But with Miyazaki, who is awesome, you can't really go wrong. Disney is just trying to push more ticket sales, I'm guessing, because they don't think the fact that it's MIYAZAKI is enough (but then, I guess most Americans or whoever don't really know how he is).
Honestly, to know that, you have to know the anime climate in the US... while we did get a lot of stuff from Japan in the 60's, Mach Go Go Go, Kimba the White Lion, 8 Man, and stuff like that, Anime was pretty sparse in the 80's except for cheap dubs made for cheap VHS. At least in the US... in Europe, there was a boom that rivals our fake little boom after Pokemon... Yatterman was HUGE in Italy and Poland , and Dragonball, Saint Seyia, Kinnikuman (until it was banned for the Nazi character Brocken Jr.) became absolutely huge in non-English speaking European countries... Lupin III had to be renamed, no thanks to the Estate of LeBlanc, writer of the Arsene Lupin novels. but that stuff was infinitely more popular in Europe in the 80's than this stuff is now here. Hence why we use a French term for animation for a Japanese medium.
Now, while there is a market that actually appreciates the finer stories and classic programs, the mass market got into the stuff because of Pokemon, and jumped into the American Mass Market of current Japanese shows, which are either hyper violent series based off of adult comics, Moe series (I could rant about that one ALLLLLLL DAY!), bi-shonen series (which, as much as I hate the excuse of making dudes make out with each other for titilation, is not HALF as bad as Moe in my opinion)... and of course, the kiddy toy commercial bottom of the barrel that pops up every year... Beyblade, Bakugan... that horrible little stuff. And most "anime" fans are people that watch one or two of the hyper violent ultra masculine ones, and go to conventions for gaming only. Trust me... gaming has taken over the anime market.
We only get one or 2 anime movies a year. That's like getting one piece of Indian cinema a year... it's almost an imperceptible amount. I'm glad we get some of the finer ones, like Miazaki's fine work... but they get dropped into art house cinemas for a week. Heck, Pokemon's 3 theatrically released films, Yugioh, and even Digimon (which was a terrible flop over here) got a national release. And frankly, these are the kinds of anime movies that don't translate over here on the business level.... any TV show can become an anime movie over in Japan if the show is successful enough. And "Movie" can mean an actual 90-100 minute film, or a 20-40 (sometimes even less) minute triple bill.
Think about it this way... almost 20 years to make a Simpsons movie... let's say it was a Japanese show in Japan... the first movie would have come out less than a year after its premire... and possibly be 20 minutes long with a 40 minute longer film of another show, and another 20 minute short from yet another show. And after 2 or 3 years, they'd get an annual feature length film. Doraemon films are SO successful in Japan, they actually stopped making original ones, and are just remaking old scripts. While in the US, a TV cartoon show will rarely get a theatrical movie, and it wouldn't be all that successful. Beavis and Butthead, Rugrats, Spongebob, Simpsons and South Park are the only exceptions... and even then, Rugrats was the only one to have more than 1 theatrical movie.
So, what we're getting is essentially a dubbed Disney style animated movie... and even then we get one out of several of them we never hear about. And again, arthouse theaters at midnight... no wonder they had to put Disney stars into it... and I agree... subtract them, and you have an enormous impressive cast.
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And sometimes the story suffers for it.
