Forum - View topicNEWS: 'your name.' Earns 17.6 Billion Yen, is Now 7th Highest-Grossing Film in Japan
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#859141
Posts: 13 |
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Huh...what exactly that movie got so special anyway for that insane popularity?
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OrangeVision
Posts: 87 Location: Finland |
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Well, you're intrigued now, aren't you? It's been a media frenzy in Japan after marketing kickstarted it. Being a high budget domestic animation film catering to the average audience, after them being left hungry post Miyazaki's "retirement". As you can see from the list, Japan has a huge market for these kinds of anime films. Now they want to find the next person to bring in the same scale animation spectacle Miyazaki did. |
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#859141
Posts: 13 |
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Errr you didn't answer my question. |
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OrangeVision
Posts: 87 Location: Finland |
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I'm pretty sure I did. It's a big budgeted animation movie with a star director, in a post-Miyazaki world. They marketed it as such and word to mouth did the rest. |
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#859141
Posts: 13 |
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That doesn't sound enough to amount the popularity. Anything special about the story or something? |
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John Thacker
Posts: 1006 |
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That may be necessary, but it's not sufficient. Marketing only gets you so far (typically not much more than a good opening weekend), and word of mouth only works with a high quality film. The film has legs because it has quality, and I think his question is reasonable. Your answer is painfully inadequate. |
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OrangeVision
Posts: 87 Location: Finland |
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I specifically said that marketing *kickstarted* the phenomenon, not *maintained* it. I explained where the need for this kind of movie inside Japan is coming from. I also did say it's high-budgeted. It being a quality movie is obvious, and countless of those quality movies fall into obscurity every year because they don't have these kinds of circumstances. |
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Dab1za9
Posts: 68 |
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The producer said they kept the budget pretty low so it is not big budgeted movie http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hot-producer-behind-japans-body-937113 |
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OrangeVision
Posts: 87 Location: Finland |
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Okay! I was running on assumption, the movie had some non-stop TV coverage so it very much seemed like they had pretty big marketing wallet. I'd love to see some numbers. |
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kotomikun
Posts: 1205 |
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Saying it's popular just because of marketing is rather cynical, don't you think...? I'll quote my own explanation from the review thread:
"As for why it's popular... the story is sufficiently complex and unique to be engaging (without being overly cerebral or confusing to people who aren't sci-fi-fantasy nerds), but still a straightforward "boy meets girl" story at its heart, so it's easy to relate to the themes and character motivations. The characters are more fleshed-out than usual for this director, and aren't hyper-introverted; but his trademark introversion still plays an important role, starting with the "spontaneous body-swapping long-distance relationship" plot device. It also deliberately subverts some of the established "Shinkai-isms." Very pretty, like all his other movies, and so much pop-rock music that the entire movie is practically a music video. It feels somewhat like the full version of 5cm; most of his other movies were like beta-tests that were interesting and worked for some people, but were too melancholy and/or weird for a general audience." In short, this is the movie people have always wanted Shinkai to make; his previous movies didn't quite have all the right pieces. It's like the equivalent of Princess Mononoke, or, I dunno, Frozen (for the merged Disney-Pixar era). If there was a lot of marketing, it's only because they recognized it had this potential, and it looks like they were right. (Seems to me the absurdly early premiere in the US was partly to make it look like a Cool Thing From America, even though it was made in Japan.) |
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Jayhosh
 Posts: 972 Location: Millmont, Pennsylvania |
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Perhaps it's doing well because it's a good movie and people who see it often recommend it to their friends and family? I feel like it shouldn't be that hard of a phenomena to wrap one's head around.
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Jose Cruz
 Posts: 1773 Location: South America |
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Why it made so much money? Because it's the best animated movie of the past 15 years or so. Since Miyazaki's Spirited Away (2001) that I haven't watched a so powerful and good theatrical animated film.
Last edited by Jose Cruz on Fri Nov 04, 2016 11:56 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18185 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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I haven't seen the movie myself, but based on everything I've heard about it, the popularity can mostly be summed up in two words: "broad appeal." It's a story with powerfully-conveyed themes that anyone can appreciate done in a style which doesn't require one to be an otaku to "get" it. All of the Ghibli films currently ranking above it in the Japanese box office also fit that same mold. |
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Jose Cruz
Posts: 1773 Location: South America |
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@Key, Actually the movie is not without otaku elements (spoiler[body swapping, gender bending, time travel and asteroid impacts] are featured in the plot) what differentiates it from movies like Wolf Children and the previous Shinkai's movies is that it's quality is phenomenal. Its like a Miyazaki movie in its flawless execution.
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18185 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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I wouldn't consider any of those to be specifically otaku elements. All of those have appeared in mainstream movies many times, sometimes even in combinations. |
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