US animation movie distributor GKIDS returns once again with Ghibli Fest 2018, a year-long retrospective of Studio Ghibli movies in theaters. Films will be shown in both English (dub) and Japanese (subtitled) soundtracks and will be screened at theaters nationwide, courtesy of Fathom Events.
On Tuesday, October 31, GKIDS released their "second wave" of Studio Ghibli Blu-Ray/DVD titles: Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind and Castle in the Sky. Both titles are part of the studio's catalog reissue series and will continue into early next year.
These titles are important for die-hard Ghibli Freaks. Both Nausicaa and Castle in the Sky were released by Disney some years ago, but with annoying issues such as English title burn-in (Nausicaa) and "dubtitles" (Castle). Hopefully, GKIDS has solved these problems, but at the time of publication, I was unable to confirm or deny any changes in the new versions.
Let's cross our fingers and hope that these new reissues have proper subtitles and title credits. That would make these titles a must-have for all fans. Stay tuned.
Update (11/4/17, 9:17pm): It has been confirmed that Nausicaa has clean credits, and Castle in the Sky has proper English subtitles. Thanks to our friends on Reddit for the confirmation. Now buy these movies!
Three years ago, artist Richard J. Evans embarked on an interesting project: a series of digital artworks based on the movies of Studio Ghibli, rendered entirely in "pixel art." This is an art style that is deliberately low-fi, low-resolution and quite blocky, inspired, one supposes, by the look of computer graphics from the 1980s. This sub-genre of art has become very popular in recent years and shows no signs of slowing down.
Evans successfully captures the hand-drawn animation style of the Ghibli films quite masterfully, with a very wide color palette at his disposal (much more than what was available on computers and videogamess of the 1980s), and everything is sharply detailed, which maintaining those large blocky pixels. The ones you see here are my personal favorites, but the artist has also paid tribute to nearly every Ghibli movie ever made, and they're all terrific.
Overall, great job. Creating art within very hard limitations can be quite challenging, but the results are equally rewarding.
This past Friday, Japanese television network Nippon TV aired Studio Ghibli's 1986 classic Laputa: Castle in the Sky. During the broadcast, the network's shared trivia and memorable quotes on Twitter. One fascinating revelation: the character of Dora, the leader of the pirate clan, was inspired by Hayao Miyazaki's mom. He wanted to portray his mother as a brave and rogue-ish-yet-heroic figure. He even remarked that she was a dominating figure, where even a family of four sons would never dare to challenge her. And, of course, he was motivated by the trauma of his mother's long battle with tuberculosis, which lasted nine years during the young Miyazaki's childhood.
Whenever I think of Miyazaki's references to his mother, I am reminded of the mothers in My Neighbor Totoro and Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind, who were bedridden with illness. The Nausicaa books contain an especially haunting moment where Nausicaa discloses feelings of isolation and alienation as a result of her mother's ordeal, resulting in one of the most chilling lines of the entire novel: "My mother taught me that some wounds can never be healed. But she didn't love me."
How much of that was based on Miyazaki's own childhood? How much is invented solely for the story? Like all artists, he probably took a little from column "A" and a little from column "B". By all accounts, he remained deeply devoted to his mother throughout her life, and she lived to a very old age. His thoughts on the matter have remained private, however, leaving us to speculate and theorize by examining his art.
I like the idea of Dora as a heroic mother, and she's a great, curmudgeonly character who supplies great heart to Castle in the Sky. I can't imagine the picture without her or her bumbling sons. They're not so much pirates as a family on endless adventures.
You can find the Nippon TV Twitter messages here and here, in Japanese, of course. Thanks also to Geek for sharing the news on their site.
Ugh, look at that horrible logo! It look like Kermit the Frog exploded. My eyes, the goggles do nothing!
This is the original 1999 VHS promo for Disney's US release of Hayao Miyazaki's Castle in the Sky. It features an English dub that has aged very badly, a corny narration voice-over, and a low-resolution pan-and-scan picture that was a hallmark of the videotape era.
It's fascinating that Disney had originally planned to release Castle in the Sky on video in 1999, no doubt to tie in with Princess Mononoke. However, their shocked reaction to Miyazaki's 1997 film (which was far more violent and adult than they were expecting), as well as the subsequent difficulties with Studio Ghibli (cough, Miyazaki threatening Miramax head Harvey Weinstein with a samurai sword) left such plans in a holding pattern.
Perhaps Castle in the Sky was just too "anime" for the time. Even in the late '90s, Hollywood struggled with the difficulties in selling Japanese animation to a mainstream audience, who expected cartoons to follow in the traditions of Snow White, Mickey Mouse, and Bugs Bunny. An animated Steven Spielberg movie was not only unusual, it was entirely alien. Nobody could wrap their heads around it, and you can see this struggle in this film's movie reviews at the time.
By the turn of the century, Disney would only release one Ghibli catalog title: Kiki's Delivery Service. It was a much easier choice, far closer to the kind of children's fairy tales they wanted from Miyazaki. The home video rights to My Neighbor Totoro would remain in 20th Century Fox's hands for several more years. Mononoke was just too violent for children. The rest of the studio's movies were just too weird, too unconventional, too foreign. We would have to wait for Miyazaki's Spirited Away, and the relentless pushing by Pixar's John Lasseter, to finally end the impasse and move things forward.
Even then, Disney always seemed to be dragging their heels in regards to Studio Ghibli, never fully understanding these movies or how to sell them to the American public. To be fair, this is a daunting challenge, one we still grapple with today. We have more or less accepted that Ghibli will never achieve more than cult status in the United States. It's just what it is. We live in a country where reality show stars become Presidents and cartoons about talking poop become blockbuster hits.
Japanese artist Mocci Hajikura has spent the past four years recreating the environments and locations from Studio Ghibli's classic Laputa: Castle in the Sky. He has now completed his project, releasing several videos to YouTube. All of your favorite scenes from the movie have been rendered to scale, including the industrial town, the pirate ship, and most famously, the floating city of Laputa itself.
In 2015, he created a series of YouTube videos to correspond with the movie's television broadcast. These final 2017 videos also correspond to the latest Castle in the Sky broadcast presentation.
This is highly impressive. We have seen many Minecraft works based on Studio Ghibli movies, and this is easily the most ambitious yet. Most of Miyazaki's scenes and designs are rendered in painstaking detail; even the movie's title sequence has been recreated perfectly.
Courtesy of Hajikura, here are all seven Castle in the Sky Minecraft videos, complete and unabridged. Thankfully, there are no scary Creeper attacks. Those guys nearly gave me a heart attack in Minecraft Alpha. Enjoy and share!
Sad news for anime fans everywhere. Veteran Japanese voice actor Ryuji Saikachi died on September 29 from congestive heart failure. He was 89 years old. He was a fixture on more than 80 anime films and television series, dubbing American movies (including Disney's The Lion King), videogames and commercials.
His animation credits include the following: Dragon Ball Z, Tokyo Godfathers, Paranoia Agent, Night on the Galactic Railroad, Galaxy Express 999, Wolf's Rain, Unico in the Island of Magic, 3x3 Eyes Seima Densetsu, Roujin Z, Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise, Mermaid Forest and Tensai Bakabon.
For Ghibli Freaks, Saikachi is remembered for playing the train engineer in Laputa: Castle in the Sky, a member of the orchestra in Gauche the Cellist, and most famously, Matthew Cuthbert in Anne of Green Gables.
Obviously, since today is Pirate Day, we can't forget Dora and her clan of bumbling air pirates, can we? Here are some new screenshots from the always-excellent Blu-Ray release.
Castle in the Sky is one of those movies one can easily take for granted. As a swashbuckling action-adventure, it is virtually flawless. The action set pieces are masterfully designed and executed. The comedy bits are masterfully timed. The classic Hollywood romance is endlessly endearing. There's really nothing to compare to Miyazaki's 1986 classic, except for Raiders of the Lost Ark and Last Crusade.
Fascinating that after all these years, I still think of this movie as "Spielberg movie." Maybe it's just me.
YouTube video program EZ Anime devoted their ninth episode to Hayao Miyazaki's 1986 adventure film Laputa: Castle in the Sky. Hosts Ben Moore and Brad Ellis discuss many aspects of the movie in a causal, freewheeling conversation, including initial impressions, the movie's sense of wonder and mystery, the use of visual storytelling, the value of hard work, and the conflict between technology and the natural world.
This is a very entertaining episode. Kudos to the EZ Anime team for their show. Oh, and we get to look at the old Disney DVD cover with the creepy airbrushed plastic children. Whee.
Viz Media has long been supporters of Studio Ghibli, and nowhere better is this shown than in their series of movie art books. The Art of Castle in the Sky is the official companion to the 1986 Hayao Miyazaki movie, and like all the titles in the long-running series, features a massive collection of screenshots, production art, design sketches and informational insights from Miyazaki and his production team.
There are official "Art of..." books for all of the Studio Ghibli feature films, and a number of them have yet to be released in the States. I would certainly love to see all of these released on our shores.
I'm a big fan of this series of books and highly recommend them to all Ghibli Freaks. The cover and layout designs are terrific, the pages large and loaded with details. You pay a little more for the hardcover but you always get your money's worth.
Now if we could only see a digital (.pdf) version of these books! That would be magnificent. Unfortunately, if Amazon subjects major book publishers to the same file-size restrictions as they do with independent and self-published authors, then any future prospects for an e-book release remains grim.
In any case, you should pick up a copy of this book. It will look great on the coffee table or bookshelf.
Somebody built a real-life model of the insect flapper aircraft from Castle in the Sky. Nice! I wonder if one could buy one of these RC model kits in Japanese stores? It would be great to find one at your local hobby shop.
These spectacular poster designs recreate our favorite Studio Ghibli movies in the early 20th Century Art Nouveau style. An artist named "Marlboro" posted these artworks on Pixiv, a Japanese art-sharing site. Unfortunately, Marlboro's page is no longer available, but the art lives on.
What makes these illustrations so effective is how perfectly the art style matches the original material. Nausicaa, Sheeta, Kiki, Totoro, Howl...these characters do have an Art Nouveau appeal. They fit into this style perfectly. Indeed, it makes me wonder why comics and animation cannot use this visual style, instead of merely retreading the same old paradigms.
Wednesday and Thursday at the Minneapolis Studio Ghibli Film Festival is devoted to Hayao Miyazaki's 2008 movie, Ponyo on a Cliff by the Sea, and his 1986 adventure classic, Castle in the Sky. We're headed into the Thanksgiving holiday, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if Thursday's shows are packed.
I've written extensively about Ponyo when it arrived here in the States back in 2009, and there's not much left for me to say now. It's a terrific picture that stands as a stubbornly defiant defense of hand-drawn animation. After three years, I am willing to concede that the ending is a bit weak (Spirited Away was the last Miyazaki film to really score the landing), but it's such a terrific ride that it's worth every minute.
The Lagoon Cinema will be playing the Disney-dubbed version of Ponyo, which was pretty good. I still could do without that crummy auto-tuned pop song at the closing credits...yuck. Letting Disney try to cynically turn Ponyo into a star vehicle for yet another Jonas Brother didn't quite pan out, did it? Ah, well, the kids and parents will be happy.
For me, Castle in the Sky is the one to see. It's still the only Ghibli Blu-Ray from Japan in my collection, thanks to the horrific import price ($80 w/shipping). It's going to look fantastic in 35mm, projected on the big screen. Studio Ghibli's debut film has everything: adventure, romance, amazing action, dazzling visuals. Miyazaki swung for the fences just as he did with Nausicaa, leaving nothing behind. For many years, anime fans hailed Castle as a Miyazaki masterpiece. Come to the show and see if you agree.
Oh, and can somebody smuggle some extra pumpkin pie into the theater for me, please? Thanks in advance.
Now this is super cool! These are video clips of the making of the giant metal robot that stands on the roof of the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, Japan. It's a very large and very impressive replica of the giant robots from "Castle in the Sky," which is itself a slight reworking of the giant metal robot from "Lupin III: Farewell, Beloved Lupin," which is itself an homage to the giant metal robot from the Superman cartoon.
In addition, the giant Superman Robot (as I call it) was swirling around in Hayao Miyazaki's sketchbook for years. He was bound and determined to use it somehow, before finally settling on his premier movie for Studio Ghibli.
I do wish there was more footage of the sculptor creating this statue. The person who uploaded these videos to YouTube has only posted these three so far. I would love to hear the artist discussing the project in greater detail. In any event, this is very, very cool.
When Hayao Miyazaki conceived of his first Studio Ghibli film, "Laputa: Castle in the Sky," he didn't know just what that word meant. He took it from Johnathan Swift's Gullivers Travels, without quite getting the satirical angle of the story. "La puta," as every Espanol speaker knows, is a really really naughty word. This allows for some real comedy when Castle in the Sky is shown in movie class. Comedy mayhem ensues!
Thanks to Generacion GHIBLI (Brazil) and the Studio Ghibli Weblog (Spain) spotting this comic. I've separated the panels, to make it easier for viewing. The first panel lies below, and the rest lie after the jump:
Studio Ghibli fans in Australia have a couple more reasons to feel happy these days. Castle in the Sky and My Neighbors the Yamadas are now available on Blu-Ray in stores across the country. We should see these discs released in the UK later this year, and in the US somewhere between now and the apocalypse.
If you've seen the Nausicaa BD, then you'll know what to expect in presentation, packaging and picture quality. These releases should be excellent all around, and you'll be putting these movies into heavy rotation at your house. Whenever I can actually get my Sony HDTV to work, I'm always watching Castle in the Sky and taking in all the rich, luminous colors. Great fun!
The Studio Ghibli Weblog (in Spain) has a pair of terrific Studio Ghibli wallpapers for you to download and use on your computers. Nice! As you can see, are Spanish cousins are basing their designs on the Japanese Ghibli Blu-Ray covers. Currently, there are wallpapers for Nausicaa, Castle in the Sky, Ponyo and Arietty. Just follow these links to get to the wallpapers; sizes range from 1024x768 to 1920x1080 resolution.
As the Ghibli faithful across the pond are already well aware, Castle in the Sky and My Neighbors the Yamadas will be arriving in the UK on May 9. Now the cover designs are available on their respective Amazon pages, so I wanted to post the images here on the blog.
The Japanese BDs look absolutely fantastic. Picture quality and detail are stunning, color tones are rich, glowing, luminous. I was always pretty satisfied with the DVDs, but these new discs just smash the old ones to pieces. You're going to love these Blu-Rays, and once again the Americans will be the last ones to the party, left waiting until the Twelvth of Never to get their discs.
Since we're going to mention Miyazaki's latest, I should point out this shot which immediately stuck out at me. Mr. Dough coming to life and crawling out of the oven reminds me of similar shots of the giant robot from Castle in the Sky. I couldn't decide which specific cut was being quoted, but they're pretty much the same pose - the robot crawling out of its cell, to alarmed soldiers, or the robot smashing through a narrow pathway in pursuit of Lana, err...I mean Sheeta.
Madman Entertainment has announced this week that Studio Ghibli's latest Blu-Ray discs, Laputa: Castle in the Sky and My Neighbors the Yamadas, will be released in Australia on April 20. Huzzah!
This is excellent news. I was fully expecting to have bragging rights for owning the Japanese Ghibli Blu-Rays straight through the summer. It seems Ghibli may be moving more aggressively on the global market. This is good news for the rest of us. If these BDs are coming to Australia in three months, then the UK and France can't be far behind. The North American market will likely be the last, and left up to Disney's schedule.
