Ponyo

[cmoon]

[Kevin]

[strobe_z]

[cmoon]

Oh Strobe... you're the last person I'd expect to say this.

Of course, at this point Disney/Pixar is spending a LOT of money to dub the film, and while I agree that it is a compromise, it isn't a big one.

For one, there isn't much talking in the film. Now I'm not saying it is Wall-E, but this is all about looking at amazing 2D animation, not about discussing philosophy. I imagine you might be worried since there are parallels to Totoro that we might have two screaming kids for the whole film, but it wasn't dubbed by those folks, and pretty restrained.

My real argument however is that this is some of Miyzaki's best animation--and this sort of thing ONLY works on the big screen. Yes, you can wait for the blue ray or whatever, but I can tell you when I project movies onto a wall, it only begins to capture what the animated movie was designed to do. If you want to be swallowed up by the animation, you need to go see this now, while it is still in the theatre.

I also don't think it hurts to support Miyazaki in the theatrical run--telling Pixar/Disney with your $$$ that we want to be able to see films like this in a theatre. Hell, it is even a vote for hand animation.

[strobe_z]

I take it you mean I'm the last one you'd expect because of my documented dislike for being overly (some might say religiously) "japanese" when translating manga or anime. I MUCH prefer a smooth sounding English version than a "Japanglish" version any day. Attempts to keep all the "sensei, -san, -chan, -sama" etc. always strikes me as being overly "wannabe" and silly.

HOWEVER... (and this is especially true of spoken language in Anime), too often companies swing the complete opposite way and attempt to dumb down the translation by making it too colloquial and destroy much of the original charm. It takes a really professional team of translators, script writers and voice actors to do it justice, and for me that's extremely important for something on the scale of Miyazaki's work.

On the other hand, from a pure animation perspective... you're right. There's no doubt it's made to see on the big screen.

[Tetsuwan]

I saw Ponyo opening day, and loved every second of it. I actually thought the voice acting was great. True the only reason Disney used Noah Cyrus, Frankie Jonas was to get at that younger audience (but strangely enough their voice acting held up).

As for the animation, it was superb. Miyzaki captured that child like innocence, perfectly. The colors were bright and crisp (a great departure from the last two movies which used a more darker tone color scheme).

I would defiantly rank this up there with Totoro in terms of how enjoyable and family friendly the plot and overall movie is.