April 9th, 2006

I have been on a Stu­dio Ghi­bli mini-bender this week, in cel­e­bra­tion of the fact that My Neigh­bor Totoro has finally been re-released on dvd, with a new Eng­lish dub and the Japan­ese soundtrack.

My Neigh­bor Totoro is eas­ily one of my favorite Stu­dio Ghi­bli films. The Eng­lish sound­track from the US VHS release was def­i­nitely a bit screechy and left a lot to be desired, but it never pre­vented me from falling in love with the movie. What a dis­ap­point­ment it was when I learned that the Fox dvd release included nei­ther the Japan­ese sound­track nor Eng­lish sub­ti­tles. The Dis­ney re-release promises to be all that I had been hop­ing for. I am anx­iously await­ing deliv­ery from Amazon.

In the mean­time, I amused myself with Howl's Mov­ing Cas­tle and Pom Poko.

Pom Poko sur­prised me. It took me some time to be drawn in to the story, which involves shape-shifting rac­coons and their strug­gle to sur­vive in the face of encroach­ing human sub­urbs. Straight­for­ward enough, I sup­pose. The rac­coon com­mu­nity has to decide between a mod­er­ately suc­cess­ful non-violent approach and a grow­ing pres­sure towards mil­i­tancy and open war­fare. What was sur­pris­ing was the sub­tle role of the "rac­coon pouch." Although usu­ally back­grounded, there would occa­sion­ally be a bold and bizarre use of the mag­i­cal rac­coon ball­sack. This never failed to knock me off bal­ance. Espe­cially con­sid­er­ing that the US release comes from Dis­ney. Any­way, this strange humor only added to my enjoy­ment of the film. Def­i­nitely worth adding to your Net­flix queue.

Tags: anime, Studio Ghibli, totoro

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