works of Hayao Miyazaki written by Helen McCarthy stated that none of the changes were done without approval from Studio Ghibli. I haven't even found one shred of evidence of Ghibli being legitimately dissatisfied with either Kiki or Laputa's dubs. Otherwise they wouldn't have allowed Disney to release them back then.
Aside from the "hot chocolate" debacle (which is personally ridiculous, to be honest; what difference does it make?), there were indeed purists who blasted Hartman as well as the additional pieces of music. Trust me, I've seen them on places like IMDB, and even on Amazon.com. (The Ghibli Blog is also every bit as vicious toward them; he's hated EVERY single Disney Ghibli dub except Spirited Away, Howl, and Totoro.) Such people have always existed since the days of the Ghibli-Disney partnership. They still do, sadly. I personally don't believe the "no additions" thing either because Miyazaki was said to have been pleased with the rescore of Castle in the Sky. Otherwise he wouldn't have allowed it to be included on the Japanese BD release, and why GKids/Fathom Events would allow it to be back on the film. I know that purists DETESTED the new score, and it it arguably must have been the primary reason it was initially dialed out, but then complaints from people who missed it brought it back into the spotlight. |
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Cardcaptor Takato
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I suspect the truth is in the middle and Ghibli approved of both the changes and the decision to restore the original scores but I doubt their opinion was influenced by fan outrage. As we've seen from both the Warriors of the Wind debacle and Miyazaki's threats to Miramax over Princess Mononoke, Miyazaki would likely be more outspoken if he disapproved of the first edition of the Disney dubs. I suspect more likely Ghibli wants a single uniformed approved dub for their releases. It should be noted that the Disney dub of The Secret World of Arrietty has even more significant changes than Kiki or Castle in the Sky, with actual visual alterations to Westernize cars driving on the left side of the road, changing names, and adding a pop song in the ending credits. Yet all these changes remained on all the US releases in spite of a more faithful dub being available in the UK.
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Sailor Sedna
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@EricJ2
Yes, I remember the "cocoa" thing (saw Kiki as a kid, it was the first anime I ever saw), and they used that a lot in Sailor Moon when they first dubbed it. Didn't realize it was coffee till later. 
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TurnerJ
Posts: 481 Location: Highland Park, NJ |
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Really? I thought Ghibli approved of the alterations for the Arrietty dub. If they had any objection they should have said so. Either way I didn't have any significant issues with that dub from what I remember. Still, I'm not bellyaching about the occasional deviations in that version. If Ghibli isn't upset, I'm not upset. I didn't know they flipped around one of the scenes for the opening credits of Arrietty. I am aware of the changing of some names and that unnecessary pop song, but it's been so long since I've seen that dub that I don't really remember it. |
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EricJ2
Posts: 4016 |
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As Justin pointed out, the "No cuts" rule was implied on Disney's honor system from the beginning--which approved Disney for the deal, after memories of "Warriors of the Wind"--but it wasn't enforced until Miramax/Weinstein concerns over Princess Mononoke. At which point, "No additions" was simply another legal string, and closed the door on any reasonable localizations, which Phil Hartman did fall under.
Have to remember, by '97-'99, Michael Eisner was marked for death by the fans: Everything Disney did wrong (including the final backlash against the Disney Renaissance by the time "Hercules" came out) was personalized as "Eisner's fault", and his own weaseliness created the image of the Evil Rat, that would sue daycare centers over images of Mickey Mouse. ADD TO THIS the still unresolved anime-fan frustration that "No, 'Lion King' is not a 'version of Hamlet'!" that had slow-burned for three years by this point--causing anime fans to look for Katzenberg-like examples of "Disney stealing anime" everywhere else ("Atlantis stole Castle in the Sky!"), and anime fans and DVD fans had no love for anything Disney. Just mention the D-word, and Evil was clearly afoot. So, initially, there was a little.....resistance to the idea of Disney dubbing Miyazaki, hence the "Burying their rivals!" conspiracy-theory. But when the early BTS interviews came out, Janeane Garafolo (who voiced the artist Ursula) shrugged "Eh, it's a job", but Phil Hartman sounded very interested in the "new" anime, and enthusiastic about helping to "bring it to the US". Most on-the-fence fans were willing to give Hartman a pass for that, and it paid off.
The CitS rescore came from Jo Hisaishi himself--Most US fans didn't know why he wanted to, but Hisaishi said that most of the original synthesizer score came from the fact that Ghibli back at the beginning couldn't afford an orchestra in the original soundtrack, and he'd always wanted to fix it on a bigger budget. The "No additions" rule only applied to Disney, but Ghibli could make its own changes in-house...As George Lucas would say, hey, it's their movies. 
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Ryo Hazuki
Posts: 364 Location: Finland |
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According to which source? According to this quote from the Japanese Keyboard Magazine, the request came from Disney: http://www.nausicaa.net/wiki/Laputa:_Castle_in_the_Sky_(Rescoring) "According to Disney's staff, foreigners (non-Japanese) feel uncomfortable if there is no music for more than 3 minutes (laughs). You see this in the Western movies, which have music throughout. Especially, it is the natural state for a (non-Japanese) animated film to have music all the time. However in the original Laputa, there is only one-hour worth of music in the 2 hour 4 minute movie. There are parts that do not have any music for 7 to 8 minutes. So, we decided to redo the music as (the existing soundtrack) will not be suitable for (the markets) outside of Japan." I think Laputa's score is stylistically pretty consistent with the rest of Joe Hisaishi's filmography in the 80s and the early 90s. Movies such as Arion (1986) and Drifting Classroom (1987) have similar arrangements. |
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