Author Archives: Jon Turner
The Dub Reviewer: Princess Mononoke
The last thing Disney ever would have expected to see from the man responsible for lighthearted fare like My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service was a hauntingly beautiful yet morally complex and sometimes violent epic targeted toward an adult audience. Handing off the film to its arthouse subsidiary, Miramax, Disney commissioned a highly-acclaimed writer, Neil Gaiman, to pen the English script, and spent an estimated $2.1 million to produce what would be one of the most high-profile yet hotly debated dubs ever recorded. READ MORE
The Dub Reviewer: Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind
Miyazaki’s 1984 animated epic, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, despite achieving cult status with both the Japanese public and overseas fans, suffered from a heavily edited American release. Chopped down from its two-hour running time into a 90-minute edit, and altering much of the plot and characters, the resulting disaster was infamously known as “Warriors of the Wind”. Needless to say, Miyazaki was appalled by this treatment; so much so, in fact, that he declared that any future adaptation of his work should be done under his terms. As such, the public was denied of Miyazaki’s work for more than twenty years. READ MORE
Castle in the Sky – Review
Having scored a box office success with Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Hayao Miyazaki was on his way to becoming a respected animator in his native country of Japan. Yet this was only the beginning; with the help of Isao Takahata, Miyazaki enlisted the backing of their financial distributor, Tokuma Shoten, to establish their own animation company, known today as Studio Ghibli. Under this new facility, Miyazaki directed his third feature—and the first to be produced under the “Ghibli” banner – a rollicking, fast-paced action-adventure tale called Laputa: The Castle in the Sky. READ MORE
Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water – Review
In the mid 1970′s, prior to obtaining his well-deserved status as Japan’s greatest animator ever, a young Hayao Miyazaki was hired by Japanese movie giant Toho to develop ideas for TV series. One of these concepts was “Around the World Under the Sea’, based on Jules Verne’s literary classic “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.” Although it was never produced, Toho nonetheless kept the rights to the story outline. Miyazaki would reuse elements from his original concept in later projects of his, notably the Sci-Fi series Future Boy Conan and the action-adventure feature Castle in the Sky (this explains why Anime fans often find similarities between the show I’m about to review and the latter film). Ten years later, Japanese animation studio GAINAX was commissioned to produce this very scenario. READ MORE
The Dub Reviewer: Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water
Since its initial broadcast on Japanese television in 1989-1990, Gainax’s likeable but flawed TV series debut Nadia—The Secret of Blue Water has been dubbed into international languages around the world, but its English premiere in America was another matter. READ MORE
The Dub Reviewer: My Neighbor Totoro
There really is no argument that Hayao Miyazaki’s 1988 whimsical fantasy My Neighbor Totoro is one of the greatest Anime — correction, greatest films — of all time. Despite this, however, a major debate about this movie still continues to rage on: which English dub version is preferable? READ MORE
The Dub Reviewer: Kiki’s Delivery Service
When Disney announced that it would be bringing Hayao Miyazaki’s work to audiences outside of Japan, a mixture of anticipation and dread echoed from longtime fans. For some, this meant that Disney’s resources and marketing skills could pave wider exposure for this man’s works in the United States, while others simply stated that the Mouse House was setting out to destroy Studio Ghibli and sabotage its chances for success. Indeed, when the first release under the new deal, Kiki’s Delivery Service, premiered on VHS on September 1, 1998, there were mixed reactions. READ MORE
The Dub Reviewer: Castle in the Sky
This is the most underrated and hotly debated of the Disney-Ghibli dubs. Recorded in 1998 but delayed until 2003, reactions to Disney’s dub of Castle in the Sky (retitled from the original Japanese name, Laputa: The Castle in the Sky since “laputa”‘s an offensive phrase in Spanish) have been divided. Hardcore fans of the original Japanese were especially harsh, condemning it as a travesty to the original and that it is a dub to avoid. On the other hand, there have been just as many who actually enjoyed the dub as a fun and interesting reinterpretation of a classic masterpiece with clever casting choices and a fully spruced up (and extended from the original by the composer) musical score. READ MORE
The Dub Reviewer: Record of Lodoss War – Chronicles of the Heroic Knight
Since my last review covered the Lodoss OVA dub, I figured it would be fitting to do another entry for the follow-up, subtitled Chronicles of the Heroic Knight; even though it would be ideal to attach it to the OVA dub review, both the TV and the OVA series are different entities and should be treated as such. READ MORE
The Dub Reviewer: Record of Lodoss War
Nowadays it seems as though people are so accustomed to top quality dubbing; this is more of the standard these days rather than the exception, which wasn’t necessarily how things were in the ’90s. Around this period, the consensus was that dubbing just wasn’t very good at all, and “efforts” such as most of the output from Streamline and Manga UK often fell into truly dreary territory. However, there were some notable exceptions to the rule, and Record of Lodoss War OVA, dubbed by National Sound for Central Park Media in 1996, was one of them. READ MORE
Recent Comments