SBManiac

There's an Asian mall close to where I live, so maybe I can stop by one of these days and see if they have any of these. I'm willing to try anything once, even if I'm not the biggest fan of Hi-Chews (the taste comes off as really plastic-y to me, though that might just be a texture thing). Looking forward to more reviews!

Last time on "Izzy talks about Studio Ghibli movies," Izzy (also known as SBManiac) was "spirited away" to a whimsical yet potent fantasia with Miyazaki's 2001 masterpiece! Will this next Ghibli film deliver its whimsy in the same way? #03: My Neighbor Totoro [April 16, 1988 (Japan) / October 23, 2005 (North America - Disney dub)] Sup fools! We're here today to talk about the 1988 Studio Ghibli film My Neighbor Totoro, written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki! Now before getting to the story, I should mention that two official English dubs exist for Totoro: one made by Streamline Entertainment in 1989, and another made by Walt Disney Pictures that was released in 2005. Of course, we'll be talking about the 2005 dubbed version since it's more well-known, though for those interested, I heard the Streamline dub might still be available on the Internet Archive according to a YouTube short I found on the subject, I'm just not sure of the upload's current status. Anyway, without further ado, let's talk about the world of soot sprites, catbuses, and that giant cat-bear-rabbit thing we all know and love! Taking place in post-World War II Japan (this detail will become relevant later in this talk-about), two young girls named Satsuki and Mei move with their father to an old, abandoned house out in the countryside. Once their family, the Kusakabes, settle in, Satsuki and Mei encounter a giant forest spirit named Totoro (who does indeed resemble something of a cross between a cat, a bear, and a rabbit--never mind that I stole this joke from "Chowder", lmao), who introduces the girls to the wonders of the forest they now call home. The first thing I noticed when watching is that compared to Chihiro's apprehension in Spirited Away, Satsuki and Mei are pleased as punch about moving to the country and take the opportunity to be adorable goofballs once they get to their new "haunted house"; they run around, laugh, make silly noises, shake down a rotting old beam of the house to let the chips of its wood fall on them both ("It's collapsing! It's collapsing!"), that sort of thing. I personally find the girls' antics endearing, to the point that I'm still somewhat jealous of the ability they have, that kids in general have, to live so carefree. That being said, if you find kids and their antics to be annoying as a general rule, I would not recommend this movie to you lol. While sisters Dakota and Elle Fanning do a great job voicing Satsuki and Mei in the 2005 dub, their characters' hyperactive enthusiasm in those first 20 or so minutes of the movie began to wear even on me. The girls' father, a professor at a university in Tokyo, never talks down to them like Chihiro's parents do with her; perhaps he also thinks his girls are prone to flights of fancy, but he always explains the supposed supernatural elements of the world around them (the soot sprites, Totoro himself) with a firm but gentle touch. There will be plenty of time for Satsuki and Mei to grow up, so let the girls have their whimsical fantasies while they still can. As for Mrs. Kusakabe, while the girls' mother is bedridden at a hospital throughout the movie, her mood is no worse for the wear, and she loves her daughters dearly, always reading the letters they send to her. In fact, Satsuki and Mei's concern for their mother's health only drives the conflict during the last act of the movie, when Satsuki and Mei argue over not being able to see her that weekend because of an unforeseen illness, and Mei goes off to the hospital on foot to bring their dear mother a freshly-picked ear of corn for her health. I'd say that even then, the true source of conflict here seems to also be technological in nature: it's hard to keep tabs on a sick relative when the only means of long-distance communication you have are the telegram that Kanta, the neighbor boy, gives to Satsuki and the rotary telephone she dials to speak to an operator to connect her to her dad, busy teaching in his university classroom. I should probably mention here that when Totoro was first released in Japan in 1988, it was part of a double feature with Isao Takahata's Grave of the Fireflies...yes, that Grave of the Fireflies, which, spoilers, isn't nearly as breezy or lighthearted as Totoro (yes, I've already seen Grave for the first time this year, though I obviously haven't talked about it in this thread yet). However, perhaps that tonal whiplash is part of the point Miyazaki and Takahata were trying to convey with the movies' paired theatrical release. While I won't discuss Grave too much here, what I will say is that Takahata's animated drama is, among other things, a brutal depiction of the loss of innocence set in 1940s Japan, the very innocence that Satsuki's and Mei's belief in Totoro represents. As for Totoro himself...I don't really have much to say about him? In fact, beyond his cute and cuddly aesthetic, I'd argue he's the least interesting part of his own damn movie, lmao. Sure, he's as gentle and kind as the adults in the film, but while the adults' kindness comes off as damn-near aspirational, Totoro's just comes across as too whimsical and lighthearted even for me, like a fading childhood memory I can no longer relate to. Speaking of which, according to the movie's Wikipedia page, Totoro himself has been compared to A.A. Milne's character Winnie the Pooh, and while I get the comparison on an intellectual level, I am far more nostalgic for Disney's 1977 adaptation The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (yes, I know the movie's an anthology of previously-released shorts, don't @ me) since I actually grew up watching Many Adventures on VHS as a preschooler. To sum up, maybe if I had first watched this Ghibli film when I was a kid, I'd like it more, but as it stands, My Neighbor Totoro's pastoral optimism might work better when paired with Grave of the Fireflies' bleak realism. SCORE: 8.5/10 - "Great, with some caveats" For our bonus segment, here's a clip from a show starring Japan's second favorite neighbor: Jeri Sainferudo! (In case you didn't get the joke, the name for the Japanese dub of "Seinfeld" literally translates to "My Neighbor Seinfeld". The show's still freaking hilarious, even when dubbed in a language I barely know the basics of lel) Once again, sorry for the delay; this time, it's really because life just kinda got in the way this month, so I'll promise to talk about these Ghibli movies on a more regular basis in 2026. Speaking of which, I wonder what the wheel gave me for Boxing Day this year: Stay tuned for Izzy's next talk-about...

Going back to my roots, I'll be "Snowball in Hell" (as in, the They Might Be Giants song), using the art from this old EP of theirs: https://tmbw.net/wiki/Don't_Let's_Start_(EP)

#12: Spirited Away [July 20, 2001 (Japan) / September 7, 2002 (North America)] Hi everyone! It’s taken me a bit, but I’m finally here to talk about the 2001 Studio Ghibli movie Spirited Away, written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki! Before we begin, I should note that there will be spoilers in these talk-abouts, though I’ll accommodate those who haven’t seen these movies as best as I can. Also, I am watching the Ghibli-approved English dub versions of these films over the subs. I have nothing against watching subbed anime and sometimes prefer it, but I do think on-screen subtitles distract from the overall visual experience of a Ghibli movie, and especially this one. In any case, let's get started! The film opens with a young girl named Chihiro who is moving with her parents to the countryside, away from the home she’s always known. Taking a detour on the way to their new home, Chihiro’s parents leave their daughter behind and track the smell of food coming from an abandoned stall in what appears to be a long-forgotten theme park. Despite Chihiro’s protests, her parents refuse to heed her warnings and pig out on the smorgasbord of delicacies they’re stuffing themselves with, soon literally turning into pigs themselves. Just from this opening sequence, one notices all the expected hallmarks from a Miyazaki/Ghibli film: a young female protagonist undergoing a break from the familiar, a gentle yet stirring score by frequent collaborator Joe Hisaishi, gorgeously-rendered backgrounds and vistas, and a sense of mystery and intrigue, where the lines between fantasy and reality become increasingly blurred. Getting back to the scene where Chihiro’s parents turn into pigs: Jesus. Fucking. Christ, did this scene fuck me up as a kid. As to why, I think it’s because Chihiro has not only been, in a sense, abandoned by her parents, but that her parents had also fallen to their vices in a sort of divine punishment since the food they’re eating is the food of the spirits that inhabit this (literal) ghost town. In other words, Chihiro’s parents have disrupted the boundary between the spirit realm and the realm of the living, or in a slightly less metaphorical sense, have disrespected either the living gods or the human dead of the Earth. To be honest, I do not know enough about Shinto folklore, which is clearly one of Miyazaki’s inspirations for the film, to describe his intent less ambiguously. However, given my religious upbringing and the fact my parents have never been the most responsible people, Chihiro’s parents turning into pigs was and still is incredibly powerful imagery. With nowhere left to run, Chihiro encounters a mysterious boy named Haku on a bridge near a floating bathhouse. Haku, who acts as a sort of guardian angel for Chihiro throughout the movie, helps her sneak into the bathhouse to work for the devious witch Yubaba until Chihiro can save her parents and find a way home. Along the way, Chihiro encounters other spirits employed and served by Yubaba like Kamaji, the chainsmoking, multi-limbed boiler man; Lin, the sassy bath maiden who Chihiro ends up working with; and the mysterious (and notorious) No-Face, a silent spirit who spits out bits of gold to charm Yubaba’s greedy staff before devouring her employees whole. In a weird way, a lot of what happens in this movie reminds me of two formative novels I read as a kid: Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth. The Alice comparison is the most obvious: a young girl witnesses something strange and is spirited away (“hey, that’s the name of the movie!”) to an even stranger world that runs on all sorts of surreal fantasy logic. While Haku is more compassionate, thoughtful, and deliberate with his actions than, say, Alice’s White Rabbit, he is still the first spirit Chihiro encounters in the movie before she goes down the “rabbit hole” that is Yubaba’s bathhouse. In fact, in the scene where Haku offers Chihiro something to eat after seeing her transformed parents in a pig pen, Chihiro’s gigantic tears as she eats definitely reminded me of Alice herself shrinking and growing while drinking or eating various concoctions that make her do just that. However, in Chihiro’s case, her misshapen tears come from her contemplating the hopeless situation she and her parents are trapped in, which for me at least, amplifies the emotion of the scene as well as the strangeness of the world she inhabits. In other words, while Miyazaki’s story doesn’t lose sight of its whimsical charm, there are actual lives and futures at stake in his Spirited Away. This is why I also brought up The Phantom Tollbooth; while a children’s fantasy novel like Alice, the author seemed more interested in using fantastical imagery to convey deeper messages that could still be understood by children. (Guess which book I liked more growing up?) My favorite example from the book is when the protagonist Milo encounters the Terrible Trivium, a demon from the Mountains of Ignorance who tries to distract Milo from his mission of getting back home, the demon character being a metaphor for the way we lose sight of our true wants and needs with, well, distractions that seem important at first but don’t mean much to us in the long run. In Miyazaki’s case, his film is ripe with fantastical visual metaphor: Chihiro literally signing her name away to Yubaba, forcing Chihiro and those around her to only know her as “Sen”; Chihiro’s successful efforts to bathe a sludgy “stink spirit” by removing a thorn jabbed in its side that’s revealed to be the handlebar of a discarded bicycle, with a torrent of human-produced and human-discarded garbage being expelled from the grateful river spirit in the process; and of course, No Face’s endless consumption of food, praise, and then other spirits themselves being a sharp rebuke of modern consumer culture. Even though I’ve already said so much about this film, I feel like I’m only just scratching the surface here! If I had any real critique of the movie, I’d say that in the film’s climax, how the reveal of Haku’s identity was expressed in its dialogue is the closest Spirited Away gets to being sappy. Whether it’s because of the English dub script, the English dub voice actor’s performance (wait, Haku’s voiced by Jason Marsden?!), or even just Haku’s wide-eyed smile of joy and relief in the animation, I don’t really know, but the scene almost didn’t resonate with me because of how corny it seemed. Regardless, I really enjoyed watching this movie and highly recommend that you also watch Spirited Away! SCORE: 9.5/10 - "One of the best!" As a bonus, here’s the Based God himself rapping over “One Summer’s Day”: Once again, sorry this took so long for me to post, but given how much I enjoyed Spirited Away, as well as the movie being one of the most critically acclaimed animated films of all time, I wanted to make sure this movie got its due. What Ghibli film waits for us next, O Wheel? Stay tuned for Izzy's next talk-about...

Hello everyone! SBManiac (AKA izzydapanda) here with a topic that is hopefully more than just jumping on the bandwagon started by Dman and his topic talking about every Cartoon Network show in existence and whatnot. Now, you'd expect I'd be talking about the first episode of every Disney Channel original animated series to complete the trifecta of cable TV networks most of us here grew up with, but for now, you will be sorely disappointed. (I'm not against the idea, actually, but it turns out a lot of the original animated series produced by Disney didn't even originally air on Disney Channel, but on ABC and other forms of syndication on network television, and that includes stuff like Darkwing Duck, Gargoyles, and even the freaking Weekenders, none of which make any sense to exclude in a retrospective like this, but I digress.) Instead, I'm gonna be talking about the filmography of the one Japanese animation studio that even non-weebs can name, which is of course, Studio Ghibli (whose works were, ironically enough, distributed by Disney itself when I was growing up). Unlike the other two "talking about" topics here, though, I am actually unfamiliar with most Ghibli movies and wanted to undertake watching all 24 of their major productions to date (and one production that actually predates the studio itself, but has since been re-released under the Studio Ghibli name) just to see what I've been missing out on. Some of you here may remember that I tried to have some of us SBCers binge watch these movies over Discord as a group, which unfortunately didn't pan out due to our varying personal circumstances. In other words, I'll be going it alone and will be creating this thread instead to gather my feelings on each of their films. Like with Dman's topic, I will be choosing each Ghibli movie at random using a decider wheel. What are we gonna get this time, O Wheel of Chance? Stay tuned for Izzy's first talk-about. LIST OF MOVIES:

Really did my best to stay within the theme, although the choices here may prove I'm more of a sci-fi gal. I also added songs that touched on religious themes since Christianity's influence on Medieval culture itself was massive, at least in Europe.

What's up, funky fresh people!!! As we all know, @Zaid challenged me this weekend to make a list of my favorite ten songs from the PaRappa the Rapper franchise for his King for A Day spiel, given my Um Jammer Lammy avatar on this forum's Discord server. The major irony here is that I've never even played the OG PaRappa game, with my only exposure to the franchise beforehand being a tie-in song featured in this very list, the fun fact that the games' character designer, Rodney Alan Greenblatt, also did the cover art for They Might Be Giants' debut album from 1986, and this absurd-ass meme: Now, for this list, I'm going to post both the songs from the official OSTs as well as gameplay from the stages they're featured in for each entry. Also, many thanks to Khinsider for the OST downloads and to the PaRappa the Rapper Fan Wiki for providing me the lore on these very strange and colorful games! Anyways, before I go and ramble about Brooklyn's Ambassadors of Love yet again, the time has come for...the list! Okay, so turns out the top 5 songs are gonna need to be a post of their own because my writing for each entry is getting a bit unwieldy lol. Hopefully I can have the second post done by tonight--stay frosty, y'all!

Lammy from “Um Jammer Lammy” lmao

This one's a bit longer than my usual limit of 30-ish minutes (I know that limitation doesn't exist anymore, but I like a challenge), 'cause I was seeing this mixtape as a possible workout playlist lmao

“2000 Miles” by The Pretenders seems to be hitting hard for me this season, along with this hidden gem from They Might Be Giants’ days as a duo with a tape machine, called “We Just Go Nuts At Christmastime”:

Welcome back, Zaid! I’m not sure if I remember you—I took a break from SBM and SBC for a while as well—but I’m always glad to have old SBC peeps come back into the fold lel

Karaoke is pretty great, tbh, and has honestly been one of the few social activities I legitimately enjoy lel. It’s probably because it’s a chance to share my taste in music with others in a way that’s more interactive and fun than making a playlist (no shade to Hawk and Steel, your collaborative mixtape series are excellent and fun to take part in as well), as well as having other people in the crowd join in if they know the song. Tbh, I don’t think being good at singing is even required to enjoy karaoke since it’s more about the social aspect, though it does give me a chance to show off for once

ONE CRYIN’ PLAYLIST OF LATE AUGHTS TO MID TENS CLUB BANGERS COOOOOOOOMING UP! Edit: This is the final playlist - embed fixed itself a day later: