Hi all, I'm Hux. I've been a Ghibli fan for a long time now. First discovering Princess Mononoke in 2001 or so (ok, so I was a little late to the party, but come on, I was in New Hampshire). Anyway, I currently live in San Francisco, more specifically, right next to a neighborhood called Japantown. And in J-Town (as I like to call it) they have seeral stores that have Studio Ghibli's original Japanses dvds. They have the whole assortment of the Ghibli Museum Library movies, and several dvds that have the Ghibli loge, but then have photographs for covers (they're completely in Japanese, so I have no idea what they are, now have I ever seen them online). Now, my question is, what is the likelihood that these dvds would have English (or perhaps French) subtitles on them? I can't imagine it's very good, considering the Studio Ghibli website isn't even bilingual, and I've read that Mitazaki doesn't care for subtitles in movies.

Anyway, to give more an introduction to myself, as I said I currently live in San Francisco. I moved out here to go to art school for animation. I have a deep love for animation, not just Studio Ghibli. I'm also a big fan of many of the Disney movies, Pixar's films, a lot great European animation that hasn't been released in this country (like the Ghibli Museum Library stuff), and independent animation as well. My current fascination is with Russian animation based on a History of Animation class I took last semester. The Russians had some great animation that is rarely, if ever, seen outside of Russia thanks to the Cold War and dissolution of the Soviet Union. I'm also a big film guy (hence my animation focus on storyboarding), perferring classics to newer fair, and I love, love, love science fiction. That's about it for me. Thanks for the help, and I hope to enjoy more conversation here.*

*I should warn you all that because I'm in art school, my postings here will probably be very sporadic, simply due to time constraints.

Hi and welcome to the Tavern. Enjoy your stay, I think you might only be the second American we have here! What was your question on R2 DVDs?

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My question is: is there any chance of English subtitles on a Region 2 dvd? And if so, would they extend beyond just the film?

And I'm curious, if I'm only the second American, where is everyone else from?

I have 3 or 4 region 2 Ghiblies.

Ghibli always (as far as I know) supplies subtitles in English for their movies. Often also in French.
Sometimes they even supply English dubs aswell.

So. If you can navigate Japanese menus go ahead (you can just do it by trial and error aswell, not too hard).

However, as far as I know extras never have subtitles.
Its only for the movies.

So my tip is, buy the ghiblies that you cant get in the USA as R2s so that you can watch the movie, but buy the Disneys of the other ones as they contain english subs for extras (if they have any!!).

Also.. make sure you have a code-free DVD player.

I own all the dubbed versions and I think there is only about 2 that has extras. I think Howls and Spirited Away.

Nice sig, tiki. We need a competition to spot how many Ghibli characters are in it.

Studio Ghibli is about the only company I know that includes english subtitles for ALL their video products.

The subs, however, while done by professional translators, never extend to the extras, simply becaus the translators only sub the movie for the big screen. If the extras have subs, these were done by other translators hired by distributors, usually the local distributor.

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Originally posted by fenkashi
Screw your opinions, they are not relevant ^^.

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Originally posted by Hux

They have the whole assortment of the Ghibli Museum Library movies,

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Are these pirate? I thought the films were exclusive to the museum?

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Are these pirate? I thought the films were exclusive to the museum?

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I can back up what the others said that Ghibli Region 2 animated films have English subtitles. I have many of the region 2 disks and have seen all of them in R2 at one time or another. This is in very sharp contrast to Japanese R2 disks as a general rule. In most cases, Japanese domestic DVDs don't even have subtitles in Japanese for the hearing-impaired.

For the legal record, Japanese R2 disks are clearly labeled FOR USE IN JAPAN ONLY and the R2 encoding mildly enforces that, because most off-the-shelf DVD players sold in the US won't play them. (You usually need to hack the player for all regions. That means you're forced to buy a low-end Chinese player, as few of the better-quality players are hackable.) Because the disks are intended for use in Japan only, there's no inherent motivation for a distributor to subtitle its films in other languages.

I've just discovered this trailer – http://www.ghibli-museum.jp/library/about/004827.html – on the Museum Library Web site. It covers all their releases up to (not including) Snezhnaya koroleva, and though it misses out the two most recent ones it's still quite delightful to see them all together like this.

You can now, well, not disregard all that I said about Princes et princesses earlier, but add to it the fact that it has now been released on region 1, NTSC DVD with English subtitles. Again, see http://palais.wikidot.com/princes-et-princesses-videography for the details.