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Answerman - Why Can't Anime Get A Wide Theatrical Release?


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Paiprince



Joined: 21 Dec 2013
Posts: 593
PostPosted: Sun Jan 22, 2017 5:28 am Reply with quote
Jose Cruz wrote:

Anyway, even most serious western film fans are scared of anime that's not super mainstream like Miyazaki's or Kon's films. I showed Hidamari Sketch to my cousin who had watched arthouse stuff like Tarkovsky and Bresson and she started screaming that "asians are all pedophiles". I guess the fact is that trOO otaku anime is just too much for most people to handle. Wink


I bet she was white. They tend to throw racial remarks without realizing they're insulting someone. And it's towards Asians too so double the free pass.
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leafy sea dragon



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PostPosted: Sun Jan 22, 2017 5:44 am Reply with quote
DerekL1963 wrote:
That's not a real-world example, it's fan wank. In the real world, for every ten people who register maybe three will actually buy a ticket - the rest will be people who can't actually be bothered or for whom the showing will be at an inconvenient time or location.


Or if they're like me, something comes up that prevents them from seeing the movie. In the case of the most recent example, One Piece Film Gold, I came down with a fever the Saturday before the screenings began that lasted the entire duration of when it showed. (I did see both of the Dragon Ball Z movies though.)

Or something might come up that takes precedence, especially if the person is in a line of work where people might suddenly ask them to do something at a moment's notice.

I was recently at an event where volunteers just wrote their names down onto a spreadsheet on the event's Google+ page. It made me wonder how they dealt with volunteers who didn't show up, if they accounted for them at all.

stararnold wrote:
This is why Hollywood needs to continue the trend of producing live-action movies based on anime and manga in the decades to come. Problem is some people would rather that the stories originating in anime and manga respectively (even the underappreciated ones) remain forgotten by western society in general forever than to see an American film studio produce an alternate telling of an anime or a manga with international/American non-otaku type viewers as its target audience.

Think about it. The currently-in-the-works American live-action Star Blazers movie, which Shoji Nishizaki (the adopted son of Star Blazers' creator Yoshinobu Nishizaki) is co-executive producing, is still a good idea, especially if there is no guarantee o fStar Blazers 2202: Warriors of Love getting the wide U.S. theatrical release treatment or even being a mainstream deal in america like Doctor Who. In this case scenario, the otaku will have their Star Blazers to enjoy while the non-otaku viewers will have their version to enjoy. It's like serving ice cream in multiple flavors.


While it's a good way to get a franchise into the American mainstream, there are going to be two issues stemming from that. The first is that there may be a problem where the movie is what people know of the franchise from and not realize it was an adaptation of something (such as Shrek or 300). The second is that the hardcore fans will inevitably object to it, if not its existence then the changes done to the story. I mean, Death Note is currently in production, and the responses here have been mixed, to say the least.

Quote:
It's sad but true that anime remains quite niche, and most of the reason is flat refusal for people to give it a chance. I think Justin's 2-axis theory on the reasons people will give a movie or a show a chance are pretty accurate, by the way. I think it's sad that he estimates only 10% of adults even know what anime is; among my group I think about 10% are legitimate anime fans who have favorite shows and buy and read manga, about 50% like a couple shows or at least enjoy the aesthetic and can make some Dragonball or FMA references. I don't know anyone who doesn't know what it is.

But then I live in SoCal and have a heavily Asian tilted friends group. Maybe it's different elsewhere. Sad


I thnk it also depends on what you define as knowing what anime is. Does it include everyone who knows Japan has a bustling industry for animated works of fiction that isn't in-betweening? Would you get more specific and include only people who can name at least one series that they confidently know is an anime and actually is one (as opposed to, say, The Powerpuff Girls or Avatar: The Last Airbender, which are frequently confused for anime by non-fans)? Would you be even more specific than that and include only people who can name at least several series and some creators? Would you include only people who can identify what anime looks like enough that, when given a test, they can correctly identify most of them?

I also live in southern California, but the truth is that the culture here is incredibly fragmented. You could ask a local in Irvine and expect everyone to at least be familiar with the concept of anime. On the other hand, you could ask a local in Hollywood (I mean the city, not the movie business) and they might not even be aware Pokémon is an anime.

xchampion wrote:
The smug arrogance of the person asking the question is irratating to say the least. I don't know about The Nut Job 2 since it has not been released yet but Sing was far from mediocre. It was a very enjoyable movie. I know several people who don't like anime because of the people who are like the OP. There are far more of them then there needs to be


Another thing is that The Nut Job, the first one, was profitable enough to get a sequel. That's a big deal because The Nut Job was incredibly disadvantaged from the get-go as a small studio's first movie, something they pretty much bet the farm on. It was also up against some tough competition that year too. And I can see why it succeeded: It appeals to children very well, as it was essentially a movie where every character is Scrat. The thing is that it has limited appeal to any market beyond that, but as has been proven time and time again, with movies like Minions and the live action Alvin movies, that this is the only demographic you really need to make lots of money.

I used to assist a movie producer. I think this is a story I mentioned before, but I think it's worth mentioning again, but he told me that children are by far the most valuable demographic for movies, as they not only are the ones most likely to obtain merchandise, they are also the audience most likely to go watch a movie repeatedly in theaters. (If you've ever worked with little kids, you'll know they love experiencing something they like again and again.) On top of that, kids are almost always accompanied by their parents or guardians, meaning what is one movie ticket for an adult-oriented movie will be two or three tickets for a kid movie.

This approach has been working superbly for Illumination. They are very, very good at the fast-paced slapstick that kids love. I don't know how much there is in Sing (probably not a lot, at least less than that of The Secret Life of Pets, which I did see and I liked, but quite flawed in its writing), but the trailers I've seen has a good amount of physical Chaplin-esque movements.

I think as it stands, the anime fandom is stuck in a tug of war. On one side, you have people who want anime to be more popular, and they are willing to make compromises necessary for that to happen. On the other, you have the ones who would rather it remain a niche and don't care how bad they look to other people. The people you mention who get turned off of anime because of the fans' repulsive behavior, well, I wouldn't be surprised if that's the reaction some of the fans in the latter group want.

CrownKlown wrote:
This kind of ties to kid thing, but Westerners can't differentiate a genre from a medium.

In the west, even in Europe, animated features are a kid thing, sure there is the occasional Waltz with Bashir and Illusionist, but as stated in the article most view animated works as the genre kids film.

Animation in reality is a medium not a genre, its more appropriate to say film, tv, animation then it is say animation, horror, comedy etc. Animation itself has everyone of these subgenres whether its drama, comedy, horror, action, and even sub genres, thriller, supernatural, period pieces. In reality there is probably an anime or animated film for everyone, but they just can't get around that stigma made in the first point.

I mean you don't have to go any further than everyone, even in the West, beloved Miyazaki and I can remeber a showing of Princess Monoke where a bunch of parents took their kids to it, and in the first few seconds dude gets his head shot of with an arrow. And you can imagine the reaction.


Nah, I am pretty sure the Animation Age Ghetto exists in Japan too, and that all those anime shows in the late night are basically geek TV, and not in the geek-chic way that's popular in the United States. The highest-rated anime are all family entertainment: Shin-chan, One Piece, Sazae-san, Pretty Cure.

Stuart Smith wrote:
Anime doesn't really need mainstream Americans getting into it, so that's not exactly a bad thing. Medium context it's also important. Critics were calling Sausage Party groundbreaking and amazing simply because it was an animated movie not aimed at children, despite the fact it was one big penis joke and made Family Guy look tame by comparison. Obviously to an anime fan an animated show or movie not being aimed at children is nothing new, so why anime fans care so much about what the public or movie critics think and chasing after their approval always baffles me. Chances are you're going to be in a better position to enjoy or judge anime than they are.

-Stuart Smith


Two reasons: For some, anime is a social experience, and more people being into anime means more social gatherings; and the more niche something is, the more likely the companies serving these niches could become unprofitable.

It can get mighty frustrating to someone like myself, as none of my offline friends are into anime. That makes it impossible to discuss anime with them (besides explaining it to someone who's willing tolisten).

Eri94 wrote:
Justin I like how you say matter-of-factly that no rational person blindly hates anime in the west and then you go on to explain in detail how most westerners do exactly that.


He didn't. He said that no rational person in a position to profit from anime being in movie theaters would turn it down, and he said that most westerners are not curious enough to go watch anime unless their friends are into it.

L'Imperatore wrote:
Megiddo wrote:
Americans at large don't care about 2D animation.

Strangely enough, they did care... at least until Atlantis: The Lost Empire.


Well, we'll see what happens when My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic hits wide release theaters this October, which is not only 2-D animation, but done using Flash/Animate. (It is still computer-drawn, but in a vastly different way than the 3-D that'sprevalent in western animated film these days.)

epicwizard wrote:
Quote:
It's too foreign, too animated, and too not-what-they-like

Too animated? What do you mean by that?


The Animation Age Ghetto, the belief that animated works of fiction must be for kids and thus would not appeal to older people.

Jose Cruz wrote:
Well, resistance to try something new because you don't know it, it's foreign and different from what you are used to consuming can be though as "closed mindness", "prejudice agains foreign culture (a form of xenophobia)".


Sticking to what you're familiar with isn't automatically xenophobia or prejudice. It's simple risk aversion. I think in most cases, they don't want to watch foreign novies not because of a grudge or fear against foreigners, but because they are not certain they'll like it. Nothing more, nothing less.

It's the reason behind those "From the creator of ______" or "From the mind that gave you ______" or "The studio that gave you ______ brings you ______!" taglines: They're telling you, "If you liked this past work, you will like this one too."
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matt78



Joined: 25 Jul 2015
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 22, 2017 8:01 am Reply with quote
Lord Oink wrote:

Disney is also at the point of remaking their classic 2D movies as live action because they feel kids won't watch old 2D movies like Beauty and the Beast or Cinderella anymore


I don't think this is true. All Disney is doing is milking the success of their animated classics by turning them into live action. It's easy money for them and requires little work since the script is basically already done for them and all they need to do is adapt them for live action.

I think another problem with getting anime into theaters is that Hollywood makes way to many movies already and there just isn't room for them. There is to much competition. I've seen to many movies here that last a week and then its gone and replaced with something else.
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fathomlessblue



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PostPosted: Sun Jan 22, 2017 2:43 pm Reply with quote
A perfectly valid response, but like people have already mentioned, the tone of the question was groan-inducing. Bad-mouthing western productions as mediocre despite (or perhaps for) being popular just because they aren't to your taste? Implying some sort of imperialistic conspiracy to prevent foreign movies from succeeding? Seriously? Take off your weeb glasses a moment & stop acting so precious. Anime isn't some fragile & all-encompassing treasure that you need to play the role of guardian for. Distribution relies on estimated sales based on logistical viability & marketability/perceived demand rather than some sinister cabal trying to keep your personal interests out of the mainstream. Start looking at things from a business point of view rather than from blind fan enthusiasm.
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EricJ2



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PostPosted: Sun Jan 22, 2017 3:08 pm Reply with quote
matt78 wrote:
Lord Oink wrote:

Disney is also at the point of remaking their classic 2D movies as live action because they feel kids won't watch old 2D movies like Beauty and the Beast or Cinderella anymore


I don't think this is true. All Disney is doing is milking the success of their animated classics by turning them into live action. It's easy money for them and requires little work since the script is basically already done for them and all they need to do is adapt them for live action.


Exactly: Disney tends to be overconfident and greenlight three movies at once--And when Maleficent became a hit (and back before Looking Glass, when they thought we still liked Tim Burton's Alice), they greenlit three live-action fairytales and three villain-backstories at once. And by the time the third one came out, Jungle Book and Cinderella were hits, so that exponentially meant another SIX. Minus whatever projects the Pete's Dragon remake destroyed.
And when they feel they have to have Bill Murray, Christopher Walken and Helena Bonham Carter sing the old Disney standards, even if they don't fit in the tones of the new movies, just because they think the audience would "expect" them, I think we can say that Disney is in no immediate danger of thinking the public has "forgotten" the classics. Quite the reverse, in fact. ("Well, they didn't sing 'Candle on the Water' in the Pete's Dragon remake, there's your problem!")

Oink is sort of indirectly skating on the point about other studios, though, and why we're getting so many remakes:
A) Studios right now are (literally) afraid of original screenplays, and want properties the audience already knows going in, so they don't have to explain them, but
B) The realization is setting in that the audience misses the 80's/90's days (even if they weren't alive to see them) when it was actually fun to go to theaters, and hope that if they invoke enough of the holy names, they can conjure up the spirits.

Quote:
I think another problem with getting anime into theaters is that Hollywood makes way to many movies already and there just isn't room for them. There is to much competition. I've seen to many movies here that last a week and then its gone and replaced with something else.


Again, the problem--as we explained on the FIRST page--is the basic question of who gets them into theaters: The companies most interested in seeing anime get a dub and national disk release are the anime companies, and they're not studios.
They can't do what studios do, and they're lucky to be big enough to get a one-week event screening like Funi or Viz.

It's a nice issue to explore, but when we get "Why can't I see Sailor Moon R when we have to have Secret Life of Pets in theaters?", all the fan persecution-complex crying in the world isn't going to help that.
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Nimitz



Joined: 17 May 2009
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 22, 2017 5:21 pm Reply with quote
Paiprince wrote:

I bet she was white. They tend to throw racial remarks without realizing they're insulting someone.


I really think you need to think about what you said there.
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Jose Cruz



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PostPosted: Sun Jan 22, 2017 6:52 pm Reply with quote
fathomlessblue, well thing is that a lot of the most popular anime is "pretty easy to consume popular entertainment" like the most popular Ghibli films or DB just like mainstream hollywood blockbusters. It's not like Tarkovsky which is inaccessible to people with knowledge of film, very long attention spans and patience to watch it. So, there is no simple rational reason why it's not mainstream outside of Japan.

The reasons are complex and are essentially part of a social equilibrium where: almost nobody watches anything that's not Hollywood, hence, everybody will only know and recommend Hollywood stuff while expectations for almost everybody regarding films remain entrenched into the Hollywood style of film making leading to a rejection of anything that's different from Hollywood just because it's different from Hollywood.

EricJ2 wrote:
Oh, yeah, I remember: The photo-realistic quality of the STILL photos of the CGI characters had a lot of people talking in the industry about whether "computers would replace actors someday"...
And then the movie came out. Where the characters had to talk and move, ie., move like the characters in a '00 Squaresoft game.
Very quickly, the industry stopped talking about actors being "replaced", and weren't talking about it anymore. Laughing


Well, even if CGI manages to be perfectly photorealistic it will still not substitute live action because live action is much cheaper and easier to make. So only blockbusters would be under consideration for photorealistic CGI.

leafy sea dragon wrote:
Nah, I am pretty sure the Animation Age Ghetto exists in Japan too, and that all those anime shows in the late night are basically geek TV, and not in the geek-chic way that's popular in the United States. The highest-rated anime are all family entertainment: Shin-chan, One Piece, Sazae-san, Pretty Cure.


Your Name nor Princess Mononoke are not family films (IMO they are for teenagers and young adults) and are 2 of the top 5 highest grossing Japanese films of all time. While films like Wind Rises, Porco Rosso and Only Yesterday are obviously adult and were the highest grossing Japanese films of their respective release years.

While Seinen and Josei manga represents about 50% of all manga publications and sales. A strictly adult manga like Vagabond sold 100 million books in Japan, a country of 120 million people. Adult manga books sells in higher quantities than movie tickets in Japan.

Among TV shows, Space Brothers was adapted from a seinen manga and was consistently at the top 10 TV ratings for animation.

And One Piece, despite being a shounen manga is read 90% of the time by adults. While shounen manga in general is read by people from ages ranging from under 10 to over 60, while the most voracious consumers of shounen manga are not kids but 15-25 year olds. And many shounen titles would be easily classified as R-rating if adapted in the US as movies. For instance, my favorite anime/manga of all time is a shounen title about a boxer who kills his friend in a fight and gets seriously depressed, spending his time in bars drinking: Shounen manga not remotely similar to Nick and Cartoon Network stuff.

So no, the comic/animation age ghetto (since in Japan people regard anime as being part of manga), if it exists in Japan, is way less restrictive than in the Western world. That explains why Japan produces like 50 times more minutes of adult animation than the US and why the average Japanese buys around 500 times more pages of comics than the average American.

Still I was reading a sociology book about adult manga and it shows some Japanese people saying it's wrong for 40 year olds to read manga because it "shows things" instead of forcing people to use their brains to imagine things like a novel does. The exact same criticism however applies to live action film (I don't think nobody makes this sort of criticism). The book also claims that even in the late 1990's there was still some stigma in Japan regarding manga. I am talking about manga here but in Japan people usually think in those terms: a 60 year old Japanese priest said in 1998 that his opinion of manga was improved after he watched Princess Mononoke, before that he was angry at his son because he had become a manga artist.

I think that as of 2017 the stigma regarding manga has been mostly eradicated in Japan though. It's pretty much regarded as just a medium for fiction already like novels or live action film: If you log into Amazon Japan you see manga stylizations everywhere.

Japan though is a very "cookie cuter" society so nerdyness which is obsessive interest with pop culture is not well regarded by society. There you are only supposed to be obsessed with your work and not with pop culture.

Quote:
Stuart Smith wrote:
Anime doesn't really need mainstream Americans getting into it, so that's not exactly a bad thing. Medium context it's also important. Critics were calling Sausage Party groundbreaking and amazing simply because it was an animated movie not aimed at children, despite the fact it was one big penis joke and made Family Guy look tame by comparison. Obviously to an anime fan an animated show or movie not being aimed at children is nothing new, so why anime fans care so much about what the public or movie critics think and chasing after their approval always baffles me. Chances are you're going to be in a better position to enjoy or judge anime than they are.

-Stuart Smith


Two reasons: For some, anime is a social experience, and more people being into anime means more social gatherings; and the more niche something is, the more likely the companies serving these niches could become unprofitable.

It can get mighty frustrating to someone like myself, as none of my offline friends are into anime. That makes it impossible to discuss anime with them (besides explaining it to someone who's willing tolisten).


In my case I tried to make some of my coworkers to read manga by giving some manga to them. Some of them didn't try to read anything while one tried and said to me it was "weird". Anyway, I now just restrict myself to talk about manga/anime to people who are also into it. Although I only have about 3-4 offline friends who are into that.


Last edited by Jose Cruz on Sun Jan 22, 2017 7:35 pm; edited 2 times in total
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DerekL1963
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 22, 2017 7:21 pm Reply with quote
Jose Cruz wrote:
fathomlessblue, well thing is that a lot of the most popular anime is "pretty easy to consume popular entertainment" like the most popular Ghibli films or DB just like mainstream hollywood blockbusters. It's not like Tarkovsky which is inaccessible to people with knowledge of film, very long attention spans and patience to watch it. So, there is no simple rational reason why it's not mainstream outside of Japan.


Yes, there is a simple rational reason - one that's been linked to multiple times in this thread. Anime movies do not make significant money.

Why do you find facts so hard to grasp?
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Jose Cruz



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PostPosted: Sun Jan 22, 2017 7:24 pm Reply with quote
@DerekL1963, Because that's the outcome not the cause. The question is "why they don't make money?".

Paiprince wrote:
Jose Cruz wrote:

Anyway, even most serious western film fans are scared of anime that's not super mainstream like Miyazaki's or Kon's films. I showed Hidamari Sketch to my cousin who had watched arthouse stuff like Tarkovsky and Bresson and she started screaming that "asians are all pedophiles". I guess the fact is that trOO otaku anime is just too much for most people to handle. Wink


I bet she was white. They tend to throw racial remarks without realizing they're insulting someone. And it's towards Asians too so double the free pass.


Yep she is white.

leafy sea dragon wrote:
Sticking to what you're familiar with isn't automatically xenophobia or prejudice. It's simple risk aversion. I think in most cases, they don't want to watch foreign novies not because of a grudge or fear against foreigners, but because they are not certain they'll like it. Nothing more, nothing less.

It's the reason behind those "From the creator of ______" or "From the mind that gave you ______" or "The studio that gave you ______ brings you ______!" taglines: They're telling you, "If you liked this past work, you will like this one too."


I still think that ethnocentrism plays a role as well. Talking to American and British film fans showed to me that they usually regard foreign stuff as automatically and inherently inferior to original English language stuff.

Instead of thinking: "well, if this is so popular in that foreign group of people maybe it's good", they think: "that's some weird foreign stuff, I don't like it because it doesn't fell like domestic stuff, who cares what these foreigners think of it". Yes, I even said to one that movie X is well regarded in it's country Y and they made the joke a "oh, but so what if a bad movie is well regarded in Germany".

Ethnocentrism is very deeply ingrained in the psyche of many and probably most people.
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leafy sea dragon



Joined: 27 Oct 2009
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 22, 2017 8:33 pm Reply with quote
Jose Cruz wrote:
@DerekL1963, Because that's the outcome not the cause. The question is "why they don't make money?".


You youself provided an anecdote as to why that is the case.

Jose Cruz wrote:
In my case I tried to make some of my coworkers to read manga by giving some manga to them. Some of them didn't try to read anything while one tried and said to me it was "weird". Anyway, I now just restrict myself to talk about manga/anime to people who are also into it. Although I only have about 3-4 offline friends who are into that.


You witnessed firsthand that most people are not really interested in something that they're not accustomed to. Manga and anime are one of those things: Though they gained a foothold in the western mainstream in the past, they don't anymore, and even during then, that moment was brief. The first two Pokémon movies came out in wide release right during that window, and the boat has left.

Jose Cruz wrote:
Your Name nor Princess Mononoke are not family films (IMO they are for teenagers and young adults) and are 2 of the top 5 highest grossing Japanese films of all time. While films like Wind Rises, Porco Rosso and Only Yesterday are obviously adult and were the highest grossing Japanese films of their respective release years.

While Seinen and Josei manga represents about 50% of all manga publications and sales. A strictly adult manga like Vagabond sold 100 million books in Japan, a country of 120 million people. Adult manga books sells in higher quantities than movie tickets in Japan.

Among TV shows, Space Brothers was adapted from a seinen manga and was consistently at the top 10 TV ratings for animation.

And One Piece, despite being a shounen manga is read 90% of the time by adults. While shounen manga in general is read by people from ages ranging from under 10 to over 60, while the most voracious consumers of shounen manga are not kids but 15-25 year olds. And many shounen titles would be easily classified as R-rating if adapted in the US as movies. For instance, my favorite anime/manga of all time is a shounen title about a boxer who kills his friend in a fight and gets seriously depressed, spending his time in bars drinking: Shounen manga not remotely similar to Nick and Cartoon Network stuff.


They would be teen and adult stories, but by western standards. However, the output of the likes of Mamoru Hosoda, Hayao Miyazaki, and most of Makoto Shinkai (including your name) are coming of age stories, usually with young protagonists. They may have some swearing, some nudity and/or suggestive scenes, and some violence, but Japan has a different line on what's considered acceptable for children. I would consider movies like your name and The Wind Rises to be family films, or at least that's their intent.

Also, according to the Unofficial One Piece Podcast, the viewership breakdown of the anime is mostly children, with teenagers and adults in the minority. The manga has a cosmopolitan audience, but the anime does not. So while there doesn't seem to be a Comic Book Ghetto in Japan, I do believe the Animation Age Ghetto does exist there, albeit in a different form than it is in other countries.
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Top Gun



Joined: 28 Sep 2007
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 22, 2017 8:47 pm Reply with quote
Jose Cruz wrote:
@DerekL1963, Because that's the outcome not the cause. The question is "why they don't make money?".

Because, by and large, American audiences aren't very interested in foreign films. And if you ask "why?" to that in turn, I think the answer is fairly simple: they've never really had to be interested. Generally speaking, Hollywood has been the global nexus of film production for as long as major film releases have been a thing. For a variety of reasons, American pop culture has become internationally ubiquitous, so if you live in many other countries, you're going to be accustomed to viewing foreign-made content as a matter of course. However, if you grow up in the US, all the big-ticket movies are coming from your own backyard, so there's no void to fill with content produced elsewhere. It's not close-mindedness or xenophobia nearly so much as it is being accustomed to having all your entertainment needs fulfilled by domestic productions. I've honestly felt the same way about anime myself at times: if it had happened that the American animation industry produced significant amounts of narrative-focused works from a wide variety of genres, I probably never would have looked externally for those needs to be met either.
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Afezeria



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PostPosted: Sun Jan 22, 2017 8:49 pm Reply with quote
Here comes a classic reason as to pertaining why anime still can't make it big apart from the aforementioned examples, the stigma of being perceived as nothing but being a medium for erotic artwork. Sure, adult films with sexual scenes still can garnered high ticket sales but setting aside that it is a completely platform, since animation is profoundly believed to be something for kids, not many adult will come flocking to the cinema near you that showcased an animation with scenes that many would believe to be only available in live action movies, and I don't think Anomalisa (a pretty brave attempt by the way but I think it looked weird), a stop motion animation made for adult make it production cost back either (maybe because Charlie Kaufman's work is often hard to sell). Sure, your usual Japanese mainstream animation isn't filled with perverted scenes from left to right but the stigma it had received from whatever that caused it in the first place (probably because of those old OVA) will help cement the fact that an anime being screened on the big screen would find a hard time to obtain a lot of money, if it doesn't come from well known original works like Pokemon, Digimon, Ghibli stuff, Yu Gi Oh and so on. I have doubts regarding Kimi no na wa making some good sets in the US once the airing date is reached but the fate isn't certain.
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leafy sea dragon



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PostPosted: Sun Jan 22, 2017 9:08 pm Reply with quote
Afezeria wrote:
Here comes a classic reason as to pertaining why anime still can't make it big apart from the aforementioned examples, the stigma of being perceived as nothing but being a medium for erotic artwork.


Based on my personal experiences, at least, anime is a hard sell for people not already into it most often because they'll dismiss it as kids' stuff.

And considering every anime that's broken through into the American mainstream has been aimed at kids (Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball Z, Naruto), that's an understandable misconception. (Well, Fullmetal Alchemist, Attack on Titan, Bleach, and One-Punch Man are ALMOST there, but not quite.)
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DerekL1963
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 22, 2017 9:47 pm Reply with quote
Jose Cruz wrote:
@DerekL1963, Because that's the outcome not the cause. The question is "why they don't make money?".


It's cause and effect. As Justin obliquely pointed out - most anime films aren't that accessible to non-Japanese audiences. (And that includes many Ghibli films.) The degree varies by film, and is in fact near zero for some, but it's there nonetheless. (And it's something many folks in anime fandom don't grasp. They make the all-to-common mistake of generalizing from their singular experience.)

Decades of disappointing numbers from the widely acknowledged King of Anime (Miyazaki)... gives Western movie executives little incentive to keep trying.

And that's on top of the excellent answers provided by Top Gun and Leafy Sea Dragon.
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Vizo



Joined: 19 May 2015
Posts: 167
PostPosted: Mon Jan 23, 2017 8:27 pm Reply with quote
"Much as some of us would like it to be a giant tentpole event that everyone in the world gets excited about, anime is not that, and probably never will be."

I came to that realization last year. It's kind of sad but at least anime is popular enough to continue to exist, have a fanbase, conventions, and networks.Wink
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