特別転載：『ゲド戦記』原作者による作品の感想

『ゲド戦記』原作者アーシュラ・ル＝グイン氏本人による感想 (前書き）

宮崎アニメと原作ファンの両者から賛否両論を呼んでいる 『ゲド戦記』（個人的感想）について、宮崎駿監督にアニメ化を快諾（というより積極的に推薦）した原作者のル＝グイン氏当人はどう思っているのだろうか。

大手プロダクションには敬意を示すお行儀の良い日本のメディアではル＝グイン氏の率直な言葉がそのまま表に出されることはないだろうと観て、原作者の公式ページに最近公開されたばかりの、作者自らが語る率直な「第一印象」について、その核心と思われる後半の部分を転載・全訳する。こうした私的コメントの翻訳は素朴ながらも意外と時間がかかるものなので、まずは原文から。

以下、2006年8月13日付けの原作者公開コメント
『Gedo Senki, A First Response（ゲド戦記─私の第一印象）』より抜粋

本編（訳文）

『ゲド戦記』原作者アーシュラ・ル＝グイン氏本人による感想（前編）
『ゲド戦記』原作者アーシュラ・ル＝グイン氏本人による感想（中編）
『ゲド戦記』原作者アーシュラ・ル＝グイン氏本人による感想（後編）

訳：GivingTree

A First Response to "Gedo Senki," the Earthsea film made by Goro Miyazaki for Studio Ghibli.　
Written for my fans in Japan who are writing me about the movie, and for fans elsewhere who may be curious about it.

映画について私に多くの便りを寄せてくれた日本やその他の国のファンの皆さんに捧ぐ、スタジオ・ジブリの宮崎吾郎監督が製作したアースシーを描いた映画『ゲド戦記』に対する私の第一印象レポート。

The Film.

So, in the spirit of everything being public all the time for fifteen minutes, I will give a fuller report of my first response to the film: 

Much of it was beautiful. Many corners were cut, however, in the animation of this quickly made film. It does not have the delicate accuracy of "Totoro" or the powerful and splendid richness of detail of "Spirited Away." The imagery is effective but often conventional. 

Much of it was exciting. The excitement was maintained by violence, to a degree that I find deeply untrue to the spirit of the books. 

Much of it was, I thought, incoherent. This may be because I kept trying to find and follow the story of my books while watching an entirely different story, confusingly enacted by people with the same names as in my story, but with entirely different temperaments, histories, and destinies. 

Of course a movie shouldn't try to follow a novel exactly ? they're different arts, very different forms of narrative. There may have to be massive changes. But it is reasonable to expect some fidelity to the characters and general story in a film named for and said to be based on books that have been in print for 40 years. 

Both the American and the Japanese film-makers treated these books as mines for names and a few concepts, taking bits and pieces out of context, and replacing the story/ies with an entirely different plot, lacking in coherence and consistency. I wonder at the disrespect shown not only to the books but to their readers. 

I think the film's "messages" seem a bit heavyhanded because, although often quoted quite closely from the books, the statements about life and death, the balance, etc., don't follow from character and action as they do in the books. However well meant, they aren't implicit in the story and the characters. They have not been "earned." So they come out as preachy. There are some sententious bits in the first three Earthsea books, but I don't think they stand out quite this baldly. 

The moral sense of the books becomes confused in the film. For example: Arren's murder of his father in the film is unmotivated, arbitrary: the explanation of it as committed by a dark shadow or alter-ego comes late, and is not convincing. Why is the boy split in two? We have no clue. The idea is taken from A Wizard of Earthsea, but in that book we know how Ged came to have a shadow following him, and we know why, and in the end, we know who that shadow is. The darkness within us can't be done away with by swinging a magic sword. 

But in the film, evil has been comfortably externalized in a villain, the wizard Kumo/Cob, who can simply be killed, thus solving all problems. 

In modern fantasy (literary or governmental), killing people is the usual solution to the so-called war between good and evil. My books are not conceived in terms of such a war, and offer no simple answers to simplistic questions. 

Though I think the dragons of my Earthsea are more beautiful, I admire the noble way Goro's dragons fold their wings. The animals of his imagination are seen with much tenderness ? I liked the horse-llama's expressive ears. I very much liked the scenes of plowing, drawing water, stabling the animals, and so on, which give the film an earthy and practical calmness ? a wise change of pace from constant conflict and "action". In them, at least, I recognised my Earthsea.