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Ghibli's Ocean Waves DVD Dated for August 17 in U.K.
posted on by Egan Loo
The British distributor Optimum Home Entertainment has scheduled a DVD release for Tomomi Mochizuki's Ocean Waves (Umi ga Kikoeru) television special on August 17. The 72-minute animated movie is the last Studio Ghibli feature to get a DVD release in an English-speaking country, although the DVD releases in Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea did include English subtitles. Mochizuki was the first person besides Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata to direct a Ghibli feature when he adapted the Umi ga Kikoeru high school romance novel by the late Saeko Himuro in 1993. Optimum had picked up the television and DVD rights in the United Kingdom for Ocean Waves from the Paris-based licensor Wild Bunch last year.
Ocean Waves and another Ghibli work, Grave of the Fireflies, were notably missing from Tokuma Shoten and Walt Disney Company's landmark international distribution deal for every other Ghibli feature in 1996. Central Park Media (CPM) released Grave of the Fireflies in North America, and ADV Films announced last month that it will re-issue the film in July after CPM's bankruptcy in April. Walt Disney Company's Buena Vista distribution arm has since released every film from its Tokuma Shoten deal on DVD in North America, except for Only Yesterday. (Optimum released Only Yesterday in the United Kingdom in 2006.)
Source: Nausicaa.net
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