Disney REPLACED Studio Ghibli’s Music 

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Theres something about the silence that makes it real, like how theres not that extra stuff noise in real life. It also allows you to focus on the enviorment and feel of the scene, instead of unnecessary jaber.

Beautiful analysis! "Insulting" is the perfect way to describe an approach where an original has so much changes just because they think American kids need constant noise. I only saw the English version as a kid and don't remember it well, but just from your presentation and analysis, it's crazy to think that the original score and intent of the artistry wasn't being preserved. I didn't even know such a thing happened, it's odd. It defeats the purpose of listening to/looking at art from other countries.

I think about this a lot! it's weird sometimes that as a composer, I have to convince directors that for some scenes, music is not needed. The space will create more power when there is music, rather than having constant filler. I was working on a project last year where the director wanted music for almost every scene and every beat - "to help the acting." You'd think we composers would want to have music non-stop, but the reality is, for storytelling, silences can be equally powerful, and having those moments of silence create a greater contrast and impact for when there are cues. Another great genre to look at are effective scores for thriller/suspense/heist/horror movies - the Hollywood intuition is to jam the tense climactic action moments with wall-to-wall music, but sometimes I think it's wayyy more tense and unsettling to have silence, for example to feel the character lying in wait for something. Just hearing the sound of shaky breath and approaching footsteps in the dark - sometimes that's way more intense than hearing music to “hold our hands” through it and tell us how we should feel. There’s an old French bank heist movie called “Rififi” by Jules Dassin, who was actually an American director blacklisted by Hollywood. Even though it’s from 1955, I find it more suspenseful than most modern-day heist type movies like the Ocean series, for one simple reason: music is used sparingly and deliberately. Toward the end of the movie when they go to execute their heist, there is no music the entire time - and the characters move about quietly to not make a sound. You could hear a pin drop - and it’s this silence which creates the most amount of tension, where you really feel what the characters feel - where any false move could ruin everything. I feel like if this movie were made now, in Hollywood, there would be “suspenseful” music blasting the entire time, and yet ironically you would never feel nearly as tense as a result.

My feeling is that people in the western world, and particularly in the US, have a fear of silence and have to keep noise going on all the time. For those of us who appreciate silence, this is particularly annoying.

I watched Kiki's Delivery Service for the first time in the 90s, and then later bought the DVD in the early 2000s. It was SO weird how different the original and dubbed versions were!

i prefer the Japanese version, disney is doing too much

I'm German and I observed this all my life: the US killed almost all European movies by re-filming them and missing the point what's it about and why. But to put a new unintended score is against the creative work of people who happen to live outside the US. Why not appreciate the work of other people?

the american dub of Dragon Ball Z was like that too, adding music and extra dialog where the original was silent, while also completely redoing the soundtrack

Haven't seen Kiki dubbed, but this drove me up the wall with the Disney dub of Laputa. When he plays the trumpet to wake up the town, the dubbed version has it morph into an orchestral BGM complete with key changes that would be very hard for a 10 year old.

This is such an interesting thing, because, when I saw any Ghibli movies, I saw it in my native language (Spanish), and quite frankly, it was the exact same as in Japanese when it came to the whole vibe that Ghibli was trying to impose on their audience. So we could say, that it wasn't all the west that when through this drastic change.... But this so interesting nonetheless.

Thanks Ryan there is big lesson in there: Watch the original version!! The less the better.

It's frustrating that the 2010 DVD has restored the score, but the Netflix dub still has all the changes.

Great video Ryan. I remember being obsessed with this movie about 10 years ago, and I ran into the addition of the music during the crow attack in the english version of the film. I had no idea there were so many other changes, this has been very interesting and nostalgic. Also, your points about the original score better serving the intention of scenes were bang on. It's funny how adding something to a piece with the intention of improving it sometimes ends up compromising what made the piece beautiful in the first place.

I personally didn't mind the opening and closing songs by Sydney Forest... I personally love them. Maybe someday they should be recycled for another film... Not a Studio Ghibli one Some stories I'm writing, I think some scenes that I confirm those songs with perfectly to frame it.

Subs over dubs has a different meaning for me, and it's not because of the language. It'll -always- be due to the music cues being removed/changed for the American versions. The Pokemon anime is something I wish I could've seen subbed first tbh

Let's Go back even one more decade from the '90s back to the '80s. Look what they did to Nausicaa!!! As a kid I didn't know any better, and when I first saw warriors of the wind I was blown away.... Not knowing of course that they had cut out like 45 minutes of the movie, renamed the characters, And then reorganized scenes to their own taste. I still have my old VHS recording of that butcherization I had recorded back in the day. Looking at it now with the treatment Disney gave with top cast and respect and reverence to the source material when they remade it again the right way it's a night and day difference

Glad someone was able to bring attention to the OG dub, I loved these songs used on my vhs copy of Kiki, "So I'm gonna fly, flyyyyyyyyyyy"

Actually not too uncommon, 1978 LOTR has a cue in the foriegn language versions that is not present/dialed out in the English version, Disney's Robin Hood also has a similar situation.

The silence is so much better at letting my emotions come to fruition I feel

these were my feelings back when Breath of the Wild came out and there was a lot of controversy about the simple, even sparse music. It felt insulting to the vision and majesty of the world, as well as to the composer, to think that the lack of music was laziness. literally just thinking about the lonely serenity, the longing, the wanderlust evoked by just the right amount of music at the right time, right when it's going to move your heart the most, is making me almost cry. thinking of walking through rolling hills and appreciating the wind through rolling grass in stark musical silence, before my heart leaps at just a few notes of piano letting my know my curiosity was rewarded as I come across some small shrine. or the eerie, poignant, *intentional* emptiness as I approach ruins from just the right angle and am left to contemplate on the world I've made my home without feeling like I'm being told what to feel. I can only imagine the disappointment of a Ghibli fan approaching their favorite movements of reverent, deafening silence in a ghibli film and having that robbed of them. it's borderline an insult to what we as soundtrack composers can achieve artistically with the ebb and flow of energy and negative space. I'm really glad the original intent was preserved in the disney adaptations. extremely rare Disney W

I've never watched any of Miyazaki's films, and yet, I could tell that this man is an artist. As a Pixar fan, it's nice to know that they [John Lasseter and his crew] gave his works the respect that they deserve.

Theres a concept in japanese called "ma" which means the space between two things. This concept often shows up in Japanese cinema as silence and is used heavily by Miyazaki in his films unfortunately that concept makes a lot of westerners uncomfortable since we arent used to prolonged periods of silence in media or conversation so the urge a lot of professional film makers have is to fill it with something thus ruining the point.

Thanks for this video, it is even more i can ask for with this two versions :)

I occasionally watch Kikis delivery service and I like to switch which language I hear it in. I always thought something was strange each time I watched it. I guess since I watched it in between long breaks I never realized.

The saccharine music pushes me away, the quiet draws me in. The redone version tells me how to feel with no room to think, the quieter version lets me feel and think.

Hey Ryan, I recently discovered your channel and I love your content, you’re such a great teacher, and the questions you address as so pertinent to what any musician would need or want to know! I was wondering if you will have anything in the future where your viewers will submit pieces for critique or something else? I know you used to do competitions, but don’t anymore. Anyways, thanks for the great content. Keep it up 🌜🤙

This was fascinating. Thank you. So there are now 2 English versions? One with the add-ons and one with the original music/SFX?

Another similar and interesting case of this would be the first 3 English Dubbed 4Kids Pokemon Movies. They hired Ralph Shuckett to write an entirely new score for these films. The part of the fanbase that cares about the music is usually divided on which score is better. I've seen the first film countless times and think both scores do a good job. There are moments in the American score that are better and some in the Japanese that are better.

That is so interesting! I never considered how silence could be just as effective as any musical motif in a film.

Good video shining a rare light on the dark practice of different regional releases of the "same" media. I first heard of this happening due to regional cultural/religious taboos, or because of clearance issues. But they also do it to fit into a time slot, with little consideration for continuity... and sometimes even out of hubris or a personal agenda (money or beliefs).

Same with My Neighbor Totoro. I was lucky enough to buy a copy of it before Disney got a hold of it. I kept telling everyone that my copy is different but no one believed me, they thought I was imagining things.

Thank you for the video! Very interesting! I didn't know that happened)

I've never watched the dubbed version so it was interesting to hear the additions. They all seem completely unnecessary to me as I'm well tuned into Miazaki's "Ma" which is present in all his anime. In short I have a long standing attraction to "less is more".

super interesting video!!

Laputa: Castle in the Sky - Also had its soundtrack "re-done" for the English release. But Joe Hisashi was given the chance to re-arrange it with a fuller Orchestra. And I prefer the English version!

Thanks for addressing this. This gives us more understanding to the "silence" in the ghibli movies.

I found score heresy. Wow. I never thought I would see the day.

I think I've watched a couple of Japanese works in Spanish but never in English. I've always tried to watch OVs with English subtitles; it's not only the music but also the voices that mess up whenever they dub it.

I like to watch new Pokémon anime series episodes in Japanese with English Subs and then later in complete English. I like to see what music the Pokémon English Dub has changed and the change of feeling it gives me.

That is why I always try to watch movies in its original version. here in Spain everything is dubbed. and sometimes, the music changes in quality or in volume in the dubbed version. not to speak the difference in intention from the real actors. some jokes are ruined (I remember specially one in Star Wars) and plenty of other things.

Thanks for this video. Very interesting!

After watching this, ive just realized that this "emptiness" is one of the main reasons i like anime. Good job for destroying it...

This is a hard topic to grasp. When I’m composing something, should I utilize more silence than in allowing? Hard to know for sure.

Increíble cómo lo cambiaron! Aquí en latam, creo que muchos solemos ver las películas en el idioma original, pero subtitulada.

I'm sure you already know about the disagreement between Bernard Hermann and Alfred Hitchcock over the music in the shower scene in "Psycho". Hitchcock wanted the scene to play without music - until he heard the scene with Hermann's cue. This came on the heels of "North by Northwest", which Hermann also scored and which famously has no music during the crop duster scene. I don't recall offhand if there was any disagreement between Hermann and Hitchcock over the handling of the scoring in this instance. Obviously, there are instances where a scene works better with music and instances where a scene works better without music. Of course, the issue here is: who gets to decide?

It’s cool that you did a video on this. The original title song and credit songs for Kiki are absolutely beautiful. I also hated the cat voice over the American version because he add libbed a bunch of annoying sarcastic and unnecessary lines.

It’s so bothersome that the folks who dubbed this film in the 90s thought that their target audience were totally unable to follow anything on screen and had to be talked at the entire time. -H-

American localisation has done this soo many times. Like editing or removing whole episodes, putting them out of order, editing the animation itself etc. A specific example is the Astro Boy(2003) animated series which was subjected to several of the things above. But in regards to sound, the spoken dialogue and the music: Not only did they change the original score, but REMOVED IT altogether. Out with the original orchestral score and in with a new kinda shitty electronic score. In regards to dialogue: lines were changed, removed or added to make the characters seem more "cool". The titular character in particular. Astro/Atom is a sweet, compassionate kid who wants to solve conflicts with words before violence. In the dub, he still is, but he is also given unnecessary action catchphrases and made to seem more stereotypically boyish and less kidish. If you type "Astro Boy 2003 sub vs dub" into youtube, there are several good comparison videos. I would so love to see someone talk about this other than me screaming in my corner 😆😭 please... give us the score back or just a proper localisation 💔

Thats so weird that they thought it was necessary! That one scene does sound a bit better, but less "Japanese-y" so I still prefer the original 😂😅

I severely dislike this kind of practice. The original vision should be respected, but at least the film wasn't completely butchered like Nausicaä. This video reminded me about those old Silver Fang VHS-tapes we had here in Finland. Man, they censored the hell out of those things and let's just say that they didn't do a very good job.

any chance of a link to that UofE study? I can find Rodriguez' profile on their site, but not the study.

Please man, you're my only hope. I am in a dire struggle at the moment with my compositions. I can't for the life of me write slow music. I can only seem to write really fast melodies. Do you have any advice for writing slow melodies? I'm really at a loss, and I would really love to learn.

Sub is superior, I don't know what they were thinking rescoring it, sounds like a fool's errand with good quality piece of media. Still, the rescoring composer did a good job given the task, not trying to insult his work!

I immediately think of the American DragonBall Z soundtrack with a video like this. It had music playing all the time and sometimes to its detriment (although I WILL say that the American soundtrack was fantastic regardless).

My first instinct it is to stay with the artist (director) vision, but.....when two choices are given I watch the scenes with other eyes and I can imagine more alternatives and even doubt of the music composition

Everything disney touches it butchers it. they only make good original stuff. you see it nowadays too.

This is pathetic on Disney's part. Thank you for sharing...

When it comes to Studio Ghibli movies, there is always the intriguing question of who they are aimed at. Clearly, while Kiki's Delivery Service would be aimed at children, one would hardly say that of Grave of the Fireflies. If I understand correctly, Disney always dubs its movies for foreign language markets and never has subtitles. I have seen Ghibli movies in countries (eg. the Nordic countries, Portugal) where there was only subtitles, thus taking them away from the viewing of small children. I myself don't like the dubbed American-English versions and prefer to watch them in the original Japanese with subtitles. It thus retains more of the exoticness of the films; I see them as distinctly Japanese not "universal", even though of course they may touch on universal themes.

Is there something similar to My Neighbor Totoro in Japanese and the English one?

I can’t believe Disney acquired studio ghibli in 1996?!

I was taught to show anime strictly in Japanese, no subtitles, and to read an English script aloud. This was the early 90's and anime was handed back and forth, free, on VCR tapes. Translations were created by fans, with some fans actually buying subtitling machines just so they could share these great works for free. (Because if you didn't make money, copyright was irrelevant. I guess.) The silent scenes in anime are breathtaking. The use of silence is masterful. (My favorite use of silence is when Tetsuo destroys the satellite in Akira.) I guess the universal understanding of Noh theater (where the space between the notes is a key feature) the Japanese people have an appreciation for silence as a musical note. And it's a shame we don't have that in the US. (I still show anime this way. And I place my voice separately from the speakers, and somehow your brain absorbs my English reading, and also hears the Japanese as if you can understand it. If you want subtitles, watch it at home.)

Chihara made a piece of ... you know what. This is bad, oh really bad. I'm furious about this! Joe Hisaishi slapped his face and Miyazaki just ate his cigar after hearing it, I'm sure. Glad I saw the original version. By the way, this is my favorite Ghibli's movie and favorite soundtrack.

What do you think about the movie Belle? I like the English subtitled version better than the English Dubbed version.

Yeah, I think this is just one more example of Disney just kind of sucking in my opinion. I think it is right to say that even if you personally like the changes in the dubbed version, it wasn't the directors intent and therefore kind of cheapens the creation. It isn't announced that these changes are being made, so it takes away from the original creation, even though in some ways it isn't the original.

They dumb it down for The U.S. That is insulting, simply insulting.

Man, the really ruined the silent scenes with music. The English version in the final scene also ruined it, in my opinion... Sometimes the silence and the ambience is the right thing for visual art rather than music.

I also picked up is that the colour in the english version is a lot brighter.

Maybe someone already mentioned it, but these changes seem between not caring about the original work and a lack of understanding because they also changed the ending: originally, Kiki is never able to understand Jiji again after hearing him meowing like a regular cat, and that meant she had to mature and get out of her comfort zone, deal with people. But in the dubbed version, they made Jiji talk again, missing the entire point to make it "happier."

This is a difference we see in most anime that was dubbed to English in the 90's. Want a perfect example? Just compare the original Japanese dub of Dragon Ball Z to the Funimation dub. Obviously they changed the complete score, giving the show a more electronic sci-fi feel. But that dub also had wall-to-wall music. And the characters ramble on in internal dialogue when they were supposed to be silent in the original dub. It's obvious that the executives believed Western children would never watch something that seemed too exotic, or had no constant audio stimulaton. And I know a lot of people feel nostalgia for the Funimation dub of DBZ. I know some people who still prefer it over the Japanese dub. But I do find it a bit insulting to the vision of the original creators, and to the children who got to watch it, that they felt they had to meddle with eveything. I was lucky enough to grow up with the Latin American dub of Dragon Ball. We didn't need all those changes.

Unfortunately the UK Netflix upload of the dub brings back all those unnecessary scores and voices. Had to switch to my Blu-ray half way through

MA !

Just curious…why do you study Japanese?

Whaaaat

I'm afraid the argument that "music takes away the agency of the audience" or that "it tells the audience what to feel" and therefore it's harmful in some way for the viewing experience that it might be the argument used for more modern scores, as soundtracks have grown so pale and even more backgroundish by the year...

Very interesting. I don’t speak Japanese, but I prefer the original voice performances, so I watch with English subs. In the version I have I can see that the subtitles are just a stripped down version of the English language version. She’s not saying the same lines which means they’re changing the script. That’s disappointing.

In public speaking giving space is very meaningful. This is lost in some western countries. It's quite powerful to make a point, then pause, and give the audience space.

Yet another reason for Subs over Dubs.

I like the orginal dub I hate the change so much

Roger* Ebert

It's so weird to explain. The silence speaks so much more to me than the music. Why are we like this?

Oof... i never knew this. Surely the original Japanese creators cant be happy about the USA chopping up their masterpieces???

I prefer the original score and language

As someone who has always watched Miyazaki's movies in original Japanese with subtitles, I find most of these clips pretty cringe inducing.

i loved the music from the dvd dub from the early 2000s. then i got the blu ray copy from a couple years ago and they changed the music and also edited out jiji talking at the end to kiki. that irked me.

This is an insult to art.

The constant sound they force in actually makes me cringe.

Seemed to have been dumbed down for the western audiences.

The music that Paul Chihara composed is really good, but I think it's poorly placed.

Oof... enemy of every composer: overscoring. Prefer the Japanese one mostly.

Most english dubs are crap. There's maybe 5-10 dubs that are even watchable let alone good. Trigun, cowboy beebop, being two that might just be better than the original.

I don’t mind no music what I miss is Phil they took so much out with his dialogue

Man, just my opinion, but I after watching both versions I really prefer the American version. I grew up with it, so maybe it’s just nostalgia, but I like the all of these examples better in Disney’s version :( sorry Ghibli!! This is one of my favorite scores and I think the Sydney Forester songs really added to the energy of the movie too! Sad they weren’t allowed in the dub.

I don't see any wrongdoing or crime here. Every culture is different and like what they like. This kind of thing happens all the time in commercials . I understand and respect your point and share your disdain for that kind of Hollywood plebian "we need to pump it up" mentality. But film is art AND commerce and if the person who paid money to own the intellectual rights (a tenet of modern civilization) wants to maximize its value for sale then it's a good thing. Music gets remastered all the time. Enhanced. Keeps it alive and moving. As long as the untouched original remains available then the audience has choice. I'm not challenging you or showing disregard for you or your channel; which I enjoy and adore but I ask you if you are not the tail trying wag the dog here. (LOL that's so trite I can't believe I said that. It's so corny LOL)

I like the disney version better