Ni no Kuni : Wrath of the White Witch - Wizard's Edition - PS3

Well, Ni no Kuni is coming out in the UK.

It's a video game that's a co-production between Level 5 (who make the Professor Layton games among other things), and Studio Ghibli (who make critically acclaimed boring films about heroic young girls befriending strange things).

I'm not that interested in it myself, but it's supposed to have had some good reviews and my boyfriend has asked for the super special edition for his birthday present. Even though his birthday is in November and the game doesn't come out until mid January. Ah well, that's his choice.

It's up for preorder on Amazon UK for £69.99: Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch - Wizard's Edition (PS3)

And comes with the game, an uncute cuddly toy, some exclusive DLC codes, and a 300 page hardcover book. Very pretty.

I went to watch the film "Ponyo"

I went out to the cinema to watch a film this evening. It was the newest Studio Ghibli / Hayao Miyazaki film "Ponyo".

I saw it at the Showroom cinema, right next door to where I work, so that was convenient. The ticket cost me £6.90 and I was slightly late but there were so many adverts that I ended up waiting around for the film to start. The picture was out of focus when it started but the seats were comfy.

The film started, and... it's a really good film!

It was dubbed into English, but as you'd expect from the localisation of a Studio Ghibli title, it's top quality and uses great actors - no complaints from me!

The film broke halfway through. The lights came up and some music started playing. I counted the number of people in the audience; 18 people in total. Wow. I had thought it was nice to have two entire rows to myself to lounge around and perch with my head on the seat in front! After a few minutes, someone from the audience went to fetch someone, and after a few minutes I followed to investigate... and the other person came back. A member of staff told us to sit tight and wait for the film to come back.

"Excuse me", I piped up with a question which had been burning within me. Which was going to distract me from the rest of the film if I did not get an answer right away: "You don't happen to know what the music we're listening to at the moment is?" :D
"It's... from a soundtrack, um, another Japanese film..."
"Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence" spoke a voice from behind me in the audience.
"Ah! I knew I'd heard it from somewhere! Thanks!" :D
See, this is the kind of cinema The Showroom is. ^_^

The film started again, and lasted about a minute before the film stuck on one frame and we watched it warp and melt away.

"OMG! Ponyo just burst into flames!!!" T_T came a cry from the audience.

And we waited again, but the film restarted after much less of a delay this time. The sound was still a little messed up, making a somewhat surreal film even moreso.

But, this experience didn't detract from my enjoyment of the film at all; as I said, it's a wonderful film. As always with Miyazaki films, it's got the same old undercurrent of "children are cute", "hey kids - befriend weird things; it's ok!", "destroying the environment is super-bad", and "females are the more-amazing of the two genders". That's not a bad thing, it's just what I expected, I suppose. Some parts are very odd and never end up being explained, which is also to be expected. Hmm, I guess there's not much more I can say really without giving anything away. It's a good film, I liked it more than Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle, I'll leave it at that. ^_^

I might well get it on DVD when a home version comes out, so I can watch it uninterrupted and in focus. ^_^

If you don't care about watching this whole film, watch the trailer, and you'll know the entire plot to the film! That's terrible! T_T Just as well I only looked at that after seeing the film! I'm only linking to it so that anyone who's seen the film can see what I mean!

Sherlock Hound series now available in the UK on DVD

In the 1980s, there was a cartoon series that was a Japanese-Italian co-production, very loosely based on the Sherlock Holmes stories. In Japan, it was known as "Meitantei Holmes".

Like "Dogtanian And The Three Muskehounds" and "Around the World with Willy Fogg", it features animals as the main characters.

The series was dubbed into English and was renamed "Sherlock Hound", and is now being released by Manga Entertainment on DVD after all these years. It's an exclusive to the shop HMV, and although the release date is the 1st of February 2010, my preorder copy arrived today.



It cost £17.99 for this 26 episode 5 DVD box set, and the series is presented as dub-only. The cast aren't so bad, they're voice actors whose names I recognise from US cartoons, not specifically as anime dub actors. There are only 4 names so they're doubling up, but it's very good considering that they are also probably from the 1980s. The British accents don't sound overdone, which was a concern I had. Well, actually Inspector Lestrade might take some getting used to, hehe.

I've only watched 2 episodes so far. The first episode seemed to be quite action oriented, but the second episode had more eagle-eyed detective work. Sherlock Hound's car seems to be as much of an assistant as Watson!

The DVD box says on the side: "Hayao Miyazaki and Kyousuke Mikuriya's Sherlock Hound The Complete Series", though it appears that Miyazaki only had involvement in a few episodes. There are typos on the back of the box. :/

I'm just interested because it looks like another Dogtanian or Willy Fogg. :)

It seems quite fun. :)

Tales From Earthsea

I went to a local cinema on Friday evening with my boyfriend, and we wathed the new Studio Ghibli film Tales From Earthsea (or Gedo Senki).

It's based on a series of books by Ursula K. Le Guin who I remember my dad mentioning before as a SF writer. I haven't read any of her work though. Apparently she wasn't entirely happy with the film, and I knew that the film had not been well received in Japanese reviews either. I decided to go to see it anyway because it's rare to see subbed anime in the cinema.

It was alright, not nearly as terrible as I was led to believe it would be. But then, I haven't read or feel any attachment to the original books, and my expectations for the film were low (due to the reviews and perhaps because I don't think Ghibli movies are better or more special than other anime movies).

I got this feeling that the storytelling was being affected by that thing where the makers don't explain something big because they think thay're too cool. ¬_¬

It still has the old Ghibli cliche of *befriend weird things!* and *heroic girl!*, but in this film they're both the same character and she's not the main character, but I get the feeling she'd like to be.

It also has the *be environmentally friendly* ethic, as always.

It was a Goro Miyazaki film, rather than his father's work, though I noticed at the end of the film that it said the film was "inspired by" a Hayao Miyazaki manga called The Journey of Shuna / Shuna no Tabi.

So this film tried to serve two masters. Perhaps that was another of its problems.