Ummm, could somebody please enlighten me as to how Daite Senorita managed to make it into the Oricon lists last month? That song's crazy...
solidark (yes, I finally managed to download the songs in your mp3 update). *edit* But I do like it, craziness notwithstanding. ^0
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Here's my opinion on that: A lot Studio Ghibli movies feature a pre-adolescent/early adolescent couple as the main characters. At any rate, there's *always* a pairing among the main characters, adolescent or not (Totoro was an exception, but then, that's because the main characters are siblings). And since their primary source is The Farthest Shore, that makes Arren the main character. Of course, he has Sesserakh later on, but considering the plot and Arren's standing at this point, making Tehanu the same age as him was probably the easiest way to give him a somewhat believable "female counterpart" as opposed to inserting Sesserakh or a random female OC (the former would have messed up the timeline/history of the world even more than adding a few years to Tehanu's age, and the latter would probably have had fans of the books crying Mary-Sue in no time).
I don't watch much anime, but from what I've seen (from Ghibli at least) it's very hard to differentiate between ethnicity (correct me if I'm wrong). And the way they've got her is much the 'stereotypical' Karg, and there's no-one else in the trailers with those features.
This has a lot to do with the history of anime and manga in general, as well as the Japanese people's acceptance of their conventions (such as obviously *Japanese* female characters having blond hair and blue eyes in shojo manga). Bottom line is, the readers/viewers *know* that the characters are Japanese, so just because they have blond hair doesn't necessarily make them Caucasian, nor does it express some hidden desire to be white on the part of the Japanese.
Studio Ghibli has an immediately recognizable house style which they use in all of their movies. And as you mentioned, there's not much difference between their supposedly Asian characters (like Ashitaka and San in Mononoke Hime) and their Caucasian characters (like Nausicaa). But because of the previously mentioned anime/manga conventions, the fact that the characters aren't dark-skinned here won't make this a "whitewashed Earthsea" (and a conscious decsion on the part of the producers to make all the characters white) like that horrible white trash Sci-Fi Channel version.
Studio Ghibli rarely animates blond characters, in fact, the first time I ever saw a blond Ghibli character was Howl from Howl's Moving Castle. So yes, I do believe that their character design for Tenar is their nod to the fact that they understand what the character's actual skin colors are supposed to be.
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What do you think about how little we've seen of Tenar so far? Do you expect her to play the role she does in Tehanu, or something different altogether?
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From what I saw of Tenar's house in the trailers, I'd say that she still serves as Tehanu's guardian in the movie, because the scenes with Tehanu tending to her flock of sheep (weren't those supposed to be goats?) showed a similar house in the background. But then, since neither of the trailers showed a scene with both of them together, it's hard to be definite at this point. Still, Tenar is featured in the preliminary cast list, and they never do that unless the character plays an important role in the plot, whether as a major character or just a supporting one.
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Yes, goats - 'trust a goat to ruin anything'. And Sippy the goat. And yeah, I was curious about that, because they put her in the preliminary cast list, but we only see her for an instant, and in that instant she simply opens her door to Ged (I'm assuming now he won't ride to Gont near-death on Kalessin's back).
In other words, I'm interested to see how they work the two books together.
What do you think of this interpretation of Cob, by the way?
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They decided to give Arren more visible parents? My guess is that since the books (the thus the movie) have Arren as a prince, and the movie has Arren as a boy with a shadow chasing after him *coughyoungGedcough*, they had to show somebody sending him off on his mission to meet Ged, thus the parents. Or maybe they just assumed that because Arren is a prince, then his parents must be a king and queen (when they can just as easily be prince and princess, if my knowledge of titles holds true)?
We aren't sure that Arren's dad in this movie was made to sit on the great seat of Havnor though. For all we know, that might just be some generic court/throne room designed to bring home Arren's princely origins to viewers who might not be familiar with the books.
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Never thought of that before. ;)
Well, our questions will be answered soon enough. The movie releases tomorrow in Japan, yes? (Unfortunately I'll be headed for the UK the following day for two weeks without my computer and limited access to the internet, so then I won't be able to see what the final verdict is from some Japanese fans who get to see it).
I'm really looking forward to this - I love both Ghibli and Earthsea; it'll be interesting to see how they combine.
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a)it's different from the books (Of course, we've established that already since Goro & co. sort of mishmashed and entire series of books into one movie. At any rate, based on the trailer alone we can already confirm that this will be closer to the spirit of Earthsea than the Sci-Fi version, so I guess we can't complain too much...), and
b)it was too scary for a Ghiblie movie and it made my kids cry (WTF? So what do they call Princess Mononoke then?).
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