Hayao Miyazaki Films that touched me Hello, I am Randy Andrews and Today is a special show where I will be discussing four, yes count them four Hayao Miyazaki films that have touched me on a personal level. I’ll discuss some of the background, the art the way the film has moved me and a tidbit from the score, all today on Soundtrack Alley! Hello, Today I’ll be discussing four of my favorite Miyazaki films. These are in the order of which I’ll present them, Nausicaa of The Valley of the Wind; Castle in the Sky; Princess Mononoke; and Porco Rosso. I’ll begin by discussing Nausicaa. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) Hayao Miyazaki was still so upset by the truncated 'Warriors of the Wind' version of Nausicaa, that when Harvey Weinstein approached him to discuss the distribution to Princess Mononoke (1997) and insisted on a similar heavily cut version of the film, Miyazaki angrily left the meeting. Several days later, Studio Ghibli producer Toshio Suzukisent a katana sword to Weinstein's office with 'NO CUTS' embedded into its blade. The film was later released in the USA in its uncut version. During a later interview, Miyazaki commented on the incident by smiling and stating "I defeated him". The film was initially released in the United States and Europe as "Warriors of the Wind" by distribution company New World Pictures. However, the company had substantially modified the film to more closely resemble a traditional action-adventure. Nearly 25 minutes of footage containing vital exposition was cut, and some dialogue was purposely mistranslated to alter or simplify certain story elements. Many of the character names were changed (e.g. Nausicaä became Zandra), and the voice actors were not given the script for context. To make matters even worse, promotional images prominently depicted characters and creatures that weren't even in the film, whereas the female protagonist was placed in the background. Not surprisingly, director Hayao Miyazaki and his Ghibli studio openly despised these changes. When the rights to the picture expired in 1995, they negotiated a new deal with the Walt Disney Company. This led to a re-release in 2005 of the uncut version with a completely new dub that was a more faithful translation of the original script. Miyazaki has since urged viewers to forget the old version, and "dismiss it from their minds". After the heavily re-written and edited 1985 release of this film in the United States and Europe (as "Warriors of the Wind"), which substantially changed the movie in addition to cutting nearly 25 minutes of footage, Hayao Miyazaki was hesitant to release any of his film's outside of Japan. Miyazaki demanded that any new licensor for his films be contractually bound to do no edits whatsoever aside from a straight translation and dub. Disney (who bought the rights to all of Miyazaki's films except The Castle of Cagliostro(1979)) has honored this stipulation. Nausicaä is the name of a character in Homer's Odyssey. Adapted from the first two volumes of the original manga which Hayao Miyazaki wrote and drew for Animage from February 1982 through March 1994. He took breaks from working on the manga worked on the earlier anime films he did. The manga is longer and more complex than the movie, featuring many more characters and places. The lack of color fidelity used in certain versions give many people the impression that Naussicaä flies around in a miniskirt with a bare butt. This is not the case, she's wearing pants that happen to be roughly the same color as her skin, and the "skirt" is actually the lower part of her coat. While many consider this to be a Studio Ghibli film, it was actually created before the studio was properly founded, and is instead a production of Topcraft. Studio Ghibli was officially founded in 1985, and its first production was Castle in the S