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

https://www.polygon.com/2019/10/15/20828843/studio-ghibli-movies-miyazaki-streaming-netflix-disney-plus

by minimaxir • 7 years ago

92 72 7 years ago

swsieber3• 7 years ago

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.

clairity• 7 years ago

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.

klodolph• 7 years ago

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.

simcop2387• 7 years ago

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.

asiekierka2• 7 years ago

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.

swsieber3• 7 years ago

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.

schmichael2• 7 years ago

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?

bobobooey• 7 years ago

Why would you need a bluray player to setup Plex?

schmichael2• 7 years ago

Buy discs, rip to plex

xnyan2• 7 years ago

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

SubiculumCode2• 7 years ago

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.

SubiculumCode2• 7 years ago

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.

GreenJelloShot• 7 years ago

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.

jedimastert• 7 years ago

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.

magic_beans2• 7 years ago

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.

jefftk• 7 years ago

My Neighbor Totoro would be great at 2.5

rtkwe2• 7 years ago

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

xnyan2• 7 years ago

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.

yiyus• 7 years ago

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.

toyg2• 7 years ago

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.

metamet3• 7 years ago

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-...

WilliamEdward• 7 years ago

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

novok2• 7 years ago

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...

toyg2• 7 years ago

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.

smacktoward• 7 years ago

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.

criddell2• 7 years ago

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.

criddell2• 7 years ago

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

open-source-ux• 7 years ago

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

JackC• 7 years ago

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?

ThePadawan• 7 years ago

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.

crazygringo• 7 years ago

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.

boterock• 7 years ago

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

pier257• 7 years ago

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.

koboll• 7 years ago

Ghibli films aren't available in 4K HDR.

hadlock• 7 years ago

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.

wavefunction• 7 years ago

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.

GrayTextIsTruth• 7 years ago

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.

intopieces• 7 years ago

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.

xzel• 7 years ago

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.

anoncake2• 7 years ago

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.

pier257• 7 years ago

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.

rtkwe2• 7 years ago

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

novok2• 7 years ago

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.

pier257• 7 years ago

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.

asiekierka2• 7 years ago

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.

pier257• 7 years ago

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

oliwarner• 7 years ago

Piracy wins again.

slackfan• 7 years ago

This may actually be a good thing.

inerte• 7 years ago

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

keymone• 7 years ago

Tool caved in, so will they.

tus88• 7 years ago

“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.

tibbydudeza• 7 years ago

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.

hinkley• 7 years ago

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.

jdonaldson• 7 years ago

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.

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

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