After the disappointment of Goro Miyazaki’s Tales from Earthsea I didn’t go out of my way to see The Secret World of Arrietty when it was released in theaters earlier this year. The disappointment of Earthsea, however, was only part of the reason I didn’t go see it, the other was the fact Disney was again presenting another Studio Ghibli film dubbed into English. I still remember the Earthsea screening and how it was actually presented in its native Japanese with English subtitles, which, as it turns out, was not how Disney wanted us to see it. I didn’t go back to see it in English.
Thankfully, Disney’s Blu-ray presentation of The Secret World of Arrietty, directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi and written by the great Hayao Miyazaki and Keiko Niwa, is presented in both Japanese or English, so it can be seen as it was meant to be seen and boy does it look and sound phenomenal. Earthsea may have been a brief misstep, but Arrietty is a return to the magic Ghibli is known for.
Carrying all the life-affirming trademarks of a Hayao Miyazaki feature along with the gently measured storytelling, Arrietty is exactly the kind of film you expect from the Japanese studio. The animation is just as wonderful as it ever has been, bringing the tiny world of Arrietty and her family to life as they try and coexist with the humans whose houses they live in and “borrow” from and the high definition transfer is as close to perfect as I imagine you can get.
Unfortunately, while the film sparkles the special features are worthless. The only true special feature is a presentation of the film using the original storyboards. This may be of interest to anime fanatics, but personally this lost my interest really quick.
Additionally there are a couple of music videos and the making of one of them, but I didn’t even bother.
Where this film sits when compared to the rest of the Studio Ghibli canon is hard to say, not enough time has passed to make that kind of judgment, but it definitely holds a place. It isn’t as grand in scope as Miyazaki’s features, but its confined nature, most of it taking place under one roof, is part of its charm. After all, to one as small as Arrietty and her family, a house can be a big and dangerous place, but when she finds a human friend in Sho a whole new world opens up.
