Wizard of earthsea Ghibli style

[Spriggan]

Yep, the title is right, the next Studio Ghibli movie is an adaptation of Ursula K Le Guin's "A Wizard of Earthsea".

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Studio Ghibli has officially announced that their next feature film will be Gedo Senki (Gedo War History), directed by Hayao Miyazaki's son, Goro Miyazaki. The film will be an adaptation of Ursula K Le Guin's "A Wizard of Earthsea," and will be released in the Japanese theatres in July 2006.

The Studio's official site has also undergone a revamp. Details of the new film can be found there. There are also dedicated sections of production diary and director's diary. Goro Miyazaki has posted some comments on his father's opposition towards his work as a director.
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http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/newspro/latest_news.shtml#newsitemEEFuuVZAkkoJLjcSzp

http://www.ghibli.jp/

[42]

Ged is looking awefully white in that picture. Ursula won't be pleased.

Other than that...yay!

[Spriggan]

I browsed through Goro Miyazaki's comment about his father's objections and while my Japanese Kanji is rusty (so Ookla might be able to give a better translation) it seams that his father objected to him being the director but no real reasons where given (he declined to comment on them further then that) and just hope people will see it with an open mind.

It looks like Ghibli is turning more to the YA market for stories then writing they're own like they use too.

[Spriggan]

Ged is looking awefully white in that picture. Ursula won't be pleased.

Other than that...yay!

I doubt they would even consider making him non-white since the Japanese tend to only like using that color for skin in most cases.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

Honestly Ghibli will probably pull of Earthsea better than the Sci-fi channel did so thats a plus... color me excited!

[Chimera]

I would still be disappointed if Ged was white. What made Earthsea cool was that for once the protagonist of a fantasy was not a white male. I didn't watch the TV movie, but I saw a clip of it, and was severely disappointed that they didn't cast a black actor as Ged. It would not have been hard. And aren't they usually looking to put more variety on the screen, to be politically correct? At least be true to the book, people.

[42]

According to LeGuin, Ged is suppose to be "Archipelagan" or polynesian.

In the mini-series, the only person who was suppose to be white was Tenar (Tombs of Atuan) who ironicly was played by Kristen Kruek who is half-Chinese.

[Spriggan]

Sometimes it's hard to distinguish between males and females in Ghibli style so maybe that's not Ged.

[42]

Possibly, but Tenar never meets a dragon. Ged is the only one who converses with a dragon.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

But heres where I think there is a subtle difference... Ghbli primarily makes movies for the Asian Marketplace (and Japan in particular) and not the American one (sure if it sells in America they dont mind... but if it doesnt no huge loss) if the characters look white, like Nausicaa or Ged then the spirit of LeGuinnes otherness is being conformed too. IE as long as the people dont look Japanese it works. Granted they could have just as easily been brown, or purple, but I hope you get the idea...

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Um...but anime characters never "look Japanese" to Americans. They do "look Japanese" to Japanese people though, like the Simpsons "look American" to Americans, when really they're all just stylistic human-looking representations.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

I dont agree.
A lot of Ghbli stuff does look very ethnic Japanese, and a lot of it doesnt. Nausicaa doesnt, while most of the Mononuke characters do.
The same goes for their other features; the Cat Returns features a very Japanese looking girl, Porco Rosso doesnt... Spirited Away has very Japanese looking characters and so on.

[Entsuropi]

mononuke

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

It's the prequel to the popular post-holocaust thriller Dual Nukes

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

Before the Nukes of Hazzard