Forum - View topicINTEREST: Current State of Anime Films Explains Mirai's Reduced Earnings
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GeorgeC
Posts: 795 |
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They rarely make the best films during the peak/boom periods.
"Post-Miyazaki?" I dunno... Hardly anybody who's watched most or all of his films thinks The Wind Rises was very good and I do recall before Princess Mononoke was anointed a "classic" by anime critics that it was not very well-received when it was originally released. A lot of people felt it was dark for Miyazaki. Going back and having watched his films in the 1980s, Mononoke covers a lot of the same territory as Nausicaa and feels like a remake of it. I really think it's been a decent period for anime features in the last 10 years. Ground-breaking like the 1980s (seems retrospect)? Probably not but the consistency's been better than it has been on TV for a long while. |
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Dr.N0
Posts: 149 |
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Is it just me or this article did not explain anything? "Movies make less than before because of the new circumstances where they make less than before."
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louis6578
 Posts: 1866 |
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I guess it's a slow day for ANN. I'd rather they just not make an article at all than create a nothing article like this though.
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Dey21
Posts: 42 |
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I can explain why this movie is flop.
People don't want movie about little kid and some girl. This is boring idea. People want action or romance or romance and action combined with feels and good plot. Thanks, bye. |
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Yuki_Kun45
Exempt from Grammar Rules
 Posts: 725 Location: U.S.A. |
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Yeah there wasn't any real explanation. What is the "current" state they're talking about? Did the movie under-perform just because it's a new IP? This whole article just keeps focusing on Miyazaki for some odd reason without drawing to any point or conclusion. Is it implying anime films are just unprofitable without the name recognition of Miyazaki? I don't know. |
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Psajdak
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Am I asking for too much when I say I want Hosoda to direct Digimon anime again?
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RoninX
Posts: 40 |
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Agreed |
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SHD
Posts: 1752 |
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Blame it on the article title. The original article that ANN used wasn't supposed to be an explanation of anything, it's just a sort of report on the state of anime movies. Anyway, if I had to explain it, my subjective guess is that people may just be getting tired of so many original anime movies (ie. not franchise movies) being essentially variations on the same visuals and story types. Miyazaki was popular because he's Miyazaki, he's kind of like Disney in that sense, whatever he does people will go see it. But we've seen what happens when a Ghibli, or a Ghibli-esque movie doesn't have the "Miyazaki-factor". Then it's just yet another one of a series in similar-looking movies that are, deep down, kind of similar. And they're mostly made by old(er) men who, as time goes on, are less and less connected to younger people in the audience. (This is not about the movies themselves, they may be really good, but personally I'm having a really hard time even pretending to be excited about Ghibli/Ghibli-esque films. I've grown bored of their aesthetics even while Miyazaki was active.) On the other side you have people like Shinkai, who tends to have a really good sense of the sort of sentimentalism that Japanese audience tends to love, plus has very eye-catching visuals. I think Kimi no na wa became such an explosive success because it touched on the post-3/11 trauma and made it into an emotional, sort of catharctic movie experience. Whatever Shinkai releases next it's guaranteed to get lots of viewers, but also I think it's bound to end up being seen as underwhelming after Kimi no na wa. Personally, I hope that whatever is going on will end the dominance of the Ghibli style in non-franchise anime movies, and hopefully open the way for new faces to do new and interesting things. |
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Ambrose7
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Lol no. Wolf Children and Boy and the beast weren't action or romance flicks but they did good. |
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EricJ2
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It seemed to be taking the US view that "All US-released big box-office Japanese anime features are 'Miyazaki movies', even when Hosoda or Yonebayashi direct them." 
For inexperienced US fans who don't really see many anime features, maybe, but it would be ridiculous to even put Isao Takahata's "Princess Kaguya" in the same pigeonhole as "Wind Rises" just for coming from the same studio. (Remember back in the 00's, when we thought all CGI comedies came from "one" studio, and advertised "From the studio that brought you Toy Story and Shrek!"?) With the amount of "art" features, I'm sure Japanese audiences have no trouble whatsoever telling one director or one story from another, and Honoda's reviews on "Boy & the Beast", were, frankly, not great. That's probably why he's a different director. As for why Mirai's box-office is declining, um, maybe it's not very good? FWIW, I'm watching "Mary & the Witch's Flower" on Netflix US at the moment, and that one is very, very much a "post-Ghibli" movie in the classical style. (Even Yonebayashi's Studio Ponoc label is an imitation/parody of the Studio Ghibli logo, with Mary in Totoro's place.) That's probably why it did better with US Fathom audiences, being a different movie, and all. |
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MoonPhase1
Posts: 492 |
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Wolf Children is technically a Romance movie(even if it does get cut short on the romance after a certain incident occurs and i’m not spoiling it for those who haven’t seen it yet). |
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Dr.N0
Posts: 149 |
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Wow, SHD, now that would actually make sense, thank you!
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kotomikun
Posts: 1205 |
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Maybe I imagined it, but I remember seeing an article somewhere saying "Mirai no Mirai" wasn't particularly popular because it came off as just a bland family film. (The corny title might be a factor, too...) Without having seen it, I can't say whether it's bland or not, but Hosoda has now done three straightforward "kid-friendly family story with a slight fantasy twist" movies in a row. Both of the previous ones involved a hairy beast-man father. Wolf Children was the most popular (?) of the three but still not all that creative story-wise; the whole transforming-wolf-kids thing is mostly a plot device to explain how the mother ends up raising kids in a nostalgic rural setting. It's starting to feel weird that this is the same director who made Summer Wars and Girl Who Leapt Through Time. And, yeah, there's Your Name, which through overwhelming popularity seems to have chosen Shinkai as the official "Next Miyazaki (tm)." (Ironically, Hosoda was apparently gunning for that title with all these family films, while Shinkai didn't want to be seen that way.) Making the market more intimidating both for him, with the impossibly high expectations for his next movie, and for everyone else. Japan's anime movies are going through the equivalent of Walt Disney fading out of the picture, so it's going to be a bit weird for a while. |
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Neko-sensei
Posts: 284 |
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Having seen the movie, I think you've hit the nail on the head: it's fair to say that Hosoda's made the same film exactly every three years five times in a row. I really like his stuff, but I walked into Mirai no Mirai with very lowered expectations after The Boy and the Beast, and a post-Your Name audience in Japan is not terribly interested in an anime film targeted mainly at kids. That said, I know a ton of children in elementary school who are excited about the idea of seeing it over their summer vacation, so the movie may have more legs than we expect (since parents often take kids to see films after they've been in theaters for an extended period of time). Also, although this is a bit-off topic, I think Mirai is Hosoda's best film by far—almost like the final draft of the movie he's been trying to reach all these years. He avoids the structural issues that have plagued his previous efforts by eschewing a traditional narrative arc entirely in favor of a cyclical format that mirrors a four-year-old's emotional patterns: in roughly twenty-minute intervals, Kun-chan does something with his family, falls into a funk and has a terrific tantrum, and while running through the courtyard of his (jaw-droppingly well-designed house) stumbles into a window in time allowing him access to the thoughts of another of his family members, helping him to learn empathy—a four-year-old's most important task—and get over his mood. Rinse and repeat to create a film that never outstays its welcome and escapes from the pressure of "tidying up loose ends." Hosoda also sidesteps his penchant for overexpositing his own worlds by avoiding any explanation of Kun-chan's experiences at all; they are simply allowed to happen. Mirai further evades Hosada's tendency to lose his focus in the third act by restricting itself almost entirely to a single character's view of the world from a single place (apart from some mystical or imaginary excursions, it is set completely inside Kun-chan's wonderful house). Add to these three lessons learned from earlier Hosoda productions an achingly naturalistic ear for dialogue, the sense of authenticity that comes from a semi-autobiographical story, gorgeous production and sound design, and a final sequence that literally reduced me to tears of joy, and you have The Film about the way families connect humanity through time. I really hope no one misses it. |
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andyos
ANN Associate Editor
Posts: 263 |
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George C wrote:
'Hardly anybody who's watched most or all of his films thinks The Wind Rises was very good' 89% on Rotten Tomatoes - https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_wind_rises/ 'and I do recall before Princess Mononoke was anointed a "classic" by anime critics that it was not very well-received when it was originally released.' Becoming Japan's number one blockbuster of the time wasn't a good reception? EricJ2 wrote: 'Hosoda's reviews on "Boy & the Beast", were, frankly, not great.' 91% on Rotten Tomatoes (though granted, I've no idea what the Japanese reviews were like) - https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_boy_and_the_beast/ |
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