Carl's house that flies in the sky?

"Ratatouille" in Japan

I'm an all-around movie lover, and so my idea of a fun time on a weekend evening is to walk to my nearby Tsutaya (Japan's Blockbuster) and peruse their selection.

It would seem that most people in America love to just order their movies online, but I still love going into a store and seeing what all is available to me. Sometimes I stumble across a movie I hadn't remembered I'd even wanted to see until the moment I come face-to-face with it. Other times I experience delayed pleasure when the movie I want to watch has been rented out and I have to come back another time to watch it. I think I'll always love the concept of a video rental store the same way I'll probably always love the feeling over opening a newspaper in front of me or holding a book in my hands. I'm old-fashioned, I know.



The only downside to perusing a video rental store in Japan is that if you happen to have a specific movie title in mind, you will probably never find it without some serious digging.

See, Japan and America have different standards for putting a title to a movie. In America, we think the shorter, the better. We want a concise title that sums up what the movie is about. Think about movies like "Star Wars," "X-Men," "Love, Actually" and "Ocean's Eleven." It is an unusual day when you see a movie title longer than five words (though they do happen every now and then).


Japan, on the other hand, LOVES to have long rambling titles for their movies and TV dramas because if they don't, a Japanese person will take one look at the short title, wonder what it's about only long enough to wonder why the people making the film didn't put a longer title on it and then pass on watching it. Japanese people seem to have this inherent need to know exactly what a movie is to the point their movie titles just go on and on forever.

Also, Japan does not enjoy incredibly clever movie titles. They don't want a word that provides a double-meaning that you'd only get after watching the movie. No, they just want a straight-up, no-nonsense title that will tell them what the movie is about most of the time.



The problem with this, then, is when Japan imports films from abroad, dubs them over or puts in Japanese subtitles, and then mass markets the film over here. The title can't just stay the way it is because who in Japan would get that "Sister Act" is about a woman pretending to be a nun but then starts to enjoy life as a nun because she's reaching out to people?

Thus, the title became "A love song to angels." Someone thought this better described the film.

"Legally Blonde" became "Cutie Blonde" to better emphasize that the movie would not appeal to men.

"Hitch"? That became "How to begin your last romance"

I have read that Japan has recently had to give up changing the names of a lot of movie titles because people in Japan started to read about these films online before they are released in Japan, so if movie marketers over here changed the title, no one would know it was the movie they'd read about online. Thus, confusing movie titles like "RED" stay the same in Japanese.

One genre Japan almost absolutely refuses to budge on, however, is children's movies such as those from Pixar and Disney.

"Ratatouille" became "Remy's tasty restaurant."

"Frozen" became "Ana and the snow queen"

And possibly the worst, "Up" became "Carl's house that flies in the sky."



So best of luck to you if you want to ever find an American movie here. You'll need it.