Some images of Hayao Miyazaki's 1995 short film, On Your Mark, on CAV LaserDisc. The film bears the imprint "Studio Ghibli Experimental Theater," which is very interesting. This was the studio's first work in short film animation, after producing only feature-length films. In later years, the studio would create numerous TV commercials for clients such as NHK and Yomiuri Shimbun, and the many short films for the Ghibli Museum. Surely, Miyazaki considered On Your Mark to be successful enough to continue the formula.
This LaserDisc package is especially impressive, thanks to its full color artwork on the back cover, and large booket which includes numerous screenshots. This is a good opportunity to compare against the newly-released Blu-Ray. I think the BD comes far closer to realizing the original artwork than the ancient LD or DVD, but that's just me.
The Studio Ghibli films LD's were sold separately, or packaged together in a massive box set collection. That collection is now extremely rare and expensive, easily one of the crown jewels for diehard collectors. The box set is also noteworthy for including a televised 1993 interview between Hayao Miyazaki and Akira Kurosawa. This interview has never been released in any other format; one would think it would have surfaced on Criterion Collection by now. Perhaps there are too many rights issues to resolve (the Kurosawa estate, Nibariki, NHK). Strange.
In any case, Ghibli LaserDiscs are fairly easy to find on Ebay, and are reasonably priced, around $20. English subtitles will not be included, only the Japanese soundtrack. Keep that in mind if you want to start a collection.
More photos appear after the jump break:
(Photos: Ghibli-Collector)
1 comment:
I'm impressed they released the music video as a standalone disc. What else is on there besides that? It seemed like they could put on a behind-the-scenes featurette if they had to.
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