You may never see Studio Ghibli’s movies on streaming services | Hacker News Reader

You may never see Studio Ghibli’s movies on streaming services

polygon.com

92 pointsminimaxir74 comments

The argument given makes ZERO sense.

> For now, the physical media releases and touring Ghibli Fest screenings remain the only ways for fans to see these films. “Studio Ghibli does not make their films available digitally, whether for download or streaming, anywhere in the world,” a GKids representative told Polygon over email. “They continue to believe that presentation is vital and particularly appreciate opportunities for audiences to experience the films together in a theatrical setting.”

Huh? Physical media releases are digital and not watched in a theatrical setting.

There's zero difference in watching a DVD or Blu-Ray vs. streaming on your screen.

the theatrical setting is going out of the house and having something physical to turn in and get a show in return

> There's zero difference in watching a DVD or Blu-Ray vs. streaming on your screen.

I agree with DVDs... but physical Bluray still looks better than streaming specially 4K HDR.

Ghibli films aren't available in 4K HDR.

In Japan they are, but I was also referring to 1080p.

I am almost certain that they aren't; the number of actual native 4K anime can probably be counted on both hands. Even native 1080p isn't really "the norm" yet for TV series (but we're talking about movies here).

I don't know about all anime (I'm not a fan) but here's a Ghibli movie in 4K HDR: https://www.amazon.co.jp/Lupin-III-The-Castle-of-Cagliostro-...

Akira is coming in 4K HDR too.

The big difference between DVD/Blu-Ray vs streaming, is that I haven't owned a physical media player since 2006 or so. I would imagine there are a lot of families who don't own physical media players anymore.

We've looked at renting/streaming a Ghibli movie several times before but were unable to. I suspect that they are missing out on a pretty big market.

They must be talking about now because I know I've watched Spirited Away, Nausicaa, Princess Mononoke, Grave of the Fireflies and Ponyo on streaming services in the past.

> There's zero difference in watching a DVD or Blu-Ray vs. streaming on your screen.

There's definitely more ceremony with putting a disc in the player or going to the theater.

>There’s zero difference in watching a DVD or Blu-Ray vs. streaming on your screen.

God bless whatever first world country with top-tier ISP you live in. Even purchased content I get from iTunes, which I naively thought was downloaded to my Apple TV before I watched it, suffers artifacts from streaming.

I have non-fiber Gigabit in The Capital of Silicon Valley.

That could very possibly be the video encoding used by Apple or the 3rd party that might doing their bitrate specific video encoding. There are some incredible anime specific codec's out there that do a great job and I would want them run instead of a standard encoder you might use for non-anime movies. There's a reason why dvd ripped and compressed anime looks so good.

> For now, the physical media releases and touring Ghibli Fest screenings remain the only ways for fans to see these films.

TIL Anime fans are extremely law-abiding.

One of my favorite gifts from my wife was a Studio Ghibli 6 disc collection (it looked like this one: https://www.amazon.com/Miyazaki-Studio-Collection-English-La...)

She's not a big anime fan, which I think is part of the reason I liked it so much. We worked our way through them and she liked them enough to go out on a limb and we bought "The Wind Rises" and "When Marnie was There".

I recall seeing Spirited Away and Kiki's delivery service in the 90's and so it was fun to find out there was more from that creator.

spirited away (amazing on the big screen!) is playing in select theaters at the end of this month: https://www.ghiblifest.com/

the subtitled version is more emotionally genuine, imho.

If you don’t understand the language, the subtitled version gives you more of a “blank canvas” to project emotions onto. You don’t understand the words, just the tone of voice. If you understand the language, you realize that the timing and choice of emphasis is not always appropriate to the emotion, so it spoils the effect. As I got more proficient at various languages I often realized that the original version with subtitles is not as good as I thought.

So the subtitles version often seems more genuine unless you speak the language. The Disney dub is quite good, Disney are world experts at voice casting, direction, and localization.

I do love the English-language dubs of Ghibli films. Very high quality work.

My Dad first saw "Howl's Moving Castle" subbed, then dubbed. he said he could connect to the dubbed a lot better. He also found it surprising that Billy Crystal was Calcifer.

Wholeheartedly disagree. I've been watching only english-subtitled entertainment for a good while for two reasons:

1) english dubs generally suck, imho

2) there's always some emotion lost in translation/dubbing

And I'm not a native english speaker either; the more I know the native language, the less dubs make sense.

> So the subtitles version often seems more genuine unless you speak the language

I honestly can't fathom how could something like this even be possible. Understanding the language helped me understand when certain tones are used. Unless you're speaking strictly of Ghibli's shows, I can't really get what you mean.

> 1) english dubs generally suck, imho

Long gone are the days of 4Kids unnecessary censorship of Yu-gi-oh and One Piece.

There was a time when good English dubs were few-and-far between. Maybe Cowboy Bebop and "The Slayers" were probably the only good 90s dubs.

But modern anime is much better about dubbing quality. Madoka Magika was a pleasure in both English and Japanese for me, and many find the My Hero Academia dub / sub to be fine quality as well.

Even some "difficult dubs", like Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumia, ended up being quite good because Kyon's voice actor was superb. (Crispin Freeman). One or two "star" voice actors can really carry a dub and elevate the experience to a new level.

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I don't understand much Japanese personally. But it seems like Japanese voice-actors over-rely upon "vocal tics", like a character drawing out a particular sound or having a catch-phrase.

Ex: "Dattebayo" from Naruto, "Arimasu" from Shana, "Nyan" from many, many cat characters (Hellsing Ultimate, Stein's; Gate, Log Horizon), "Desu", etc. etc.

English dubs typically remove the vocal tics, and rely upon more fundamental voice acting to differentiate the characters. I think it helps me get drawn into the characters more.

Ex: English Dub audience didn't like Naruto's "Believe it" as a translation to Dattebayo. The dubbing community just outright rejects vocal tics. So yeah, its a different experience, but its more "realistic" IMO.

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My experience with Disney's Studio Ghibli dubs has been extremely good. Disney is a top-notch studio and hires big-names like Billy Crystal (Calcifer) or Mark Hamill (Mayor from Nausicaa)

>I don't understand much Japanese personally. But it seems like Japanese voice-actors over-rely upon "vocal tics", like a character drawing out a particular sound or having a catch-phrase. >Ex: "Dattebayo" from Naruto, "Arimasu" from Shana, "Nyan" from many, many cat characters (Hellsing Ultimate, Stein's; Gate, Log Horizon), "Desu", etc. etc.

Arimasu and Desu aren't vocal-tics... It's just differing levels of politeness or formality. A character always using them can signify a lot of things like haughtiness, noblesse oblige (misplaced or not), deference, a failure to integrate with/judge the nature of their relationship with one's peers. It really depends on the situation.

stuff like "dattebayo" and "nyan" is sort of a humorous spin on the whole concept of explicitly encoding these things into grammar. They don't generally add these into the dubs because it wouldn't make any sense as English doesn't really have this sort of thing to the extent Japanese does. Honestly I have no idea how you would translate "dattebayo" because it is a corruption of Japanese to begin with to show Naruto as having trouble fitting in, being mischievous, childlike, while also having a level of ambition wildly out of place with his position of practically village leper.

> Arimasu and Desu aren't vocal-tics... It's just differing levels of politeness or formality. A character always using them can signify a lot of things like haughtiness, noblesse oblige (misplaced or not), deference, a failure to integrate with/judge the nature of their relationship with one's peers. It really depends on the situation.

But even then, Arimasu and Desu are abused to "catchphrase" levels by Wilhelmina (Shakugan no Shana) and Suiseiseki (Rozen Maiden). For example: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlk6RcSLrpw)

If you wanted me to point out a particular "Vocal Tic", then I'll choose Deidara's "Hmph" that is added to a huge number of his lines (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU1LF-NnlvY)

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What I'm saying is: the original Japanese seems to lean extremely heavily on the use of catch-phrases and/or vocal tics. A lot of anime-watching (even in full Subs) almost feels like Donald-Duck or Loony Tunes level of vocal tics and/or catch-phrases.

I mean sure, we all love "I'm a Doctor not a X" (McCoy from Star Trek). Or Homer's "Doh". But its an issue of how often they say it IMO that kind of draws me out of Japanese Subtitles sometimes. There's a level of "campiness" whenever a character leans on a catch-phrase.

In the American Dub, the use of catch-phrases is almost always toned down. So there's less "campiness" and I take the result somewhat more seriously.

It's not Ghibli but was made by a lot of the same people, I'd recommend Mary and the Witch's Flower for the same style of story telling and animation.

PSA: These are bootleg movie collections, not authorized or licensed from the Studio itself. The only official collection in the Western market, IIRC, is the Disney-released Hayao Miyazaki collection.

Ha ha, yeah. It's painfully obvious in retrospect. We had it for a couple of years before I even thought of the legitimacy of it... and even then I didnt realize it until after linking it here.

With all due respect and affection, Miyazaki-san (and/or the people now in charge at Ghibli) is just being a stubborn old mule here. There is no practical difference between homevideo and streaming, and homevideo copies of Ghibli films are everywhere (whether official or otherwise). They have been on TV multiple times in Japan and elsewhere.

Maybe it's a way to push reluctant distributors to continue these mini-festivals they have been touring for a few years. Maybe they are trying to raise the price for when an agreement is inevitably found. Maybe they are waiting for the streaming wars to be over so they can talk to one distributor rather than five. Whatever it may be, I am sceptical that it springs from some deep reasoning about the way people consume this type of media.

> There is no practical difference between homevideo and streaming, and homevideo copies of Ghibli films are everywhere (whether official or otherwise).

There very much is.

Ghibli is preserving the "value" of the film by not allowing it to be made into a commodity. He wants people to want to decide to watch the films and have them in physical possession, rather than decide to pull it up amongst the hundreds of thousands of other options at their fingertips. "I don't want to do it because the films would be treated as cheap commodities." [1]

Their approach to merchandising might shed a little bit of light into why is doing this.

> "With regards to merchandise, we resolved not to make more than 10 billion yen. If we surpassed that number, we would gather all the associating companies and berate the person in charge in front of the whole group. Really. One time, everyone got on our case about it, saying, 'You've got to sell more.' Someone from one particular company even said, 'We could raise the sales to 200 billion yen just by ourselves.' It's not a joke. If they did that, then Ghibli's characters would die instantly. I want Ghibli's characters to have a long life.

They see more to their characters and IPs than dollar signs, and they're taking active steps to preserve it. Which is why the collectors editions of their films (Spirited Away coming Nov 12) are finely tuned and have well thought out art books. The feeling and memories they're creating are more than just the runtime.

[1] https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interest/2019-04-13/ghibli-...

All of these statements just made them one of the greatest companies in my book.

I think there might be a cultural/home market component too. When I was visiting japan, I was somewhat surprised about how many book stores, record stores and so on were still around and busy.

And when I looked up the stats, japan does have more CD sales than most markets too: https://qz.com/711490/why-japan-has-more-music-stores-than-t...

> Ghibli is preserving the "value" of the film by not allowing it to be made into a commodity.

I guess I disagree in the sense that it already is, and this restriction is actually devaluing the material. Ghibli DVDs are everywhere; a lot of them are not official, and make money for pirates rather than for the studio. You can only artificially restrict demand for so long, in the digital world, and that boat sailed for Ghibli productions a long time ago.

IMHO making the movies easier to distribute wouldn't impact the quality of presentation or remove the space for artistic and sentimental engagement with the material. The fact that mainstream movies are on dvd and streaming did not destroy the market for film festivals - the opposite is probably true, in fact.

One can go about "not being greedy" and enhancing experience of the material without being precious for preciousness' sake.

> Ghibli DVDs are everywhere; a lot of them are not official, and make money for pirates rather than for the studio.

See, the point is that it's OK. You are thinking about money, Miyazaki is thinking about what you'd call the UX.

It's better that someone picks a pirated DVD off the shelf, inserts it into the player, and watches the DVD deliberately, in their perspective, than mindlessly clicking on a "suggested next movie" button on a streaming service, and abandon the film half-way.

Even pirating the movie is better, since it's a deliberate action, a choice, and an effort.

>IMHO making the movies easier to distribute wouldn't impact the quality of presentation

Well, that's where you and Studio Ghibli disagree.

The idea of getting more satisfaction from getting something if it's a reward for an effort, however minor, is not new. That's why games have achievements, for example.

But there's nothing stopping me from stopping the DVD halfway through.

And who's to say I'm being drip-feed these movies on autoplay? What if Ghibli had their own service (please no, not another one lol). I would have to make the deliberate action of going to their platform, searching for the movie I want, and clicking play.

I don't see the lack of streaming as preserving value, the value should (and definetly does imo) come from the movie itself. The animation, the story, the colors, the music.

>And who's to say I'm being drip-feed these movies on autoplay?

Statistics! For Netflix, 80% of subscribers’ watch choices come from their personal recommendation engine.[1]

>But there's nothing stopping me from stopping the DVD halfway through.

Yeah, but you are less likely to do so given the effort it takes you to start.

Same with vinyl disks: I rarely don't listen to an entire side if I start playing a disk.

>I don't see the lack of streaming as preserving value

It's not the lack of streaming, it's shaping the experience.

As an analogy: Michelin-star restaurants probably don't have delivery. It's not that "lack of delivery" is driving their value, it's that sitting down there allows you to experience the food more fully.

[1]https://techjury.net/stats-about/netflix/

> Statistics! For Netflix, 80% of subscribers’ watch choices come from their personal recommendation engine.

That includes the cases when the recommendation engine just provides the easiest UI to select what you already wanted to watch.

> Michelin-star restaurants probably don't have delivery. It's not that "lack of delivery" is driving their value, it's that sitting down there allows you to experience the food more fully.

Very salient point. Fully agree.

And the thing of it is, he's got a pretty good point. Just look at what happened to music as its distribution format became more ephemeral. 40 years ago, record albums were among many peoples' most treasured possessions. Now music is just a slurry that gets piped to us 24/7, songs from different artists all mixed together into a tasteless, formless stream. We lost the emotional connection when we lost having an artifact to hang it on.

Which is why I think the vinyl resurgence is much more complicated than "hipsters being hipsters". We, as humans, like tangible things.

Personally, listening to vinyl is like reading a novel. There's a tangible "ritual" and the experience is inherently focusing and somewhat intimate... intentionally enjoying time immersed in the work of a single artist/group.

I'm no hipster - still all about Spotify and social media, but those are just for passing time.

I wholeheartedly disagree with this statement. I think that all streaming has done is allow for easier access to music, not "less meaningful" access.

Many family members of mine LOVE music and cherish it no matter if it's an old mixtape, a vinyl, or a Spotify playlist. My friends go to concerts of bands they discovered through youtube, I found a new love of many genres thanks to these services.

The people who don't value music (value as whatever it means for your definition), are just the people who never really got into music. If streaming was non-existent, these people wouldn't suddenly magically get a love of music, they just wouldn't listen to it as much.

They're being a little precious about it all. They don't want their movies treated like cheap commodities, but in the end that's what they are.

They can't deny that all of their movies are available in high quality for free online. If they are truly worried about making too much money, then maybe they are fine with that.

And today HBO announced a deal to stream all of the Ghibli movies. I guess they finally got the deal they needed.

He might change his mind...eventually. For a long time he was adamant he would never make a computer-generated film, but in 2018 Ghibli released his first ever short CG film: Boro the Caterpillar. Although the film is computer animated, it mimics the hand-drawn aesthetic of 2D animation. (The film is only available to watch in the Ghibli Museum in Tokyo.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfaHiPtYWTc

Recently took my son to see his first movie in the theater: My Neighbor Totoro. It was an amazing experience for us all.

While I'm glad we got to see it in the theater, I think the lack of Ghibli movies on streaming services is what will finally get me to buy a BluRay player and setup Plex. It's a popular approach among a lot of parents I know as who wants to discover their child's favorite film just got dropped by the streaming service you subscribe to?

Why would you need a bluray player to setup Plex?

Buy discs, rip to plex

Plex is nice for kids, Buy a inexpensive USB blu-0ray drive and you can legally rip and put in plex

Yes it will. In fifteen years when Miyazaki is gone, they'll end up having to stream the content in order to have revenue.

There is no heir to Miyazaki at Ghibli. In my opinion, the closest director to Miyazaki I know of is Mamoru Hosoda, and he's at another studio. Ironically, he was supposed to direct Howl's Moving Castle but they decided his direction wasn't Miyazaki enough and so they split over creative differences. I think this is why Miyazaki keeps coming back from retirement.

The one guy who should have sat in that chair was run off. The other guy who should have been eligible was Miyazaki's son, but their relationship is strained. Clearly his skill was in animation, not parenting. His son has a very different style. More different I think than Hosada's.

So either there's going to be a merger at some point, or their revenue will shift more and more to their back catalog. That's a different kind of management team, and it seems like those sorts have absolutely no problem taking money for distribution rights.

I would like to point out that since the movies are not available on any major streaming service, there is also no actor pursuing the take-down of high quality copies on private trackers etc..

Seems like a good deal to me.

Miyazaki films, and the fact that my 2.5 year old daughter has never seen one, is my one and only regret for not having an optical drive anywhere in my house. Everything else I just haven't needed or don't care about, but I want my daughter to experience those movies.

But there is simply no way she will sit still in a movie theater for 2 hours.

At 2.5, your daughter is probably too young to get any of those films anyway. You have, like, 5-8 years before she'll be fully able to appreciate them.

My Neighbor Totoro would be great at 2.5

Ponyo and Spirited Away are two that are good for kids.

You can get a USB blu-ray drive pretty inexpensively and rip a copy you own. I guess you you also just buy a blue-ray version of the movie and download a copy from any of the thousands of high-quality online sources.

I saw Spirited Away on DVD, after digging up an old DVD player in a junk pile. I loved the first half, but didn't enjoy the second half where it started skipping and eventually stopped entirely -- the pauses and stutters set a very different tone than the languid animation, and I had hoped for more resolution for the characters.

It's hard to know how to review the experience. I was annoyed to go through all of the special logistics to watch half a film. But then, Miyazaki says in the article that the point of life is not to be happy, so maybe I had the intended experience and failed to appreciate it?

I love these films and noticed their conspicuous absence from purchase from streaming services. Then I found a whole bin of Hayao Miyazaki films for $5 each at Walmart.

By the way, if you loved Howl's Moving Castle, take a listen to the original novel on Audible. https://www.audible.com/pd/Howls-Moving-Castle-Audiobook/B00...

An absolutely lovely performance and charming story...I may actually like it better than the film, though the film has a special place in my heart.

That's funny, I love the movie but hate the book.

I guess it all depends on whether you enjoy the book's explanation for the world and specifically, Howl. To me it was too distracting.

Reminds me of Prince not allowing the videos of his music and concerts (the prized bootlegs) not to be on YouTube depriving newer fans from appreciating his musical genius.

Yes it is the right of an artist to decide how his work will be presented but why such silly restrictions , why bother making stuff for public consumption at all if people can't get enjoyment from it ???.

Fortunately his estate is far more liberal in allowing his material to be enjoyed.

Although it is not exactly streaming, you can see them on-demand in tv (Movistar+ in Spain has many of them available now). So, it is not true that you have to either watch them on theater or buy a copy.

I don't mind this at all. Ghibli films are magical and memorable, and putting them in with the rest of the dross that passes for streaming kids shows these days does them a disservice.

What I'd like to see are the 4K HDR Bluray discs.

AFAIK these are available in Japan. It's really just a matter of adding the appropriate audio/subs for for the western audience.

Not sure what HDR will add to an older animated film but 4k would be nice.

They might of created it with a wider color space for theatrical film release vs the color space that gets released on home VHS / DVD. Film has a higher dynamic range than digital sensors today still.

> Film has a higher dynamic range than digital sensors today still.

No, not really.

Digital sensors surpassed film a long time ago in terms of DR. Film has 12-13 stops while it's pretty common these days in pro digital gear to have 15 stops of DR. Roma (the movie) was totally shot on digital because it has better DR than film.

As for resolution any modern pro camera (+8K) has more detail than 35mm or even 70mm film and much lower noise levels.

I'm not denying that film has its charm, but aesthetics are very subjective.

Most people think HDR is only about bright highlights, but IMO the most important parts are:

- 10 bit colors

- Appropriate mastering for darker colors (most non HDR LED TVs rarely can render the darkest colors)

Both of these would have a massive impact on the colors of hand drawn/painted animations when watched with a good OLED TV.

Incorrect. Japanese Blu-Ray releases do have HDR, but not 4K; and the former is only available in Panasonic's proprietary format, which is exclusive to their very-high-end players.

Well it seems that at least some movies are in 4K HDR: https://www.amazon.co.jp/Lupin-III-The-Castle-of-Cagliostro-...

> “Studio Ghibli does not make their films available digitally

This is false. Terrestrial broadcast is now digital and I see their movies appear on free-to-air TV quite often where I live.

Piracy wins again.

Can't stream but you can probably find them for free on your local library. That's how I saw some of them :)

This may actually be a good thing.

Tool caved in, so will they.

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