Ghibli Bootlegging

October 1, 2001

I was out in Monterey Park this weekend for some dim sum, and ended up buying the Studio Ghibli Archive DVDs from this little bookstore. It’s a 6 DVD box set with twelve movies, the bulk of Studio Ghibli’s output from 1984 on. It’s missing the two latest films, Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi and My Neighbors, The Yamadas. It does contain these works by Hayao Miyazaki: Nausicaa, Laputa: Castle in the Sky, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Porco Rosso, On Your Mark and Mononoke Hime. It also has these films by Isao Takahata: Grave of the Fireflies, Only Yesterday and Pom Poko. The two non Miyazaki/Takahata films are Whispers of the Heart and Ocean Waves. At least, this is my best guess, since all the packaging is non-English and I haven’t actually seen about half of these movies.

There are two movies on each DVD, and six DVDs total. The whole set cost $99 out the door. It runs about $80 or so on E-Bay after you calculate the shipping costs there. The reason why it’s so low cost is that it is a grey market (sorta bootleggy) item. These films aren’t available in the US, and probably won’t be now that Disney has decided has acquired the North American distribution rights and decided to sit on them. This is probably as good as it gets unless you look for the individual Japanese releases and import them and use a region free player.

I was expecting a fairly low quality set, considering its origins and cost, but was surprised to find a fairly high quality product. The video and sound quality are all very good, all the films are widescreen (despite what it says on the box) and the subtitles are switchable and not burned into the picture. There are teeny little glitches here and there which can be annoying, and there is a company branding logo that pops up occasionally (usually in the letterbox, so it’s not so bad), but those are minor quibbles.

It was definitely a worthwhile purchase, and it’s illegitimacy will give you major street cred amongst your nerd friends.

Posted in Moving Pictures