Is Watching Anime in Japanese Superior To English? : "The Boy and The Heron" Movie Review

So it was a great voice cast, which makes your story even funnier to me, go on. Never happened to me in a movie before, there was a small riot. Dub any anime, it doesn't matter, the mouse not making the like O, P, T. That's right, there's no enunciation, they're just like... Yeah, exactly. Like it wasn't like it had beautiful Monet paintings with like digital music like in the Digimon, it was like... This was more like Shostakovich or Ravel, you know. Welcome to The Real Generation Gap, my name is Shane Schuldemeyer. And I'm Fred Sottile. And today we are reviewing The Boy and the Heron. Before we dive into this review, please make sure to give us a like, comment and a subscription and let's get right into it. Okay, well I'm interested to see if any of the comments are written in Japanese because I was pretty excited to go to this. Yeah. And it was my understanding and I was going to see it in Japanese and it would be English subtitles. Never happened to me in a movie before, there was a small riot about 20-25 minutes in, somebody in the audience stood up and said, that's it, I've had it, I'm not putting up with this. This was supposed to be in Japanese, this is a bastardization of this movie, I want my money back, I'm out of here. And when he did that, another larger group of people got up and said the same thing and all of a sudden everybody was going nuts and there was all this angst and aggravation that the movie was still playing and all of a sudden the movie went dead dark. The theater was dead, they turned the movie off. And for some reason, I'll never understand, they showed a Toyota commercial and then after the Toyota commercial, a live man came and walked out in front of the screen and said, look, I understand your feelings about this, I'm sorry there was a misunderstanding about this, we're going to give everybody a voucher to come back and see it in Japanese, you are welcome to watch the whole thing the way we're presenting it tonight and still have your voucher and still see it or if you want to leave, you're welcome to do that too and once again, you'll come back with our compliments and now we're going to continue with the movie, but they started it from the beginning. So by that time, a good 25 minutes had gone by and I had to watch the whole beginning of the movie again. In English again. Yes, in English again and the movie was supposed to start at 7, but it didn't start until 7.30. I didn't get out of there until 10.30 at night. Yeah. I was very happy to see that they had the dubbed in English version. It's a great cast of voice actors. Absolutely, I like Christian Bale. Christian Bale, Willem Dafoe, Dave Bautista, who's a wrestler. I don't know if you know about him, but I think that's interesting and cool they had him. Mark Hamill, he's a freaking awesome voice actor. He's the Joker in the cartoon for years. So it was a great voice cast, which makes your story even funnier to me. Go on. The question was, does authenticity make Japanese anime? Does it create an elite group of people who want to see it in Japanese? And that's the original art form. It's an art piece. So the original form is in Japanese. And if you really want to see what the directors and producers and everybody, you need to see it in its original form, right? But I'm an American and it was America. So I'm seeing it in English and I'm real happy to see it from both sides, you know, to see the purest. Yeah. And I thought, my God, they're not wrong. See, I think they are kind of wrong. I think they are kind of wrong because it's the same story. Granted, I don't know who. Maybe there's like these amazing Japanese voice actors who were voiced in this movie. I don't know. I just know the American cast and I know they are amazing. So it's a little silly to me. I don't see a difference because you can dub any anime. It doesn't matter. The mouse is not making the like O, P. That's right. There's no enunciation. They're just like. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So it doesn't make if you speak English, it would make no sense to me why it matters. But I think there is a level of elitism. I have many cousins and friends who are super into anime and they're like, oh, you can't watch in English. You got to watch in Japanese. Like, what do you mean? I don't want to. And aren't they Hispanic? Yeah, like they're Hispanic. I'm not sure they're Hispanic, but yeah, they're Hispanic. Or like they listen to some degree. Anyway, they listen to K-pop and they don't speak Korean. It's like, I don't get it. I think there's a level of elite elitism to it. And I think it's a little silly. Like, this is an all-star cast of voice actors. Why can't you enjoy it in English? If there's going to be a group of people who are going to do a good job, it's these people, you know? So I think it's really funny that they threw a little fit. And they really did. It was a really, I mean, you had to be there. Yeah. You didn't know what was going on. When this whole room went dark, for all you know, it was an earthquake. Yeah. You know, the power failure or something like that. But then the Toyota commercial came on and that was inexplicable. And that's when everybody really started to like, okay, now what's going on? But you think they were in the right, though? You think like, yeah, there's a level of authenticity or... If you went with the intent... Look, this was like a sneak preview thing. It was a very expensive ticket. I think I paid $23. So if you hadn't the desire to see that that way, and that's what you were told that was the impression or however... Yeah. I wasn't quite sure which way it would be, but I could handle it either way. I thought you would actually enjoy in Japanese reading subtitles, because I know you love to read. So I thought you would enjoy that. I wanted to make sure I saw it in English because I wanted... I knew it was going to be kind of an intense story. I wanted to relax and enjoy some of my favorite voice actors. So that's just funny. But we both enjoyed the movie, right? I did enjoy it. Yeah. So yeah. And then let's get into the movie. Now, that was your experience. That was your experience. But initially, I really wanted you to see this because I had you watch an anime before. Right. And that was Digimon 02. That was disappointing. 2.0 to 0. Yeah, I did not like it. And that was like your first dose of anime. And it wasn't very impressive. And I wanted you to see that animes can have a deeper story. They can have interesting art. Because you said it was very flat. And this was very colorful and a little bit deeper. Yeah, the Digimon was like a comic book. This movie, all the background scenes were like Monet impressionism. They had that. Even the fire scenes were spectacular. It was almost like the fire is alive. Very much so. Yeah, very alive. Almost like a person. It had a personality, the animation. And then all of the landscape scenes, they all looked like Monet's garden. And I really liked that. And Studio Ghibli is very well known in the anime world. And again, I'm not a big anime person. But I know of Studio Ghibli. And I've seen Spirited Away. And that's very visually interesting. And the story is very interesting. And what I kind of took from that and knowing Studio Ghibli, is that you kind of got to watch these movies more than once to get the full comprehension of what's going on. This story was very complicated because they had time travel. So you had time travel paradox. But before we even start to talk about that aspect, I wanted to say how nice the music score was. It was one of those scores that was not dramatic. It was background, just like the background scenes. This movie had very three-dimensional background. And it had very three-dimensional music. There's an impressionistic music, as well as impressionistic painting. And it was very much that way. So it really helped to make the same vibe. It wasn't like it had beautiful Monet paintings with digital music. Like in the Digimon, it was like, eek, eek, eek, eek, eek. This was more like Shostakovich or Ravel, that impressionistic kind of thing. So I really liked the style of the whole thing. Yeah, okay. I was troubled by the story. Okay. Because in anime, first of all, there's no body language, no facial expressions. I mean, they might have a happy face and then a sad face. But there's none of the inflection that an actor would do. And same thing with the physical movement. Yeah. And you'd kind of told me this before in the Digimon review. And so when I was watching this one, that was in my head. And I was like, damn, Fred's right. I was like, there's a lot of scenes where the boy is just like stone-faced. And it's like, in real life, you would expect a little bit more, you know? A lot more. Oh, yeah, a lot more. A lot more. So that was a detracting thing. But because it's animated, animators have a different concept of art than human filmmakers. So they have no problem with making like a flock of parakeets turn into weird monsters. Yeah. And making them gigantic. And that's kind of what I wanted to win you over on. There's certain stories that you can't do live action. You couldn't do a live action version of this movie. It would be... I mean, you probably could with billions of dollars of CGI. But I still think it wouldn't hit the way an animated film hits. Right. You know? And that's kind of the same, I think, like... I know you're not super into superhero movies. But DC, they make these live action superhero movies. I'm a Marvel guy. Yeah, well, you're Marvel. DC makes these superhero movies. And they're all pretty garbage, in my opinion. But they make these animated short films. And I think those are awesome. And it's because I think there's a level of storytelling that you can't do in live action. You can't do all these crazy superpowers unless you do them exactly right. It's just going to look corny. It's going to take you out of it. But when it's a cartoon, we're already past that. It's a cartoon. It really is a different medium. Yeah. And I think that the art training is different. You know, the artists who make human movies, they see settings and clothing designs and makeup and all that jazz camera angles. None of that stuff exists in the anime world. So, yeah, it's just a whole different thing. I was fascinated to see the audience. The thing was totally sold out a week in advance. The people showed up exactly on time. I showed up a few minutes early. And I said, wow, nobody came. And then 10 minutes later, it was completely full. And those people, they're fans of this. But I found that... Yeah, I'm sure a lot of people had anticipation for this movie, for sure. Right. Yeah, people waited for it. They said, we couldn't wait to see it. But I didn't see a lot of explosive expression from them. Like people weren't like pumping their fist or real happy. And when they left the theater, like, you know, I've done the movies where people clap at the end of the movie. And this thing was just, they just quietly filed out. And I talk to the people when I leave. I talked to a girl and two different guys. And I asked them what they thought. And their comments are real bland. The girl just said, oh, I just like these. I like cartoon. I like this. Yeah. I like it. There was no elaboration. She was biased already. Yeah. One of the guys said, well, I came because she wanted to go. Yeah. And then they just walked away. So it wasn't like, man, I came because she wanted to go. And now I'm a huge fan. Or God, I hate this. It's terrible that none of that happened. Yeah. You know, they just sort of all just left. I was talking about the animation. I know previously you said, like, this is all Speed Racer. It's very flat, blah, blah, blah. This, and I had known this from Spirited Away, which is another Studio Ghibli movie. There's a lot of making people extremely ugly and like giant crazy noses and like moles and just like short bodies with giant heads and just really weird. It's its own style. But I wanted you to see that and see that. They depicted the old Japanese ladies, hideous, hideous hunchback in Notre Dame. Yeah. You know, and I don't know why they had like a bevy of them, like six or eight. I think that's kind of funny, though, because maybe it's from this. It's a kid's perspective. You know, maybe they're like 60. But when you're a kid, like, oh, man, this 90 year old woman, she looks grotesque, you know. So I think it's interesting. I'm going to contest that and I'll tell you why. Because the boy who was the star of the movie, this boy here who had to shave his head because he had a self-inflicted wound because he didn't want to go to school. He was the politest. He just said yes to everything. They said, this is your circumstances. OK, get in the car. OK, eat your food. OK. He didn't have he wasn't a kid. He just was this automatically agreeable guy. So if the Japanese culture is that kids think old people are ugly, like he certainly wasn't. I was in Japanese school. I was in like culture. I know. I went way out with that. But that was a weird thing that they created those. It looked like the witches from the Shakespeare, you know. Yeah. From Macbeth or something. Did you think that there was good character development for the boy in the story? Or do you think? I did. I thought the father was developed. The uncle was developed. It was weird that he had the mother that was the aunt that was, you know. Yeah, there was it was kind of strange that way or something. But there weren't a lot of really heroic characters, like no character stood out. You know, everybody was kind of bland hit when he went to that weird netherworld. And then there was a girl. She was kind of like the best character, like a heroic character. She knew how to handle things in another world. She could handle herself. Yeah. She told him, you go in this door, I go in that door. Be careful when you do this. Don't touch that. Yeah. She was kind of like a more real person than anybody else in the movie. Yeah. And she was also part of that time paradox as well. Right. Which I won't go into spoiling it. But yeah, it does become a bit confusing. Right. And then especially when you bring in. It's like the country song where the guy says, because of the marriage and the family, he says, I am my own grandpa. Yeah, yeah. Somebody married somebody and that, you know. And then you bring in the grand uncle. And to be honest, at this point, I kind of, like I said, I got to watch it twice. I kind of lost where the story was going. Yeah, I could watch it multiple times. But basically, the grand uncle was bringing balance to all the world somehow. And he wanted to bestow this responsibility upon the boy. And the boy said, nah, I don't want to do that, I guess. I don't know. I kind of lost it. Yeah. Yeah, me too. And I feel like the movie just ended. A lot of movies just end. I felt like this one was like very abrupt. Like he comes back to the real world and the mom's like, we're going back to Tokyo. End. Right. Yeah, that is how it was. Yeah. Yeah, because it was the end of the war. Oh, yeah, yeah. It was like a year or two after the end of the war. So the war ended, but they still stayed there in the country house. And then finally, they went back to Tokyo, where his mother had been in the first scene in the movie. His mother was killed in a horrible war fire. She's in the hospital and, you know, burns down. And those are fantastic animated scenes. Yeah. That's what we were talking about in the beginning of our conversation, where the fire looked it looked like it was a person like a like a like a demon fire. Yeah. You know, it was demon fire. It wasn't just a neutral fire. Just, you know, it was trying to eat things. Right. Yeah, it was after you. Yeah, I think that's got her. Do you think it kind of opened you up to the idea that you might like animes? Like maybe you can find an anime you would like or you don't think so? Well, I like this far more than the Digimon, and it was really different than that. So it's not like it's not like just there's one thing like this is anime. Yeah. But, you know, you can see the difference in quality. And that would go both ways. There might have been people that like the Digimon quality. Yeah. It was just that, you know, it's you know, you got rock here, you got jazz there. They could both be great, but they're not like each other. So these movies were not like each other. So it's interesting for me to see that that I just don't lump it into one impression. Yeah. But at least there's that. Yeah, I would watch another one. I would watch one, but I'm not eager to watch it. I want to find one that, you know, that you like, love. That I really that I'm really blown away by. Yeah, I really want to do that. I have to tell you, it would have to be a simple story. This story was really complicated. Yeah. And it was complicated because there were non-human elements. Okay. That's what, you know, if everything whenever you have. You think it's too much fantasy? Time travel paradox is always difficult to deal with. You know, you're seeing yourself in some kind of science fiction. I could totally deal with that. But in the cartoon, it was it was just too weird. I kind of I agree. Actually, I agree. It was a little hard for me to follow. And like I said, I think I got to watch it once or twice more to fully grasp what the heck this was even about. But visually, I thought it was awesome. Yes, it was. There were a lot of beautiful, beautiful scenes. Are you ready to rate the movie? Yeah, I'm ready. What do you give it, Fred? I'm going to give it a seven. Oh, really? Yeah, it was beautiful art, beautiful music. Story was a little confusing. I didn't have a real problem with it. So I think it was, I think it merited a good review. I want to go on record that way. I think it was a good movie. Maybe the shortcoming was me. Maybe if I saw it a second or third time, I might appreciate it more. It's hard. Yeah, you know, honestly, if someone could completely understand this the first time they saw it and explain it to me, I'd find that hard to believe. I do too. So I'm actually surprised you're giving it a seven because I was thinking like 6.5. Oh, there we go. So we're pretty close. For the same reasons. It was pretty, it was beautiful. The art was cool. I liked the score a lot, actually. It was very like melodic. It was nice. It was a little hard to follow. Thank you for watching The Real Generation Gap. This has been a review of The Boy and the Heron. My name is Shane Schildmeyer. I'm Fred Soteli. And we'll catch you guys in the next one. Thanks for watching, guys. Please make sure to like, comment, and subscribe. Have you seen this movie yet? Do you think it was a little confusing? Did you totally grasp it? Let us know what it was about in the comments, the ending, because we didn't really get it. And let us know what you think we should review next. Is there an anime you think Fred would actually like? Let us know. Until then, we'll see you guys at the next review.