Save $8 when you order The Secret World of Arriety and an eligible Studio Ghibli title. This offer is valid through June 22, 2012. Applies only to products sold by Amazon.com. Does not apply to products sold by third-party merchants and other sellers through the Amazon.com site.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.htm...reative=390957

Other titles are "Nausicaa" ($24.96), "Ponyo" ($25.95), "Whispers of the Heart" and "Castle in the Sky" ($29.96).

"Arietty" is currently listed as $29.96, but I imagine Amazon will price-match it down to $22.99 Tuesday.

Best Buy is doing a similar deal, by the way.

In the last hour or so since I posted, Amazon has brought down the price of "Arietty", "Whispers" and "Castle" to 22.99. Best buy is doing a two-day deal this weekend, but you aren't required to buy "Arietty" as one of the two. Amazon has a better price on "Nausicaa", though.

Bad thread title. You need to buy Arietty and another title to save $8.

To be fair, that's also the way they phrase it on Amazon. But, yeah.

I've read that Target is doing this as well, and it's actually a pull-off sticker on the titles that gives you $8 off if you buy two of them.

Does anyone know if that $8 pull-off coupon is a Target specific coupon or a manufacturer's coupon that would work at other B&M stores?

Too bad this next set of releases only has Whisper of the Heart and Castle in the Sky. While I still like them, they both rank rather low on my Ghibli list. I always feel like Japanese animation is very detailed but somewhat jerky (like it's 12 fps instead of 24), and I remember Castle in the Sky being the most jerky. Others like My Neighbor Totoro seemed a lot smoother, and that's my favorite. Then comes Spirited Away, Kiki's Delivery Service, Howl's Moving Castle, and Princess Monoke, and Ponyo. Unless I'm forgetting something, the rest are just so-so. The Cat Returns, Porco Rosso, and Pompoko are my least favorites, and yet I'd still buy them for $15-ish on BD.

I haven't seen Arietty yet either, and $22.99 (-$8 divided by 2 if I buy 2) = $18.99 is a lot to pay for a blind buy even though I haven't disliked any Ghibli movie yet. What to do. What to do. Even if I order Arietty I'd have to pick Whisper or Castle which is roughly a toss-up for me.

I assume this $22.99 price is only going to last 2 days because of this BB 2 day sale? Where is the info on that BB sale?

My plan is to wait until these are available on the Disney Blu Ray Club in about a month and snap them all up at once with a new account.

As enrollments? Will all these Ghibli titles be available for enrollment a month after their release?

For a few months I have had a note to re-join the Disney Blu-Ray Club as there are enough titles I'd like now, but I never get around to it. I forgot what the best offer to join is, but hopefully the code/offer hasn't expired. Some people also said (including a DMC rep) that you can join the Disney Blu-Ray Club while having an active regular DMC account. I selected Blu-Ray as my preferred choice, but the rep said I was still in the regular club. Who knows if it'll work.

I enjoyed ARIETTY, but it's not a buy for me at the typical Disney GHIBLI price gouge. Most of these movies are works of art, but Disney prices them too high and deprives many families from taking a blind buy chance on them. As such they are not developing the next generation of consumers to have any interest, which means at some point Disney will stop importing these. Everybody loses.

Yes. Naussica is already available for enrollment, so it's just a waiting game.

Nausicaa came out in March 2011, well over a year ago, so I sure hope it has been a DMR enrollment for a very long time. What I want to know is how long it'll take Arietty, Whisper, and Castle to end up as DMC enrollments. If it's a few months, I can handle that. If it's a year or more, then maybe I should buy them now. Too bad the $8 deal is only on 2 of the 3. There's no deal for getting all 3 of the new release BDs.

I agree with ProfessorEcho that Disney BD releases (especially Ghibli) are priced way too high. Unfortunately the only time I've seen them go dirt cheap is at Blockbuster store closing where I picked up Ponyo. Nausicaa came out at $27.99 with a $10 coupon at the same time Target had a $5 Disney coupon making the final price $12.99 ACs, as I recall, which made it an easy buy (and I still haven't seen Nausicaa any cheaper). Unfortunately for these 3 new Ghibli BDs w/o Disney coupons, it's $18.99 for 2 of them and $22.99 for the 3rd given current promos. That's a bit steep for me.

As we appear to have no other threads for the discussion of the 3 Studio Ghibli releases today, I was curious about a couple things:

- People said there should be a $8 off if you buy 2 manufacturer coupon attached to these Ghibli BD releases. Has anyone seen those and at which store? Target did not have these coupons... the $8 ($4 each) just comes off automatically meaning each has a refund value of $18.99.

- Did other people's Targets have only 4 copies of Castle and Whisper when they opened and about 12 copies of Arrietty? I went early precisely because I expected Target to have a microscopic inventory and expected them to be OOS by the afternoon.

I am tempted to just pick 2 out from Amazon but people have said these are priced a little high. Not sure what to do...

The problem as I see it is that we're comparing these to typical Disney kids' fare. Japanese anime titles are routinely overpriced due to licensing. This pricing is sort of a middle ground. My kids love the movies, so I'm OK with getting Arrietty and Whisper now to support the Ghibli releases and maybe speed the release of the bigger titles. Yeah, too bad the deal is only for two, but I'm OK passing on Castle for now in case of a price drop later, but these are rarely aggressive so I'm not holding out for anything amazing. (It's also not a huge favorite of ours, nor is Nausicaa.)

I assume your ranking is not based solely on frame rate, right? Just making sure.

The coupon on the releases was a misunderstanding someone had on another forum that got spread around from what I understand. In other words there was no actual coupon.

Yeah I went to Target to get them noticed they only had like 5 copies each of Whisper and Castle in-stock. I ended up deciding to get mine from Amazon after not finding a single copy of Arrietty with the slipcover undamaged from stuffing in the wrong sized acyclic security cases. Also forgot I had a $25.00 credit at Amazon so it worked out better anyway.

Thanks for the explanation about there being no coupon at any store. I think 5 copies (mine had 4 but I got there a little bit after they opened so someone may have bought 1) is rather low for a new release title. Surely even the least well known Ghibli releases must be more popular than that? I found an acceptable Arrietty slipcover without too much trouble. It depends how much damage there is... if there are rips or folds, I'll look for another, but if it's just dents or light scuffs/scratches I'll live with it as it's hard to find one that's perfect. On top of that, on a couple occasions I've had near-perfect slipcovers which then get a little damaged by the cashier trying to remove it from the plastic case, but never enough that I said I don't want it any more.
If you mean why I rank Castle in the Sky a bit lower than the others, yes, it's mainly that the animation seems a bit cruder and jumpier than usual. I pretty much like all of the Ghibli films to some degree... whether it's for the detailed animation (which I wish were smoother like US animation) or the interesting/inventive things that happen. The term "off the wall" isn't appropriate (people use that for Monty Python), but Japanese stories seem to be less predictable (for me) than US stories so they tend to keep my interest better. I can only speak of animation because I don't watch live action from Japan. The point is: all Ghibli films are worth owning (IMHO)... well, I haven't seen My Neighbors The Yamadas yet. The question is at what price. $18.99 is a bit steep, but then to expect Disney who has always price gouged not to be steep would be silly, though they used to give $5 or $10 coupons but not this time. For a new release Disney I guess I should be happy with $18.99, but I'd be much happier with $15 on release day. Even The Cat Returns, Porco Russo, and Pom Poko (my least favorites) have enough in them to justify watching once in a while. Those are my opinions.

I just bought it on blu-ray today and started doing some comparison with the old DVD and I noticed the jerkiness you were talking about, its not in the characters movements but mostly in the background, clouds and such sometimes have a slight micro pause and some frames shake a bit at times.

In any case with all that said it felt like the blu-ray was a little smoother (but i could be wrong). What I can confirm is that the colors are definitely more solid and detailed. Looking at the old DVD version it almost looks a little bit faded/orange like in comparison.

Its definitely worth the upgrade once it reaches your preferred price point.

I didn't expect any difference in "jerkiness" or framerate on the BDs vs. DVDs. My comments are solely about Ghibli and some Japanese animation in general. I haven't researched it, but I think they use a lower framerate, and for me it's only apparent when things are moving (mainly characters or objects in the background). I still really like Ghibli animation and certain other Japanese animation as well, but I just wish they could make the movement smoother like a Disney/Pixar animated film. I haven't watched Akira for a long time, but if I'm not mistaken that was one of the smoother Japanese animation, so I guess it's due to budget and they may be drawing fewer frames. I'll still buy Ghibli BDs when the price is right in spite of this.

"Certified Fresh at RottenTomatoes.com" sticker on my Arietty slipcover. Is this a new thing, because it looks awful (and luckily enough is easy to pull off)

saw that too and thought it was interesting. Ugly but interesting and easily removed.

How do you guys remove those stickers?? They never come off easily for me and always leave a sticky residue.

If they leave sticky scum, then people use Goo Gone (which I think is rather expensive) or plain Ronsonol lighter fluid. I don't remember who told me to use Ronsonol but it seems to work (though I'm scared by the warnings on the bottle to let it touch my skin).

Maybe it's an ad paid for by RT?

For sticker residue on plastic, I use Goo-Gone. However, on a slipcover (like these), it can actually pull off some of the ink as well.

If you pull off the sticker, and then 'dab' it on the extra residue, it'll take a little with it when you pull it off again. Do this a bunch of times, and you should be able to get everything off. That's what I did with these ones.

Best Buy price stickers are the worst. Especially on the non-glossy slipcovers, no way to get them off cleanly on those.