soc_puppet | A hint of nostalgia

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You know what I really wish I could find? MP3s of the two English-language songs from the earlier dub of Kiki's Delivery Service. I recall actually ruining our VHS of it to copy down the lyrics so I could memorize them, and now I want copies of the songs to just... listen to whenever.

I should outsource this to my AI co-staffers, maybe one of them has a copy of the early dub soundtrack.

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From:

mistressofmuses

Is it "I'm Gonna Fly" and "Soaring" by Sydney Forest that you're looking for? (I'm only familiar with one dub version, so I'm not sure if those are the correct songs!)

If so, I might be able to email you copies if you'd like!

ETA: A quick wiki scroll tells me that that is the second dub! So I don't know what songs were in the original dub version, alas. Bummer! Though on the same wiki scroll, it only mentions the original Japanese songs and the ones from Disney's dub (which were apparently removed and replaced by the Japanese ones for the DVD release)... though maybe that's not surprising, since the original dub seems to be very difficult to find.

Edited Date: 2022-03-03 04:05 am (UTC)

From:

soc_puppet

Those are the ones, yes! I didn't know there was a dub before the Disney one; I only know that the songs on the DVD were different than the ones I grew up with, and as appropriate and authentic as the original Japanese songs are, I both really like and miss the ones from my childhood.

socchan (at) protonmail (dot) com, if you can find the tracks! ♥

From:

mistressofmuses

I sent them!

I'm sad to learn that they removed the songs from the DVD release. (I bought the DVD, but haven't actually watched it yet, so hadn't noticed the change for myself.) Apparently they altered some of the music, and removed some of Jiji's dialogue, too.

The changes were all to make it more similar/accurate to the Japanese version; the extra music and dialogue had been added when they thought it would make it more appealing to an American audience. So on the one hand, I don't fault them for deciding to make it a little truer to the original, when what they removed were the actual "changes"...

On the other hand, Kiki's Delivery Service is SUCH a nostalgic love for me. The dub came out when I was 10, and I caught part of it on I think Toon Disney. I did finally get a VHS copy of it, and I watched it to *death*. I did the same thing you did - rewound it over and over to listen to the songs, lol.
So those songs were part of what I loved! (And as a kid I cared about the implication at the end that her ability to talk to Jiji had come back, even if losing that ability was supposed to be part of her growing up, lol.)
I'm sad that the version I fell in love with as a kid is no longer even available. :( I'm not sad that the original songs were returned, but... I wish that it was something where they could have included both versions, so you could select which you wanted to watch.

From:

soc_puppet

Thank you so much! They arrived safely, and it was wonderful treat to listen to them again (and with a bit more music than made it into the dub, even!)

I feel like the updated/corrected nostalgia category is one that can firmly fall into the, "I didn't say it was bad, I said I hated it" category. Kiki's Delivery Service is definitely one of those for me; I first saw the dub I'm most familiar with when I was originally discovering anime, and it's always going to have special place in my heart, even if the new version is a more accurate translation. I feel a similar way about The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Cut. It's objectively a better story! But some marketing person somewhere was definitely right about how much I enjoyed the titular thief's internal dialogue as a kid, and after watching the "lesser" version so many times, the Recobbled Cut just feels empty without it. (I'm also pretty sure I'm going to have to pretend that the new Sailor Moon dub is actually a subtitled version when I'm watching it 😂 The old dub voices and music choices are so firmly ingrained in my brain, all of the more accurate replacements just feel kinda wrong for no good reason!)

As a side note, I was flabbergasted when I found out that Jiji's speaking was all supposed to be in Kiki's imagination and a childhood trait she was supposed to grow out of. Even if you take away the one line that suggests Jiji could still talk at the end of "our" dub (where he "says" "Meow" instead of meowing at the very end), I still don't think I would've come to that conclusion, if only because not being able to understand Jiji is what prompted Kiki to figure out that she was having trouble with her magic. What else was I supposed to take away from that? Being able to talk to your familiar is clearly part of a witch's powers, or losing that ability wouldn't have clued Kiki in to her problems! And while I'm at it, being able to talk to animals is always superior to not being able to talk to animals, and I'd be super pissed if I had to lose that ability by growing up! Same reason I liked that Matilda got to keep her powers at the end of the movie when she lost them in the book. Just... argh!

Okay, rant over. I think I feel better now.

From:

mistressofmuses

Glad I could share! Other than my younger sibling, I don't know that I know anyone else who gets why I love those songs so much!

Kiki's Delivery Service was definitely one of the first anime I found. It was actually a few years later that I think I got into Sailor Moon (oh, same on the original Genuinely Not Good dub and terrible dub names that are still the Truest Sailor Moon experience to me!) After that I also found Pokemon, and then Gundam Wing and YuYuHakusho and other Toonami shows, and my mom bought me Magic Knight Rayearth, etc. But Kiki was ahead of the curve in terms of anime for me, and the specific type of nostalgia that it invoked (even when I WAS a kid) has rarely been matched in a non-ghibli film, imo!

Which is a long way to say... Yes! I want *my* original experience of the movie back, because that was the version I fell in love with and had a really strong impact on me as a kid! Even if I can appreciate the desire to offer a more "accurate" version now, I also feel a sense of loss at the thing that meant so much to me.

And I almost said something about it being like the difference between book and movie Matilda! I hate the idea that losing your cool powers (whether that's talking to your familiar or moving things with your mind) is a sign of maturity!

(I remember a wave of thinkpieces from maybe... 5-10 years ago, about how it was a terrible sign of immaturity that "millennials" found the "return home/return to normal" aspect of portal/other children's fantasy to be unsatisfying. That of course the whole point of the return from Narnia or Matilda losing her powers is that we all have to grow up, and not wanting to give up the fantasy aspects is obviously a sad commentary on our arrested development or whatever. But WHO WANTS TO GIVE UP THE FANTASY STUFF? WHY WOULD YOU?)