It was shown in the US subbed - although on a very limited basis. Call me crazy, but dubbed animation doesn't bother me nearly as much as dubbed live action - probably because the "actors" are really the animators. This is especially true of the Ghibli films in the hands of Lassetter.

Although Billy Crystal did annoy me at first.

While I'm sure the Ghibli/Lassetter films offer some of the best dubbing and wouldn't be horribly offensive, I simply prefer hearing the original language. There's just a certain quality to language that, no matter how good the translation, can never quite be captured in a dub. "Isn't that cuuuute!" just does not carry the same emotional quality as, "Kawaiiiiiiii!!!!"

I can understand that having to read subtitles can be distracting, but I've spent many many years watching anime this way and it's completely second nature. So I'll happily wait for the DVD so I can hear the original voice acting.

Oh, I agree and while dubbed animation doesn't bother me as much as live action I prefer subtitled whenever possible. Especially with Japanese because then Lani can point out how the subtitling is not quite getting it correct (though with the Miyazaki films it has usually been a change to make something more comprehensible to non-Japanese audiences since they don't know automatically why Japanese raccoons have giant testicles).

It doesn't bother me as much with animation, as well. Somehow the dialogue and animation end up fairly married. Also, a lot of the time, the translation is better in the dubbed versions. The written text is sometimes very, very strange/funny. It's just not translated as well.

Also, it's an English story, and hearing it in the original Japanese may have felt disjointed. Not bad, just strange.

So I presume you turn on the Dutch soundtrack when you watch the Little Mermaid? :p

I too am less thrown off by dubbed animation than live action, but I'll still choose subtitled over dubbed every time.

Not counting terrible fan-sub stuff that's only one step above throwing it through Google's translation software (though you get some damned funny lines that way like "fate vibrator" and "Why do you put your shirt in the word bad?"), I find that the ocassional awkward translation adds to the understanding. The preservation of some of the fundamental gramatical and idomatic differences between the languages keeps more of the original spirit, imo. But I suppose that only works if you've watched enough subtitled stuff to build a kind of an idiomatic vocabulary to intuitively decode those differences.

Hah. No, but when I watch the anime version of the Little Mermaid, I'm glad it's in English.

Sometimes that crap doesn't bother me at all of course. But it kills me that Hollywood makes movies that take place in French, and for some reason use an all British cast, as if that somehow makes up for the French characters not actually being or speaking French. Totally amuses me.

Not only doesn't dubbing not bother me as much in animation, Howl's is another work that takes place in Old Europe - where I find the Japanese language to be incredibly distracting.

Not only that, but who's there (besides Lani) to verify that the subtitles are any more a correct translation than the dubbed language???

No love for 'Kiki's Delivery Service'?
:D

Some love for it. I prefer Kiki's Delivery Service to My Neighbor Totoro but it is amusing to me (and by amusing I mean slightly annoying) that the two Miyazaki titles I'd put at the bottom of my list are the two most successful in the United States.