Forum - View topicHey, Answerman! [2010-02-19]
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littlegreenwolf
 Posts: 4796 Location: Seattle, WA |
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Wow, I can understand the Miyazaki hate for some of his more recent films, but the rip into Nausicaa at the levels I’ve seen in this thread is shocking for me. To take one Miyazaki’s first films and try comparing it to some of his newer ones and critique it for plot holes, similarities and the like, it just seems wrong. Ugh.
I’ve been watching Nausicaa from a young age when I was a poor little girl with a VHS called Warriors of the Wind, Nausicaa sounded like a 40 year old woman (seriously, the original Nausicaa dub is HORRIBLE) and a good half hour of “boring footage” was edited out for time. Even then Miyazaki managed to keep little 9 year old me rooted like a tree and mesmerized, at an age where ADD usually had me running around like I had ants in my pants. I enjoyed the story about a girl torn between her people and her connection to nature even if my small little mind didn't comprehend everything the film was showing me. In a library of films such as The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Snow White, Nausicaa stood out like some bizarre, exotic gem. Perhaps to some Nausicaa didn't seem really fleshed out to be called a strong female heroine, but really what else do we have to compare her to for the time period? Briar Rose keeping her secret affair with Prince Phillip a secret from her guardians in Sleepy Beauty? No one else in animation was giving women the lime light, they were always damsels in distress, and ones that rarely stood up for themselves. There were very few feature animated films that at the time attempted to send out any sort of message criticizing humanity, or heck any animated films that tried sending out any sort of message in general, and the only one in mind mind that came close came out years later in the form of Don Bluth’s The Secret of NIMH, followed by the Disney attempt at the Rescuers Down Under (a film Disney animators credit Miyazaki for influence in the flying scenes). Environmentalist messages in animation are a relatively new thing for Western animation outside of TV shows. What more some people criticizing here completely missed the point of Nausicaa as many people in this thread, such as penguintruth and other forum users have already pointed out. Setting plot holes aside (plenty classic movies, animated or not have them), Nausicaa is an amazing landmark for animation and to deny it of anything short of an influential masterpiece for its era is to take a Van Gogh painting now and go "Eh, it’s nothing original.” Try looking at it for what it represented in its day, and for a whole generation of Disney animators it influenced, instead of looking at it from a modern day prat’s perspective of someone who is exposed to fluid computer animation, and whose ears are overly hounded by environmentalist cries everyday that human technology is frakking up the world while failing to act on it. Nausicaa’s message is still relevant for viewers of today and did for some people what watching Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth did to some people five years ago. And yes, I think Humans are an evil scourge on this Earth well deserving of a massive zombie virus to kill us all off the face of the Earth so that nature may reclaim the planet, unless we can learn co-exist. But I don’t think Miyazaki is to blame for this completely. I have other things to blame like Captain Planet, Discovery Channel, National Geographic, and Archie Carr.
True. The main reason I bought the Blu-Ray release of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty was so that I may pause and drool over the intricately detailed backgrounds and color design of Eyvind Earle in high definition. Anyone who ever looked into animation as a career understands that an animated film is not just the key animation of character or the story. There’s more to that that makes up a film, and sometimes the background art steals the show. Princess Mononoke is another fine example of where this can occur. |
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ladyvoid
 Posts: 31 |
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Alright. for the guy who trashed miyazaki...
Hey, he's mostly correct, I guess. It's no surprise to me when he complained about the flat characters and recycled themes... but I do have to dissagree with the "long eating silences" part. Maybe this guy doesn't have much patience, but doesn't he realize that a whole chunk of Japanese animation favors the "quiet scenes"? I don't just see it in Miyazaki's movies - it's in loads of other anime as well. Hell, it's one of the biggest differences between Western and Japanese animation, and American animators have taken this to heart (just look at Up). Regardless, I'm not exactly sure how to cover this guy's other rants. Yah, they're true... but I'm sure most of us can admit that after watching a miyazaki movie for the first time, you get a lighthearted, giddy feeling, as if you watched something good in anime for once... or is that just a facade? 
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IanC
Posts: 685 Location: Essex, England |
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There is one song by X Japan in Rock Band.
Its I.V. and its part of the 20 free download songs you get when you buy Rock Band 2. |
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Lemoncookies23
Posts: 355 |
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Say what? Really? |
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lkmjr
Posts: 68 Location: Austin, Texas |
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I keep seeing people complain about Nausicaa portraying "protecting your home" as wrong and about the people of the Valley of the Wind "rising up against" the antagonists. Let's clear those up now.
The other countries invaded the Valley of the Wind. Yes, the people of the Valley retaliated; they did not just attack the others out of the blue. The Tolmekians killed the king and took the people of the Valley hostage, all because the egg for a walking weapon of mass destruction happened to get stuck there. The Pejites were trying to bait a stampede of Ohmu into the Valley, destroying it and wiping out anyone inside, in order to destroy said weapon. I'm not seeing any subtext about "saving your home" being bad here, considering that the people of the Valley were fighting not only for the Jungle (well, to be fair, the Jungle was mostly all Nausicaa) but also to save their homes and their lives. And I'll say it again: the antagonists were portrayed extremely sympathetically and shown to think what they were doing was right in order to protect not their homeland but also the entire human race, which it might well have been had it not been for the whole tree-sand-soil thing that only Nausicaa knew about. And as far as the people of the Valley rising up against them... they invaded their homeland, killed their king, and took their people hostage! They had every reason to fight back! |
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HellKorn
Posts: 1669 Location: Columbus, OH |
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And I don't know about you, but I'd never confuse any of his films. The only one that feels like a "remake" of another is Princess Mononoke, and that's a major refinement of the Nausicaä movie. If you discount directors using similar themes and characters... well, that discounts every single director who has ever lived! Also, can you seriously tell me that in Porco Rosso you see Castle in the Sky or any of the other Miyazaki movies? Spirited Away from Totoro? Again, specifics, dude!
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YotaruVegeta
 Posts: 1061 Location: New York |
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I think that the anime which portray Americans and non-Japanese in a somewhat realistic way are either playing up to Americans or really love other cultures. I tend to really appreciate anime which involve or mix in other cultures. It makes me feel like the rest of the show is going to be quality because someone took the time to put some thought into their characters and settings.
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LordByronius
ANN Columnist
 Posts: 861 Location: Philippe for America! He is five. |
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YOU KILLED SARCASM :( |
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Mohawk52
 Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
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From Nausicaa.net
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HellKorn
Posts: 1669 Location: Columbus, OH |
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vashfanatic
 Posts: 3489 Location: Back stateside |
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We have by far the largest economy and military in the world. We overthrow governments we don't like (talk to Iran and Zaire) and mostly get away with it. The recession may very well end that all, though, along with our over-extension in Iraq and Afghanistan. Maybe next time we should look at anime depictions of the Chinese? |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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America cannot find one old guy hiding in a cave. Well, actually, America doesn't know if he's even hiding in a cave, such is the uselessness of their "intelligence" services. He could be in Europe or the freaking Caribbean for all anyone knows. America has all-but lost its status as the world's sole economic superpower. The Eurozone, China, India, heck even Brazil of all places are increasing their dominance of the world's economy. China especially is the big worry, with its massive trade surplus, advanced and large military, and aggressive nature. Add to that the wooing of small nations and how much they have invested in America, and the Yuan seems poised to replace the American dollar as the premier world currency. Obama seems as useless as any other president at controlling Congress and the Senate. Drastic change is needed, and yet Republicans and Democrats are still stuck in the old feuds. Reforming the healthcare system alone would have freed up untold billions, but even some Democrats were voting down the bills. I notice the very factors that caused the recession have still not been fixed. Madness. Using essentially peasant labour and old-fashioned dynamite, China has dug and blasted thousands of kilometres of tunnels into mountainsides. Why? To build impenetrable silos for ICBMs, as well as command systems, bunkers, the works. Think Cheyenne Mountain, only outrageously bigger and even more heavily defended and equipped. For all those many hundreds of billions of dollars spent on its military, America still cannot adequately equip its soldiers or defeat an insurgency. And it still hasn't developed an anti-missile defence system; a single missile costing a million dollars can sink a multi billion-dollar aircraft carrier without too much trouble. Do you think that America could invade a country like North Korea? Even if it wasn't involved with Iraq and Afghanistan, it would suffer horrific casualties. And those are just some of the reasons why America is no longer the world's sole superpower, both economically and militarily. |
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YotaruVegeta
Posts: 1061 Location: New York |
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Wake me up the anime talk returns. Politicians talking politics is enough of a headache.
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space clam
Posts: 636 |
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That's because it's not the President's job to control the legislature. Despite what they say on TV, America's military strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan is not to quell an insurgency, but to engage in some kind of pseudo-nation-building. You're sort of correct about the rise of the BRIC countries economically, but, make no mistake: there isn't a nation or even group of nations that can engage the United States in a full-scale (i.e. nuclear) war without getting reduced to a smoldering ruin. Really, you could pretend the ground and naval forces didn't exist, and the United States Air Force alone could completely raze a nation's infrastructure in a matter of days. Of course, if you really believe the proposed "health care reforms" would free up billions of dollars (practically a rounding error to the administration of Bush's 3rd term), you are horribly, woefully misguided.
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PetrifiedJello
Posts: 3782 |
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1/3 into your post, I finally realized you were writing fiction. Good stuff, dtm42. Throw in a leading character, and you could give Tom Clancy a run for his money. |
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