excuses excuses

so it turns out that there is only one subtitled Japanese language 35mm reel of Appleseed in the world, and the owner won’t loan it to Madman, and a subtitled Japanese language 35mm print of the original Ghost in the Shell is hard to come by. Madman’s priority is the film quality rather than the soundtrack so they don’t want to show these films in digital media which is semi-fair-enough.

however.
how about i run an exhibition at the National Gallery, i’ll widely publicise it and say ‘Mona Lisa on show in Melbourne – don’t miss this rare event*’

*please note that the Louvre won’t lend us the actual Mona Lisa, so i’ve had one of my nieces draw up a finger-painting impression of it. it looks sort-of the same anyway, you just have to *think* it’s the Mona Lisa.

what a joke.
i’m sorry, if the film isn’t available in Japanese, then THE FILM ISN’T AVAILABLE STRAIGHT. a dodgy english dub is not a substitute. you can’t get it in Japanese? THEN YOU CAN’T GET IT. would you expect people to go and see my nieces’ painting, then run about town telling all of their friends that they’ve seen the Mona Lisa, and they’re now connoisseurs of classical art? that is in effect what dubbed Anime is like.

if you watch your Anime dubbed, you simply AREN’T WATCHING ANIME. you’re watching a reworking, a re-interpretation, a boiling down and over-simplification of the real article.
AND YOU CAN GO STRAIGHT TO HELL IF YOU THINK YOU’RE AN ANIME FAN.

i hope Madman make a stack of money out of the ignorance of the wider populace – the reason subtitled reels are so rare or non-existent, is because the behemoth of North-American popular culture is a pack of illeterate bigots that would rather Amerikanise everything rather than expend a neuron or two attempting understanding. they are probably the largest Anime fan-base outside of Japan, so what they want goes for the rest of us.

my life’s goal however, is to bring Anime back to Japan. i dream of a day when Anime no longer is dubbed – ever – and the Japanese get back their own sense of story-telling, instead of endlessly creating Animes that appeal to westerners more and more. sure, it’s got its place, and not every Anime studio in Japan does it, but enough of them do to cause the industry to fall into the complacent stagnant state it’s in right now.

in our lifetimes we will see dubbed Anime gone.