Studio Ghibli's newest Blu-Ray releases are available now in Japan, for the slightly horrifying price of $80USD. Fortunately, most of you will be able to buy these discs when they're released in your country sometime next year. We Americans, however, will remain at the mercy of Disney's whims. In any event, region-free discs and online merchants make it easier than ever to build up your Ghibli movie collection, even without paying the $80 ransom the Japanese are subjected to.
Let's take a look at these wonderful screenshots from the Howl's Blu-Ray. It looks terrific, as you would expect. I've noticed that a lot of Ghibli movies struggled on the standard DVD format; Howl's Moving Castle was a marvel to see on a big screen, projected on 35mm film. 480p resolution just doesn't come close. 1080p is a very welcome improvement, indeed. And, no doubt, we'll be saying the same thing once these movies start arriving on the next media format, 4K resolution. For now, we'll be more than happy.
The rest of the screenshots lie after the jump. My thanks, as always, to Asian Blu-Ray Guide for providing these photos. I'm eternally grateful for all their hard work.
4 comments:
Gosh... I can almost justify the $80+ to import it... dangit Disney c'mon.
Am I the only one to think it has less to do with Disney's whims and more their penny-pinching – specifically that preventing Japanese Blu-ray Disc buyers from having a fraction-of-the-cost alternative the same region code and format to import could be a safer way of guaranteeing income than making it affordable to North America? It's the Johnny & Associates model of marketing: keep them in the country as much as possible, market them intensely and keep the prices inflated and the competition non-existent.
But if Disney's reluctance to let the Ghibli catalogue out from under the rug in America is getting you down, there's no more striking antithesis that what GKIDS are doing in their absence: a subbed and dubbed print (such a rare thing to see a movie re-released on in its own right nowadays) of every feature that has both but the last couple, which rights issues seem to have forced them in to being just the dubs again. I may wince a little at the lack of mention of the Japanese voice talents nor any staff beyond the directors in the press information (not even ŌTSUKA Shinji?) but by Pete Bog are they showing these things. The Twitter account looks to be the way to keep up with them.
And Discotek Media too, where home viewing is concerned: we have a few more directly Ghibli-related releases from StudioCanal but not anything quite like them in the UK: think of the delays (if they even are merely that) as extra time to get up to speed with the Tôei Dôga classics if one hasn't already.
The pictures look stunning as usual....but i'm a bit annoyed by the big watermark in the bottom right corner. I usually use these Ghibli pics as a screensaver or background pic and this new watermark ruins it slightly. I can't blame the website for doing it though!
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