I'm rewatching Spirited Away with English subs I grabbed off opensubtitles.org and I had already been confused by some phantom lines that didn't correspond to any spoken dialogue but this scene made it obvious what was happening- there's extra lines added in places where the characters are facing away from the camera michael-laugh

Either the subtitler was hallucinating or these originate from the dub. I grew up watching a VHS tape chomsky-yes-honey in Japanese with Finnish subtitles and I don't recall this scene having dialogue

  • PKMKII [none/use name]
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    4 days ago

    Yeah it goes off towards the end. The sub script isn’t bad in the abstract, but it’s also kind of weird that they decided to deviate that much. It’s not like the Japanese script has anything weird or problematic. Almost like Disney just assumed that they had to change it because something would be off-putting to Western audiences, even if they didn’t know what.

    • doublepepperoni [none/use name]
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      4 days ago

      The dialogue in this scene is clearly expository and it definitely reads like some kind of studio note. I'm guessing Disney assumed the audience needed the stakes explicitly spelled out

      Actually watching it again some big wig Disney producer type probably just thought the scene was pointless if it didn't have dialogue

      • PKMKII [none/use name]
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        3 days ago

        Yeah mainstream western animation, especially back then, tends to have action, dialogue, or both going on at any time. Execs saw more than a couple seconds of just scenery, emotion and were like “fill the gap with something!”

        • doublepepperoni [none/use name]
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          3 days ago

          At this point in the movie Chihiro and the audience are trying to figure out what Haku's deal is and the silence as Haku leads her through the flowers, shown from Chihiro's perspective is clearly meant to invite the audience to ponder about him along with her, then it cuts to Chihiro's puzzled face to show what she's feeling

          WHY AREN'T THEY TALKING cat-confused

          • PKMKII [none/use name]
            ·
            3 days ago

            Which in the context of the scene makes sense. They’re sneaking off to a restricted area they’re not supposed to be in while most of the denizens of the springs are asleep, of course they would be keeping quiet as to not alert anyone.