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NEWS: Ursula K. Le Guin on Gedo Senki

I have to say I can see where she's coming from...her books would be almost impossible to make into a movie as she wrote them, and I think Hayao Miyazaki is one of very few directors who would even have had a chance of doing it.

I'm still trying to understand the color issue here. If the rest of the parts about the character is close, why nitpick about the shade of tan?.... This is no Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings or Star Wars.) The animation may convince some people to read the novels.

I don't know when this article was published in which magazine/newspaper/etc.

What the heck is her beef about skin color and who appointed her a spokesperson for realistic minority representation in anime? I could tell Ghibli 'Caucasian" from Ghibli "Asian" in Ocean Waves. Some characters in the promo were shown with more of a tan than others.

I just don't get it.

At that time, work had already started on the film: a copy of the poster of the child and the dragon was given us as a gift, and also a sketch of Hort Town by Mr Hayao and the finished version of it from the studio artists.

I am told that Mr Hayao has not retired after all, but is now making another movie. This has increased my disappointment. I hope to put it behind me.

I did not realise that I was speaking to anyone but him and the few people around us. I would have preferred that a private reply to a private question not be made public. I mention it here only because Mr Goro has mentioned it in his blog.

Much of it was beautiful.

Many corners were cut, however, in the animation of this quickly made film.

It does not have the delicate accuracy of "Totoro" or the powerful and splendid richness of detail of "Spirited Away." The imagery is effective but often conventional.

Much of it was, I thought, incoherent. This may be because I kept trying to find and follow the story of my books while watching an entirely different story, confusingly enacted by people with the same names as in my story, but with entirely different temperaments, histories, and destinies.

I think the film's "messages" seem a bit heavyhanded because, although often quoted quite closely from the books, the statements about life and death, the balance, etc., don't follow from character and action as they do in the books. However well meant, they aren't implicit in the story and the characters. They have not been "earned."

Arren's murder of his father in the film is unmotivated, arbitrary.

But in the film, evil has been comfortably externalized in a villain, the wizard Kumo/Cob, who can simply be killed, thus solving all problems.

In modern fantasy (literary or governmental), killing people is the usual solution to the so-called war between good and evil. My books are not conceived in terms of such a war, and offer no simple answers to simplistic questions.

Though I think the dragons of my Earthsea are more beautiful, I admire the noble way Goro's dragons fold their wings. The animals of his imagination are seen with much tenderness — I liked the horse-llama's expressive ears. I very much liked the scenes of plowing, drawing water, stabling the animals, and so on, which give the film an earthy and practical calmness — a wise change of pace from constant conflict and "action". In them, at least, I recognised my Earthsea.

As for her complaints about the animation, come on Le Guin, this is anime. Companies taking shortcuts in the animation is one of anime's trademarks. That should almost be expected in anime movies.

Personally, I think that this needs to be put in perspective. In my opinion, Earthsea series was lucky to get an anime treatment in the first place, let alone by Studio Ghibli. (Come on guys. This is no Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings or Star Wars.)