This week’s anime article on Ain’t It Cool News has some more coverage on Studio Ghibli DVDs in the works. In addition to Porco Rosso (which has been tenatively set for April 2004) and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Disney is also ironing out the kinks on the new English dub for Whispers of the Heart. Apparently, the dub is finished, but there seems to be “problems with a song”, which AICN guesses is “Country Road”. It isn’t known whether this is a translation problem, legal barrier, or possibly something else.
Surprisingly, Disney also seems to have their sights set on dubbing Pom Poko after Nausicaa. The former is “a story of Japan’s raccoon-dog tanukis, their mythical shape shifting power, and a fight against human encroachment.” The biggest question mark is how Disney would deal with the tanuki’s testicles, because under their agreement with Ghibli, nothing can be cut nor edited from the films without the Japanese studio’s approval.