Manga & Anime THREAD

Post by **Meg** » March 25th, 2009, 7:39 pm

Meg wrote:Thanks for the heads up George - I did intend to say 70's but with all the 80's remakes being released recently, I got a little confused! Anyway, that along with the title of the series have been taken care of.

GeorgeC · Post by **GeorgeC** » March 26th, 2009, 5:13 pm

Yeah, I got that. Waited for somebody else to post it!

I get lazy like that sometimes...!

The movie won't show in the US for more than 10 weeks, though.

I predict it'll be out on DVD by the end of the year in the US, probably on Blu-Ray within 18 months in both the US and Japan.

The Japanese DVD release should be coming out by early summer.

Ponyo should be eligible for an Animated Feature Oscar next year...

GeorgeC · Post by **GeorgeC** » March 26th, 2009, 11:55 pm

Meg,

IF Imagi can survive past the release of Astro Boy and IF Astro Boy is enough of a hit to convince the financial backers to keep Imagi afloat, Gatchaman has the potential to be a big hit.

There are more people alive now who remember Gatchaman and it has an appeal to the action/adventure superhero crowd, too.

Gatchaman is the closest thing in anime to a superhero series. (Actually, it's more like the Marvel SHIELD/Nick Fury series but even that's an imprecise comparison. The US/Western World really has nothing like Gatchaman. And Japan really doesn't have superheroes, either.)

Gatchaman was also one of the predecessors to the live-action Sentai Ranger shows (better known as Power Rangers in the West).

Battle of the Planets was a big hit in syndication when it originally aired in the late 1970s and late 1980s. I already told a story about how a bunch of neighborhood kids would get out of the local neighbor's pool and huddle around the TV set to catch the latest early afternoon episode of the series.

It's been a huge influence on artists and writers who later got into the American comic book and manga scenes as well as animation.

Alex Ross, who's a bit older than me, was also a fan and painted the covers for the ADV Films video release of the original Gatchaman TV series.

Nobody's bothered to license Gatchaman II and III for home video release in the US. Besides the generally apathetic response to the DVD release of the original show --- you can still find copies of it "in the usual places" below MSRP --, the sequel series are considered inferior by most fans. I've only see bits and pieces of the second Gatchaman when it was edited and dubbed into Eagle Riders by Saban in the early 1990s. That was NOT a good show! It made BoTP and G-Force look like genius work by comparison....

Post by **parka** » March 26th, 2009, 11:57 pm

Wow. That is going to be a very long wait.

Wonder if the Japanese DVD will have any subtitles.

GeorgeC · Post by **GeorgeC** » March 27th, 2009, 12:09 am

If Ghibli/BV (yes, Disney releases the Ghibli films on home video in Japan, too) follow their past standard operating protocol, then yes, there will be English subtitles on the R2 DVD release of Ponyo, too.

But the dub most likely won't be on the Japanese DVD release unless it was completed well ahead of the R2 DVD authoring.

I'd recommend waiting for the US DVD release.

You'll easily pay 2.5 times what the US release will cost.

Trust me -- this film won't cost more than $22.99 at any of the US major chains when it does get released by November/December this year and chances are you'll be able to pick it up for $19.99 the first week of release in the US.

The problem with getting the R2 (Japanese) release is three-fold.
A) higher cost. It's going to be at least $40 if not closer to $50 with import mark-up and again probably closer to $60 because it's a Ghibli film. Importers expect rabid fans to pay ridiculous mark-up on these films. Even they're not worth it as far as I'm concerned.
B) the R2 release will basically be identical to the US release which will hit by the end of the year with the exception that there will be no subtitles for the second DVD which will have the extras like the making of documentary and storyboards. Do you really want a second disc of extras you can't understand??? This is how all the other Ghibli film 2-disc releases were done in Japan and there's no reason to expect anything different with this release, either.
C) region-coding and copy protection are still a major $#&Y(*&*! as far as DVD is concerned. Yes, it's easy to bypass it and region-free players are available but it's still a pain. And even region-free players and computers can't add subtitles to a second disc of extras which doesn't have them.

Post by **parka** » April 9th, 2009, 10:34 am

I second that.

Never get Japan discs unless you need that Japanese version. Their disc are seriously overpriced.

Post by **parka** » April 9th, 2009, 10:35 am

I second that.

Never get Japan discs unless you need that Japanese version. Their disc are seriously overpriced.

GeorgeC · Post by **GeorgeC** » April 10th, 2009, 12:41 am

http://www.ghibliworld.com/news.html#3103_02

Japan's getting Ponyo on DVD on July 3rd. The American theatrical release of the film is in August.

The Blu-Ray edition (for Japan, at least) has been announced but won't be released before December according to the latest news.

P.S. -- I think the Blu-Ray will be released in the US first quarter next year if it does get released in Japan in December...

Post by **Dacey** » April 17th, 2009, 10:41 pm

Saw this today. I'll confess to knowing NOTHING about the source material, but I thought that it was kinda cool anyway.

I mean, I don't really know why I enjoyed it, but the honest truth is that I *did* enjoy it, even though I found the whole thing to be somewhat campy. Also, I *really* liked Emmy Rossum's character. She was pretty awesome.

Maybe I'm too easy to please?

Post by **eddievalient** » April 18th, 2009, 10:09 am

The funny thing about this movie is that if you check Box Office Mojo, the user reviews seem to be split right down the middle (although there are slightly more As than Fs). I may scope this one out after all.

Post by **EricJ** » April 18th, 2009, 11:31 am

Wendy's Jane wrote:Saw this today. I'll confess to knowing NOTHING about the source material, but I thought that it was kinda cool anyway.

I mean, I don't really know why I enjoyed it, but the honest truth is that I *did* enjoy it, even though I found the whole thing to be somewhat campy. Also, I *really* liked Emmy Rossum's character. She was pretty awesome.

It seems getting good "kinda cool" reviews from the people who know NOTHING about the source material.

(Except for those who read CN-fan DBZ complaints about the show being "nothing but big muscle guys grunting for a half hour and fights that take thirty episodes", and were thus scared into a negative perception of the series as some Jason Statham chest-beater.)

The show, particularly the original DB:Classic, has a downright silly tongue-in-cheek streak (see above YouTube clip), and the anime Bulma is one of the great pantheon Hairtrigger-Tempered Cute Girls of anime (think, "What if Misty from Pokemon grew up and got a motorcycle?"), which Rossum seems to pull off...
The movie producers don't seem to be UN-familiar with the original, it's just suffering from an overabundance of attempts to cram it back into a whitebread Smallville-fan mainstream to avoid longer, messier explanations.
Think the operative term is, "If you liked THIS mess..."

Post by **FanamI** » May 5th, 2009, 11:32 pm

I find that the best voice over acting is typically done in the language native to where the film was directed and produced. The English dub is typically done very sub par and the actors don't catch the emotion correctly IMO. I always choose the subtitles over dub. There have been a few movies where the voice over in english dub impressed me. Akira and Howl's moving castle really impressed me.

Post by **Ben** » May 6th, 2009, 5:39 am

Which version of Akira, FanamI?

From what I remember, I thought the original 1986 theatrical English dub was more "authentic" than the later Pioneer DVD edition. Why did they have to change that anyway!?

Post by **Bill1978** » May 6th, 2009, 8:22 am

A great topic.

For me personally, if it is a live action movie I prefer subtitles. It's too distracting for me to see words coming out of a mouth that isn't matching the words.

For animated fare, I go with the dubbed. It's a form of filmmaking that is suitable for dubbing. When Disney and other studios use to include a multi-track version of a song, I was always inpressed with how often the words matched the mouths regardless of the language.

I admit that the only ones I watch are Studio Ghibli and the dubbing with those films is great, it is obvious that they go to great efforts to try and match the words with the mouth movement. I'm still amazed that Japanese animation produces their animated films in the opposite way to western films. Watching the bonus features on Ghibli productions I'm always amazed to find the animation is done first and then the Japanese actors come in to dub their lines in time with the animation.

I will also admit that for some reason I find the Japanese language to be distracting when I read subtitles. I'm fine with European languages I can zone them out, but with Japanese it for some reason interferes. Another reason why I go for the dub.

And as Ben said, first impressions do make a big difference. I suppose I should choose to see Ghibli's work in its original form but I'm usually too pumped for the viewing and choose the lazy option of listening rather than reading. I then try to go back and watch the original but I find that I don't like the original voices compared to the dubbed voices.

Post by **eddievalient** » May 6th, 2009, 9:44 am

It depends on what anime I'm watching. For example, I watch the subbed version of Naruto cause I don't care for the english cast, but I absolutely adore the current english cast of One Piece so the dub is all I watch of that show.