Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Can't Anime Get A Wide Theatrical Release?
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CR85747
Posts: 113 |
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If the MLP movie is a success, it'll probably be credited to its existing fanbase. |
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DerekL1963
Subscriber
Posts: 1114 Location: Puget Sound |
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Who else should it be credited to? Certainly there will be some non-fans who go to see it (willingly, not accompanying a fan), but it's not going to be a large percentage. |
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leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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Little girls, maybe. (I don't think the fanbase is big enough to make it a success though, at least by Hollywood standards of success. It'll probably be comparable to a theoretical American Doctor Who theatrical release or, well, Serenity.) |
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DerekL1963
Subscriber
Posts: 1114 Location: Puget Sound |
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Yeah, Serenity is the poster child for what happens when you craft a movie for a narrow fanbase. (And despite the amount of noise they create inside their bubble, that's exactly what Firefly fans (and anime fans) are.) Not a flop, but not anything you could really call a success either... It made half of it's modest take in the first weekend, and was gone without a trace within two weeks. (And basically barely broke even.) On the other hand, look at the Star Trek reboot - despite the howls of the fans, they were crafted to appeal to a wide audience and they made money by the truckload. You can see the same effect in the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies. MLP... I dunno. Their target demographic is tween girls, but there's a not insignificant fandom outside of that range too. Either way, my point is that the movie is unlikely to draw in anyone who isn't already a fan (and their fanbase is huge) - unlike mass-entertainment franchises, kid's franchises rarely stray far from the reservation. They're like anime in that they're at least in part commercials for merch, and you don't sell merch by disappointing your core demographic. |
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leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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I think there is a bigger distinction here that ties in to anime movies having a tough time in American movie theaters: Whether a movie is an original property, a reboot, or what fans of various things call the "long TV episode." Serenity falls into that category, as were the Star Trek movies up to Star Trek: Nemesis. The MLP movie will also be the "long TV episode" type. The only movie in the United States of this sort to have succeeded was The Simpsons Movie, and that's because that's one of the most universal, huge TV shows of all time. Arguably, Pokémon: The First Movie was like this too. But all in all, I'd say these movies don't do too well because they are meant for the dedicated fans. Non-fans would get intimidated by these movies because they fear they'll be locked out (and, in most anime movies based on an existing franchise, they will be). I think that's the underlying reason why these movies have so much trouble attracting outsiders. By contrast, the superhero movies and the JJ Abrams Star Trek movie continuity are reboots. They're starting the franchise over, and no prior knowledge is needed to understand and enjoy these movies. To John Q. Public, this means, "This movie will be accessible to you!" I would say nearly all of the anime movies based on an existing franchise are of the "long TV episode" type. I can understand One Piece Film Gold just fine, but that's because I watch and read One Piece. There is no way the American movie-going public can watch it and not be completely lost. Most of the ones I've seen don't even attempt to explain the basic premise of the series they're based on. They just assume the audience will know. (Heck, even the Pokémon movies have an introduction in later installments, and they still flopped.) Obviously, there are other factors at work for anime theatrical reboots like Rebuild of Evangelion (but I would not consider that very accessible to non-fans either) or anime theatrical original stories like your name, but for those people who think they can introduce the American public to an anime series with something like one of those annual Doraemon movies, it's not going to happen. By the way, I should point out that I agree with you 100%, but that I wanted to point out that American movie-viewers are hesitant to watch anything that doesn't tell the story from the beginning. |
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Jose Cruz
Posts: 1775 Location: South America |
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Which is related to ethnocentrism.
On that age guetto thing: Well, in Japan 40% of college students regard themselves as otaku and the most common interest among these people is animation: http://en.rocketnews24.com/2014/02/01/are-you-otaku-roughly-40-percent-of-japanese-college-students-say-yes/. Apparently anime surpassed manga among young people in Japan as the premier nerd hobby. I wouldn't regard Your Name and Wind Rises family films, in fact it's very hard to find a Japanese "family film" in the American conception of the term. Your Name was clearly made for tennager's and young adults. While Hosoda said that Wolf Children was made for parents of small children and that film was one of the highest grossing in 2012. And Miyazaki even said that Porco Rosso was made for "tired middle aged men" and that film was the highest grossing film in Japan in the year it was released. Wind Rises is a biographical film of the contradictions of being an aero engineer whose life was made by designing killing machines used in WW2. Family films like Pixar and Disney these films are obviously not. And the demographics who watch these films are different from the "family film" demographics. From Up on Poppy Hill for instance was mostly attended by 16 to 30 year olds, just the demographic that does not go to "family films", under 16 year olds made up only ~15% of attendance. (Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Up_on_Poppy_Hill) Finally, One Piece manga and the One Piece anime share the same art style, same writing and the same sensibilities. In Japan manga and anime are not considered strictly separate things like they are in the US (superhero comics and Disney Pixar are completely disconnected), Ghibli even called their films Manga Eiga (manga films). So the animation age ghetto clearly does not exist in Japan in the way we conceive of it in the west, in fact most anime is aimed at young adults (80% of the animation in Japan airs at night). What exists (and is melting away now) is a stigma against manga/anime in Japanese society, specially the more "shoujo style manga aimed at adults" a la K-On. This type of stigma is similar to the stigma Western society had of rap and rock music (thinking that Black Sabbath was satanic) as both popular music and manga are originally youth subcultures. |
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Zin5ki
Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
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The cases you cite certainly waver from the standard "family film" archetype, but what about other Miyazaki favourites? Laputa, Totoro and the like? Surely such works fit the bill quite tightly, given how they are expressly aimed at children yet garner substantial adult followings. (Of course, their older fanbases did not exactly amass in accordance with the director's wishes, though that may be beside the point.) |
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