I watched this well-known anime by Miyazaki yesterday. I liked it a lot but I found the character played by Phil Hartman: the wisecracking cat rather incongruous and grating and somewhat out of character for a Miyazaki.
A few reviews on IMDB suggested that the Disney dub had added many lines to the cat character. Can anyone confirm this? On viewing the first half hour again I noticed that many of the “wisecracks” are in the background(ie the cat wasn’t mouthing lines) suggesting that many (all?) are new. If you cut them out the cat has a different character, more subdued but more in keeping with the general atmosphere of the anime.
Frankly the wisecracking side-kick is ,to me at least, one of the most intensely annoying stereotypes in American animation and I find it rather annoying that Disney would screw up the flavor of a Miyazaki in this way.(if any fact that’s what they did)
Anyone has any information/comments on this?
The rest of the dub was pretty OK and I guess we ought to be thankful for that.
Maybe I don’t understand anime (and excuse me if this is a highjack) but why would Japanese cartoons be set in America? Watching this movie, I felt several times things were out of kilter. Why not just set it in Japan, where you can get all the details right, and let Americans figure it out? Or is the American market so lucrative that one must make movies we understand or won’t buy.
And another thing (while I’m on a roll) I can’t stand this movie for the simple fact that every time she gets on the damn broom, Kiki’s dress flies up and we’re treated to a look at her panties. This is a children’s movie. We don’t need to see panties. If you’re making a film for adults, fine. But here it’s unnecessary and adds titillation where it’s inappropriate.
Well I am not an anime expert but AFAIK it is pretty common for anime to have Western settings and Western-looking characters; it is just one of the features of the genre. It is not a marketing device; actually Miyazaki resisted for several years before he allowed Disney to dub his films.
As for the panties, my understanding is that the Japanese have a different attitude about such things and probably wouldn’t consider them titillation at all. For instance in My Neighbor Totoro there is a shot of the two girls having a bath with their father.
Perhaps someone better informed about anime and Japan could confirm this.
And no. I don’t mind the thread drifting into a general discussion of Kiki or even anime though I hope someone can tell us about the sub version of Kiki.
Well, maybe titillation wasn’t the right word. Dumb would maybe be the right word. Unnecessary. I thought, “oh, brother, fine” the first time the dress went up, but it kept happening over and over and over – which leads to me think it’s not being done for accuracy’s sake in depicting the physics of broom-flying, but to simply get away with showing a little girl’s underwear. :rolleyes:
I think that, at least anime-wise, grown women’s panties : little girl’s panties :: naked adults : naked babies.
We have a real phobia of pedophilia in this country as compared to other countries and even recent times in this country which has pushed back the age limit for acceptible portrayal of nudity in children. For example, remember the little girl on the Coppertone bottle with the dog pulling down her bottoms to reveal her tanline? I wouldn’t be too surprised if, within a decade, it will be taboo to show unclothed baby-butts.
(I am simply making an observation; I do not wish to imply any value judgments.)
Regarding dub, far be it from me to criticize the late, great Phil Hartman, but I didn’t like his voice for the cat, either. And I hate dub in general. Not just crappy dub (which can sometimes actually be funny in its dubbiness), but even incredibly well-done with talented actors dub. It’s a religious thing with me. I want to hear the voices that the director put in the movie.
ummm titillation from a cartoon? Okay, but I’ll take REAL guys Thanks!
Overall I liked the movie, except after having seen it a couple time I got SICK of all the belly laughs at moments that weren’t even funny. What’s up with that?
“Can’t think of dialogue we’ll just make them laugh now.”?
[hijack] I think I remember something about the Coppertone logo being redesigned so the little girl’s bottom doesn’t show. I’ll check next time I’m at the grocery store [/hijack arrrr matey]
A) The “Americanization” was a bad idea. I read an interview with Miyazaki where he stated that Kiki’s world was to be his “ideal” world
B) Re: the Panties thing. See what Podkayne said and cope with the fact that other cultures have different ideas about sexuality. That doesn’t mean they’re deves. I saw nothing “tittilating” about those scenes. I think they were meant to convey childlike-innocence.
C) The dubbed version f*cked up much of the musical score and replaced it with dull, generic, background music. (The song Kiki hears on the radio when she’s leaving home is a huge change for the worse in the American edition)
One of the most annoying things about american media is that everything is made to be sexual, and anything that tries not to be is met with sarcasm. In consequence, most americans are incapable of believing in innocence. It all just seems really sad and unhealthy to me.
So basically you’re saying you wish it was set in Japan with Western cultural values instead of being set in the West with Japanese cultural values … ?
I’m pretty sure that Miyazaki wasn’t thinking about the American market at all when he made Kiki. It doesn’t seem to take place in America anyway – It seems more like a European pastiche. I would guess that for Japanese audiences the Western setting makes it seem more otherworldly and magical.
No, I’m not saying a thing about Western cultural values, or what I wish it would be. I am just confused as to why a Japanese film would be done to look Western. If I had to pick, given your choices, I supposed I’d rather a Japanese film set in Japan with Japanese values. <shrug>
As I said I don’t know much about anime, and some of the responses suggest that this is its style. That’s fine with me. I was merely watching it as a kid’s movie and not paying very much attention to its “anime-ness.”
As for the titillation issue, I’m not suggesting anyone would be turned on by a cartoon, nor do I think I have particularly repressed Puritan values. I can buy the suggestion that it was intended to show innocence. But it seemed so pervasive, so frequent and so unnecessary at that extreme that it ended up annoying me and spoiling the entire film for that reason.
And now that I know it seems to be a bad dub, I can see even more why I didn’t like it. I didn’t know that was Phil Hartman doing the cat, but I vaguely recall that the voice seemed all wrong for a friendly little girl’s sidekick.
I never watch Japanese movies, anime or otherwise, in English. For the same reason hubby won’t watch American/Aussie movies in Japanese. Things get lost/added in the translation. Jokes become unfunny.
I saw the movie at least 3 times and I don’t remember seeing any panties. I do remember the film pretty well, as my whole family really enjoyed it. (I rarely watch a movie twice, let alone 3 times… unless it’s shown frequently on basic cable.) Anyway, either they aren’t all that pervasive or I have a really bad memory. Or, maybe those scenes stood out more for you because of the meaning you were attaching to them?
As for the setting of the movie, it was clearly a fantasy world, albeit a fairly “realistic” one, with, as Pochacco said, a few European elements. But even those struck me more as fairy-tale elements than as a presentation of the Western world.
the setting is definitely european inspired rather than american inspired. (the bread shop, the streets, the city design etc)
i think the whole reason it’s like that is to emphasise the fantasy elements and to appeal to japanese viewers, rather than to export it to america.
the whole witch on broomstick thing isn’t native to japan and so it would need a suitably foreign setting to communicate it to japanese audiences.
as for the cat, i saw the japanese dub and to me, the cat balanced kiki’s enthusiasm with common sense and sometimes pessimism. i mean, it was funny, but not the wise cracking ‘Timon and Pumba’ style disney humour.
i’d have to hear the american dub too though of course
I can think of two (I’ve seen the movie (at least parts of it) dozens of times: I love the flying sequences). When she’s in the cattle car the first morning after she sets out you see her in her underclothes as she prepares to bed down for the night, and there’s at least one scene where she’s concentrating to get the broomstick to lift off and the wind whips her skirt up and you can see a glimpse.
Again, neither is even remotely tittilatiting. If you’re old enough to remember Sears Catalouges, there were pictures of kids modeling underclothes. The Kiki’s stuff was somewhat less exciting that those.
I can’t find anywhere where Coppertone owns up to the change, so I’m not sure when it happened, but the point is that an image that conveyed charming innocence a decade or so ago is now seen as titillating. Why? Is widespread awareness of, and revulsion toward, pedophilia simply making us more cautious? Has sexualization of children in the mainstream (little children dressing like sexy pop idols, kids Growing Up Too Soon, or what have you) made it impossible for us to view children in an asexual maner?
That’s probably it. Or more precisely, once I noticed it, it bugged me and therefore heightened my awareness.
I’m afraid I’m going to get a reputation here for being a whacked out prude. That I can’t see the innocence of children without interpreting it as something sexual. But in my defense, I think that sadly, yes, Podkayne has a point:
As the mother of a 7-year-old daughter, I’m here to tell you it’s pretty difficult to find modest, appropriate clothing. I have no intention of dressing her like Britney Spears.
I found a translation of the original and yes it confirms that Disney did indeed add “wisecracks” to make Jiji a more conventional American-style sidekick.
You would have thought doing these dubs might actually teach Disney that even a children’s animation doesn’t have to have inane chatter or action going on every single second and that sometimes understatement and silence works best. Apparently not.
This seems reasonable at first. But try to think of WHY children are becoming sexualized in the media? Why are they growing up to soon? The reason for this is that America has an extremely unhealthy attitude towards anything that can even conveivably be imagined to relate to sex.
Basically, the thought process is: normal = scantily clad, scantily clad = nudity, nudity = sex, sex = pornography and pedophilia and horrible things.
Every step on this process is wrong, and it is hurting us all. Underwear is just underwear. But you are immediately obsessed with the idea that someone is scantily clad. Then you immediately think how close this is to nudity. And of course, everyone knows that nudity is the same as sex. Nobody is ever nude in normal life. And sex is obviously leading to pornography and pedophilia.
YOU are the one that just sexualized kids. Because with your thought process it is impossible for them not to be sexual. When you make these links in your mind you are conceding everything to the worst among us! You are conceding that wearing underwear or a swimsuit logically leads to evil sex. It doesn’t. You are conceding that nudity also logically leads to evil sex. It doesn’t. You are conceding that sex is evil. It isn’t. When you make these connections, you make everything sexual, and therefore no matter what kids do you will see it as sexual.
The way to combat this is NOT to just avoid anything that by your twisted logic leads to evil sex. The way to combat it is to take the things back by force. Make movies and books where wearing underwear does not lead to evil (movies such as Kiki’s Deilvery Service), refuse to allow anyone to tell you that sex was a logical conclusion. Don’t just let evil win, fight against it. If we had more movies and books where nudity did not lead to bad sex we would be a healthier society. Right now we are just giving up, and letting the bad things take control, because its easier to just avoid everything that could possiblly be related to something we hate. But, as the sexualization of kids shows, it isn’t working.
Let’s take back what we know is not wrong, and fight against anyone that tries to make it lead to wrongness.
This is a children’s movie. We don’t need to see panties. If you’re making a film for adults, fine. But here it’s unnecessary and adds titillation where it’s inappropriate.
