The film follows that same basic story, focusing on the teenage Borrower, Arrietty, as she begins her first “borrowing”, which involves the family venturing out from their miniature home under a human house to “borrow” items that the humans would not miss - food, light bulbs, tape, etc. 2010’s The Secret World of Arrietty (titled The Borrower Arrietty in Japan, and just Arrietty literally everywhere else) is a case of both trends being applied, with Hiromasa Yonebayashi, a key animator for various Ghibli films, taking the reins of a story adapted from the British children’s novel The Borrowers by Mary Norton, about a family of Borrowers: miniature-sized people who have to survive on their own in a world populated by the gigantic, dangerous “human beans”. But that’ll have to be explained later.Īs mentioned in earlier articles, Studio Ghibli was trying out two different new trends in their production process: trying to get more films out by hiring more new, up-and-coming animators to make their directorial debuts, and adapting pieces of Western fiction instead of the usual Japanese mangas and young adult novels they typically used for inspiration. While Disney normally does a good job with their English dubs of these films, this is one of the only exceptions in which it makes for a much worse product. Having watched it a second time for this piece, in its original Japanese, I not only enjoyed the film a great deal more, I noticed a ton more details in the story and dialogue that I either ignored or simply wrote off in the English version. That’s how I watched The Secret World of Arietty when I first saw it two years ago, and I found it to be one of the Studio’s lesser entries. It’s strange how much of a difference an English dub can make.
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