Hayao Miyazaki’s How Do You Live is a beautiful relic – and the end of an era

https://www.theverge.com/23797349/how-do-you-live-review-studio-ghibli-hayao-miyazaki

by DemiGuru • 3 years ago

187 91 3 years ago

jfax4• 3 years ago

titled How Do You Live in Japan and renamed The Boy and the Heron for the international market

This might sound pedantic, but neither of those statements are quite right. It's not called "How Do You Live" in Japan, it's called Kimitachi wa Dō Ikiru ka. And it wasn't "renamed" for the "international" market, it was given an English name that it didn't have until then.

I'm irked by this because this is something I've been constantly correcting people with, mainly to indirectly challenge English-language exceptionalism (anything not Japanese is English - we don't know the French or German titles yet), but also a reminder that any publication worth its salt up have emphasised that "How Do You Live" was a tentative title.

BalinKing3• 3 years ago

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the context you're coming from, but I've always presumed that international titles are implicitly translated into English in English-language material. For the benefit of other readers: To my beginner Japanese–learning ear, "How Do You Live" is a pretty straightforward translation of "kimitachi ha dō ikiru ka". I don't think there's any subtext of English-language exceptionalism, here or in general, especially since this translation is so straightforward (except for maybe an English translation losing the nuance of "kimitachi").

Again though, I readily concede that your online interactions may be very different from mine—just wanted to add my 2¢ :-)

astrange• 3 years ago

The movie is based on a book which was released under the name "How Do You Live" in English. So this may be partly because they didn't want to license the name, since the movie ended up containing 0% of the content of the book.

But yes, it wasn't renamed. It just has another name. Nobody's hiding the original name from you.

manuelmoreale3• 3 years ago

Maybe his point is that “How do you live” is already a translation and not the actual name of the movie. The actual name is the Japanese version.

Kinda like saying that Rome is not the actual name of the city. It’s Roma because that’s how it’s called in Italian and the city is in Italy so that’s the actual name.

BalinKing3• 3 years ago

A further observation, to add onto my reply: The article prominently displays the Japanese poster with 君たちはどう生きるか on it. I agree that they probably should've given the Japanese title in the body text for clarity, but I assume including the poster goes some way towards indicating the presence of an implicit translation.

mananaysiempre• 3 years ago

  kimi-tachi     wa    dou iki-ru       ka
  you-and.others TOPIC how live-NONPAST QUESTION

“How do you live?” seems like an OK out-of-context translation?

Those are always fraught for cinema—the Russian release of Inception was titled Начало načalo “beginning”, which of course wasn’t the translation of the titular concept during the film itself (that was внедрение vnedrenie “integration, infiltration”)—but if you have to give something to an English-speaking audience, it’s probably as good as it gets. (Specifying the translation is on shaky ground would be good journalistic practice, of course.)

ericol• 3 years ago

The comment above _is_ pedantic. It's stating that the name of the movie IS Kimitachi wa Dō Ikiru ka, that could be roughly translated to "How do you live?"

Any other post about this movie, in any other language, is going to make the same "mistake".

raincole• 3 years ago

Just in case you are not aware, How Do You Live (the film) is based on a book, How Do You Live. The book was translated and its English name is just How Do You Live.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/54110592

dfxm12• 3 years ago

When something has an editorialized name change between regions, the first thing I wonder is if some media already has that name [0]. I wouldn't be surprised if the movie distributors fear copyright issues with whoever released the book under that title in their market(s), or perhaps they don't want to give them such obvious free marketing.

0 - Like how the Japanese videogame titled "It's a Wonderful World" had to have its named change to "The World Ends with You" in some (all?) regions because of copyright issues. https://www.ign.com/articles/2008/04/17/breaking-the-languag...

jfax4• 3 years ago

Yes, I've read the book.

chimeracoder3• 3 years ago

I'm irked by this because this is something I've been constantly correcting people with, mainly to indirectly challenge English-language exceptionalism (anything not Japanese is English - we don't know the French or German titles yet),

This is needlessly pedantic. By that logic, your use of Romaji is "incorrect" and Euro-centric exceptionalism, because the official original movie poster uses Hanji/Katakana. (And in fact, it'd be "incorrect" to say it was released in Japan, because in Japan, they'd say it was released in Nippon.)

It's an English-language article about a Japanese movie. Saying "titled 君たちはどう生きるか and renamed The Boy and the Heron for the international market" would make no sense because the audience of English readers won't be able to make sense of it.

It's not "English-language exceptionalism" to provide information in English when writing for an English-speaking audience, especially when it's clear in context that the information is a translation.

titanomachy• 3 years ago

This is needlessly pedantic

Needlessly pedantic?? This... is... Hacker News!

zerocrates• 3 years ago

While we're being pedantic: there's no katakana in the title on the original poster.

jfax4• 3 years ago

Plenty of English-language articles about this film have already done a proper job of reporting on this (before the English language title was given), by noting that Miyazaki's next film is "tentatively" titled how do you live.

QuesnayJr• 3 years ago

Who is this "correction" for? Is there an actual existing person who thought the title of the movie was in English, and not a Japanese phrase that translates as "How Do You Live?"

jfax4• 3 years ago

For the article.

gwern2• 3 years ago

It'll be interesting to see how the box office does. It's been a while since _The Wind Rises_ and Miyazaki is more beloved than ever and all 3 reviews I've read thus far seem highly positive (and certainly more positive than _The Wind Rises_), but there's also an extraordinarily low level of discussion. I was shocked when I clicked on the first review and realized it was a review - "oh, huh, when did it come out?"

The justification offered about 'people being tired of marketing' sounds absurd, and more like they are finding excuses to skip work because they are old & exhausted, and another step in winding down Ghibli. I expect lower box office than it deserves; even Hayao Miyazaki can't release a movie with zero marketing and expect no effect...

anigbrowl2• 3 years ago

There were long lines snaking out of theaters to see it despite the almost complete lack of marketing. Maybe people are sick of being marketed to, I certainly am. I'm not reading this review because I don't want to know anything about the movie before I see it. Even the international title is a disappointing concession to the retailing of art as entertainment product.

wk_end• 3 years ago

I'm not sure how I'd title it if I were the American distributor, to be honest.

It's not an adaptation, but 君たちはどう生きるか is the name of a book for young adults that the Japanese audience might be familiar with; the reference will be lost on an English-speaking audience, draining it of some of its meaning and nostalgia. Imagine a film called "The Little Prince" or something...but of course, The Little Prince isn't the same book, with the same themes, as 君たちはどう生きるか. And even if there were a book which the reference mapped onto well, it still feels like referencing a different title in the translation would be egregious.

In that sense, I'm somewhat fond of "The Boy and the Heron", though I acknowledge it isn't ideal and, as someone who prefers more literal translations, wouldn't necessarily be the route I'd take. Without injecting any specific (and thus wrong) reference, it evokes the nostalgic feeling of English childhood fables and aphorisms - and it lends it their feeling of moral weight, too, just as the Japanese title does. It's a good and evocative title.

The literal translation everyone's using, "How Do You Live?", also isn't ideal. There's a couple of grammatical mismatches between the two languages; whereas the "you" in English can be both singular and plural, the Japanese is explicitly plural; and Japanese doesn't explicitly differentiate present and future tense, and here the meaning is actually likely more future tense. But the big problem is that, to my ears, it sounds deeply accusatory in English, along the lines of "How do you live with yourself?" - and given Miyazaki's views and temperament that wouldn't have surprised me! But in truth the intended Japanese meaning is more inquisitive and philosophical. The original title, in the original novel, is from a book inside of the book, left as a question to the reader. In prose I might translate it as, "How will you, readers, choose to live your lives?", but there's countless variations I've considered; none of them are quite right, and to be honest none quite have the original's punch of a good title!

(disclaimer: I'm a reasonably advanced student of the Japanese language but not a native speaker. Apologies if I've gotten anything wrong.)

momonotoro• 3 years ago

What's the over-under that Miyazaki cares one whit about how it does at the box office, though?

Based on his past work, he doesn't seem like the sort of person who sees money as a way of keeping score. And this isn't the first time that he's retired and come back to make one last film.

Maybe he just wanted to tell another story, and didn't feel like bothering with the whole palaver of drumming up interest and courting the press?

soupfordummies• 3 years ago

Seriously! I had no idea this even EXISTED and I actually sat down and looked over all the upcoming movies recently-- multiple times!

giraffe_lady• 3 years ago

This only makes sense if you value "box office numbers" for their own sake which this signals very clearly that they do not. As the article points out it's not the first time he's said he thinks his career has run its course, but there's also no reason to think he wasn't sincere any of those times.

He knows he's famous and it will do very well without marketing. Why optimize a metric you don't care about? I don't find the cynical laziness explanation as convincing as the stated motivation tbh.

yardie• 3 years ago

I learned about it a few weeks ago because the cinema and anime blogs were posting about a new Miyazaki project that had zero marketing, which is a kind of brilliant marketing in itself. So, here we are discussing marketing strategy about a film that wasn't marketed.

WastingMyTime892• 3 years ago

but there's also an extraordinarily low level of discussion. I was shocked when I clicked on the first review and realized it was a review - "oh, huh, when did it come out?"

You are commenting on an article in the Verge for a movie which has only been released in Japan and won’t be out in the USA for months. This article is one of many in most western publications. A lot can be said about this movie but having a low level of discussion is definitely not one of them.

What’s the point of a marketing campaign when you have so much organic reach?

jvican• 3 years ago

You seem to assume @gwern isn't a Japanese speaker. His comments about low volume of reviews might very well apply to just Japan.

gwern2• 3 years ago

There were way more Western articles about _The Wind Rises_ back then. I definitely wasn't clicking on a review and going 'wait, that came out already?' Everyone knew, whether or not they had any interest in anime.

franciscop• 3 years ago

even Hayao Miyazaki can't release a movie with zero marketing and expect no effect

At Hayao Miyazaki level, having no marketing IS a very clear PR move. The article states it clearly, it's adding mystery to the movie. Everyone knows that it's not going to be a bad movie since it's a Ghibli one, but also no one knows what it is about so everyone is impatient to go watch it and discover all that mystery.

Since the opposite is true, I've lost interest in movies when the trailer revealed way too much, I can see this as a clear move in the opposite direction.

numpad0• 3 years ago

Haven't watched yet but words I have seen used to describe so far are it's a concentrate, a funeral, those kinds. And there's absolutely no trailer for this movie; there's the poster, a "quock quock quock" tweet from Ghibli's Twitter account, that's all that are out of theaters on this matter.

Now that I'm mildly spoiled by Verge I have to go watch it. damn. Hopefully they don't mandate suit and a tie.

coldtea• 3 years ago

even Hayao Miyazaki can't release a movie with zero marketing and expect no effect...

But, but Hayao Miyazaki could not give less fucks about the effect...

arkitaip• 3 years ago

I feel the same about all movies hitting theaters these days. The marketing and the social discussions just aren't there anymore.

isykt• 3 years ago

Hayao Miyazaki can't release a movie with zero marketing and expect no effect...

He doesn’t care. He won an Oscar and didn’t show up. The Oscar is still at Disney.

phlakaton• 3 years ago

I am one of I presume millions of Americans for whom the words

new Miyasaki flick

are all the marketing I need. Even the poster is superfluous. As long as somebody reminds me when the film lands in the States, I'm there.

HellDunkel• 3 years ago

Interesting how the verge has fully rolled back its site redesign step by step.

tehnub3• 3 years ago

They say we don’t see movies like this being made anymore, but when did we ever see movies like Miyazaki’s being made at any time by anyone other than Miyazaki?

Avicebron• 3 years ago

There's obviously no one-to-one, Miyazaki being a legend for a reason. But I've founded the work by Satoshi Kon to give me a blending of fiction and reality and depth of storytelling makes me think a little of what Miyazaki does.

dragontamer• 3 years ago

Satoshi Kon

In particular, Tokyo Godfathers hits in a way that not even Miyazaki can replicate IMO. Satoshi Kon probably wasn't as consistent as Miyazaki. But damn, the good Satoshi Kon movies were just beyond excellent.

Mamoru Hosoda is also pretty good. Wolf Children is one of the most "hits you in the real feels" movie that I've seen, despite its surface-level fantasy premise. A true masterpiece, though other movies from Hosoda aren't quite as good IMO. Still, his Digimon and Summer Wars are fun watches.

-----------

There's that off-branch of Ghibli, Studio Ponac too. I've only seen their collection of 3x short films: Modest Heroes (one about a crab family, one about an egg allergy, and one about an invisible guy), but its extremely "Ghibli-like".

Modest Heroes is that mix of fantasy but very much down-to-earth storytelling that reflects upon life, in a child-friendly storytelling style. "Ghibli-style" as people might say.

jasonlotito• 3 years ago

Look into Makoto Shinkai. Specifically, Your Name and Children Who Chase Lost Voices.

sn92• 3 years ago

His last two movies were also phenomenal.

Just watch them in order of release!

CobaltFire• 3 years ago

Mamoru Oshii is excellent, in the USA he's probably best known for "Ghost in the Shell" but I think some of his other work is easily as good. "Uresei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer" is amazing, as is "Patlabor 2".

jeffchien• 3 years ago

Hideaki Anno of Evangelion fame has been talking about doing something with Nausicaa for a while. He worked on the original movie (which is only 1/4th of the source manga) with Miyazaki and became close friends with him, and Miyazaki said he could do it, so that might be interesting if it ever happens.

AlbertCory• 3 years ago

Now here's some argument-bait:

I prefer Miyazaki movies dubbed in English, rather than as subtitled Japanese.

This is not true for ANY other non-English movie, where I always prefer the original language with subtitles.

Why? Well, it's anime and the characters aren't "really" speaking Japanese anyway, so there's less lip-mismatch. And apparently the Man himself doesn't mind them.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ghibli/comments/7jef8m/miyazakis_vi...

gambiting• 3 years ago

I don't think that's particularily controversial, maybe except among the most hardcore fans. Watch films(and other media) in the way you enjoy them, and don't let others tell you what's the "right" way.

Blackthorn• 3 years ago

The English dubs are also just really good. Even when the voice actors aren't known for, well, voice acting. Daisy Ridley is not known for her voice acting and yet her performance in Only Yesterday was exceptional.

the_af2• 3 years ago

Only Yesterday

Only Yesterday is a very good movie. A true anime for adults, not one that mistakes "adultness" for "naked people and/or gore".

Re: dubs. I haven't watched the English dub of too many Ghibli movies, mostly because if I watch a dub, I watch it in Spanish. Judging by the only one I've seen in English too -- Princess Mononoke -- I'd rate the English dub the worst, with flatter and less inspired voice acting. The Spanish version of Mononoke is actually tied in quality with the Japanese version in my mind.

I used to believe I could only detect bad acting in my native Spanish. Mononoke taught me that no, I can spot bad acting in English too! I don't know what the hell Billy Crudup, Claire Danes, Minnie Driver and all those well known actors were doing...

woodruffw2• 3 years ago

Miyazaki is pretty well known for having “world-class” dubs; I don’t think liking them is considered controversial. Liking the Akira dub or the dub on a Satoshi Kon film, on the other hand :-)

ryandrake2• 3 years ago

The English dub of Castle In The Sky was famously very poor[1]. Most notably, much of the movie's quiet parts got crammed with music and extra dialog because Disney felt Americans' attention span could not handle long stretches of silence and simple ambient environment sounds.

Granted this was one of the earlier Ghibli films and Miyazaki reportedly clamped down on these shenanigans on future dubs.

1: https://screenrant.com/studio-ghibli-castle-in-the-sky-engli...

erulabs• 3 years ago

"Ponyo" had Liam Neeson, Cate Blanchett, Tiny Fey, and Matt Daemon as voice actors, as an example of not skimping on the english dubs.

seanc• 3 years ago

Fun fact, on Princess Mononoke, Steve Alpert and the director of the English dub had to fight Miramax executives who kept trying to screw up Neil Gaiman's English script.

saltcured• 3 years ago

I don't have thoughts about anime, but generally dislike movie dubs as they distance me further from the original intent. I don't want another team's reinterpretation of the movie to completely replace the original expression.

So, I'd only really like a dub if it was a multilingual sound track produced by an original, multilingual team. That should include the original director, writers, and (preferably) actors and producers. To me, the original creative team needs enough fluency to review the alternate language work and keep it from diverging. Otherwise, it's about as satisfying as reading a Cliff's Notes summary of a novel instead of the actual novel.

I'd also often prefer subtitle translations if they try to hew closer to the original language including temporality. I'd rather read slightly tortured English subtitles to deliver translated parts of speech in roughly the same order they are being spoken in the original language, exposing a bit of the original language's grammar and remaining correlated with the actor's tone and timing.

lxe• 3 years ago

I asked a frAInd what famous actors dubbed miyzazki movies:

"Spirited Away" (2001) - Daveigh Chase, Jason Marsden, and Susan Egan.

"Princess Mononoke" (1997) - Billy Crudup, Claire Danes, Minnie Driver, and Billy Bob Thornton.

"My Neighbor Totoro" (1988) - Dakota Fanning and Elle Fanning.

"Howl's Moving Castle" (2004) - Christian Bale, Emily Mortimer, Jean Simmons, and Billy Crystal.

"Ponyo" (2008) - Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon, Tina Fey, and Liam Neeson.

"The Wind Rises" (2013) - Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci.

"Porco Rosso" (1992) - Michael Keaton and Cary Elwes.

"Kiki's Delivery Service" (1989) - Kirsten Dunst, Phil Hartman, and Janeane Garofalo.

canadiantim• 3 years ago

What about Nausicaa?

the_doctah• 3 years ago

I would never watch Princess Mononoke without the English dub.

jefurii• 3 years ago

Miyazaki movies are the ONLY anime where the English dub is anywhere close to good enough. Most anime dubs are done by either A) people who can't act their way out of a paper bag, or B) competent actors who don't bother to pronounce Japanese names properly. Miyazaki movies don't fall into A but do have some major B clinkers. At least with the subtitles I get to work on my Japanese a bit.

GuB-42• 3 years ago

It mostly depends on the quality of the dubbing. The trend for anime was to have excellent Japanese voice acting and terrible dubs, until western editors realized that good dubs sell and invested in better voice acting.

Miyazaki films, being popular, big budget theater releases didn't suffer as much from cheap dubbing as TV series.

fomine3• 3 years ago

Miyazaki's anime are unique about VA. He doesn't like existing Japanese "anime" VA acting, so they adopt non-voice actors or other people (even Anno!) as VA for his work.

dvt2• 3 years ago

Is this a bug or something[1]? Or is The Verge seriously expecting me to read an entire article in black-on-red? This has got to be some kind of cruel joke, my eyes hurt after about 5 seconds.

Who came up with this atrocious design language? Ironically, the polar opposite of Miyazaki.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/f0E4br6.png

lostgame• 3 years ago

It is not black on red besides the title? Did you not scroll anywhere past the title bit? :/

https://ibb.co/Fm0zz35

dvt2• 3 years ago

The whole thing is red for me (the screenshot I took is from below the title). I use Brave, but I also checked it out on Edge and Chrome, and there it's only the title (so I do think it's a bug on Brave). To be fair, even the title being black on red is absolute garbage-tier design.

NikkiA• 3 years ago

This is the second post in as many days about this 'no advertising' movie...

ketzo2• 3 years ago

I mean, it's the final film from a legendary director being released with a total lack of a traditional marketing. Do you want people to not talk about that?

Not everything on the internet is astroturfing or whatever.

grogenaut• 3 years ago

Why does he need to market. I know about this movie because of all of the "not being marketed" news posts. Media is giving them a free marketing coupon it seem. He's playing it well.

That said I rarely see movie marketing anymore. Only movies I know are out are barbie and Oppenheimer due to the meme and my friend insisting we go to both.

I just don't see ads much anymore.

djmips• 3 years ago

Article ends with "And let’s not forget the monster 2020 success of Demon Slayer: Mugen Train, whose 40 billion yen domestic gross demolished Spirited Away’s record of the highest-grossing film of all time in Japan."

Nitpick:

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_Japan... - it shows Demon Slayer at ¥40,430,000,000 (2020) and Spirited Away at ¥31,680,000,0000 (2001). This is like comparing $220 million to $290 million so it's not exactly 'demolishing' IMO.

azmodeus• 3 years ago

If you factor in 19 years of inflation, I wonder who is the winner.

ketzo2• 3 years ago

Coincidentally, Japan has spent the last 20 years in an extremely low-inflation, or even deflationary, environment.

31 yen in 2001 -> 32 yen in 2020

crakhamster01• 3 years ago

Very excited for this. I wish more films went with the no marketing approach, but I suppose it can only (maybe?) work if you're as regarded as Miyazaki.

Hayao Miyazaki’s How Do You Live is a beautiful relic – and the end of an era

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