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Katsuhiro Otomo's Steamboy in Theaters

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the if-you-haven't-seen-akira-you-suck dept.

echocharlie writes "Steamboy is rolling into US theaters on March 18. The movie features the notable return of Katsuhiro Otomo, who hasn't directed an animated film since Akira, so big things can be expected. The film opened in Japan earlier to mostly rave reviews. The english cast features Anna Paquin, Alfred Molina, and Patrick Stewart. That's interesting casting since all three have had prominent roles in comic book movie adapatations (X-men, Spider-Man 2, and X-men respectively), not to mention Mr. Stewart's famous sci-fi ties. Anime films without Pokémon in their titles haven't fared well at the US Box office (see Appleseed, Tokyo Godfathers, Ghost in the Shell 2, et al.). Hopefully with an adequate number of theaters carrying the film, Katsuhiro Otomo's latest opus will gain the exposure it deserves."

13 of 215 comments (clear)

  1. Why? by Jukashi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why does everything "good" have to be liked by MILLIONS of people? Isnt that the mindset that creates steaming piles like "Be Cool" - make the most bland-least-offensive-lowest-common-denominator-dr ivel possible to maximize profits? F that.

    1. Re:Why? by fm6 · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Studio Ghibli movies cost a lot to make. If a lot of people don't go to see them, distributors and investors will lose interest, and there won't be any more.

      Entertaining a mass market is always a tradeoff. On the one extreme you have whorish content-free Hollywood crap that aims to please hundreds of millions of mindless drones. At the other extreme you have navel-gazing art films that aim to please only themselves. There's nothing wrong with trying to find a place in the middle.

  2. Box Office Performance by PhiznTRG · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The problem is not necessarily public acceptance but studio marketing. Looking at the linked box office data it is pretty obvious that movies released to very few theatres (e.g. "Cowboy Bebop") don't do as well as movies heavily marketed and released to thousands of theatres. (On "Tokyo Godfathers" - that isn't the type of movie that the general public would like anyway - crossdressing old men in cartoons are not kid-friendly...)

    "Spirited Away", which did pretty well despite all the effort by Disney to not market the movie, shows that anime can be successful when done right. The fact that it took an Oscar to get the public to notice the movie is sad, when Buena Vista could have had a real hit on it's hands. There are more and more Miyazaki movies on DVD in places like Target now but the marketing is still minimal (though I have seen commercials for Naussica).

    There is a disconnect between what the Adult Swim alpha geek will consider good anime and what will do well in theatres (see Pokemon). The influx of Japanese manga and anime is growing, though, I suspect that we will see more movies released in theatres once the studious catch on to the growing trend. Kids that under five now will not think that Anime is strange or foreign, which will directly impact public acceptance of anime as a legitimate movie choice.

    1. Re:Box Office Performance by hashbrownie · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Looking at the linked box office data it is pretty obvious that movies released to very few theatres (e.g. "Cowboy Bebop") don't do as well as movies heavily marketed and released to thousands of theatres.

      The same could be said for most products. For instance, cookies sold in very few stores don't do as well as cookies sold in many stores.

      Trust me, there isn't a conspiracy here. If Buena Vista thought that investing $10 million more in marketing would have assured $20 million more in box office receipts, they would have done it.

      "Spirited Away", which did pretty well despite all the effort by Disney to not market the movie, shows that anime can be successful when done right. The fact that it took an Oscar to get the public to notice the movie is sad ...

      Sorry to burst your bubble, but the Academy Awards aren't a pure meritocracy. Studios spend lots of money on "For Your Consideration" ads touting their pics for Oscars. Did you ever consider that Buena Vista spent its marketing budget on winning an Oscar for Spirited Away instead of on highway billboards? It's a formula that's worked for indie pics in the past, and it worked in this case as well.

      I know it's frustrating that anime is slow to catch on here, but there is no conspiracy. Michael Eisner would sell his grandmother to add 1% to Disney's profits.

      --
      Fax Baba!
  3. English Dubs by Xetrov · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'll tell you why noone wants to watch English dubbed anime -- because it is crap.

    Surely I'm not the only person who has noticed how dull and lifeless the voice actors usually are in English dubs. It seems they try to time their words to fit the mouth movements of the characters, making the speech sound very unnatural. They also have no emotion.
    It could be that the English actors dont care, maybe it is "just a cartoon" to them.

    I watch a lot of anime. Always in Japanese with English subs. Which brings me to the next point - why do foreign movies have to be dubbed? Few things annoy me more than people who will not watch a movie simply because they "have to read" it.

    1. Re:English Dubs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      See Cowboy Bebop, where an English VA beats Megumi all over.

      See Fruits Basket, an anime so perfectly cast I have YET to meet a fan of the show that thought badly of ANY many char english VA.

      See Tenchi, another legendary cast...many of whom are old school Disney VA's.

      There exhist many good VA's some of them are better than others, some of them are REALLY tallented...some of the SUCK ASS and were HORRIBLE mistakes.

      But truthfully alot of what people prefer have nothing to do with quaility and EVERYTHING to do with preconcieved notions based on which ever language they saw first of a show they like.

      BTW the anime club at our university REGULARLY votes to watch dub over sub...we usually show choice clips from the main chars on both. This semester when 3/1 three dubs voted, one sub voted.

    2. Re:English Dubs by natrius · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Few things annoy me more than people who will not watch a movie simply because they "have to read" it.

      People watch movies to be entertained. If they don't want to read subtitles, that's their deal. It's their free time.

      Few things annoy me more than self-righteous people.

    3. Re:English Dubs by echocharlie · · Score: 2, Insightful
      I'll tell you why noone wants to watch English dubbed anime -- because it is crap.

      I'll agree that there's a lot of crap out there, but there is also stuff that is dubbed well too. You do a disservice to the hard-working actors and directors that take pride in the job they do. As the companies gain experience, the dubbing jobs have been progressively getting better. It's amazing the difference a few years makes.

      Compare the first dubbed episode of Ranma to the latest episodes of Inuyasha and you'll see what I mean. Both series are dubbed by the same company (Viz) by the same voice director using the same dubbing studio (Ocean Studios). The difference is dramatic. The voice talent pool has been growing as well.

      Surely I'm not the only person who has noticed how dull and lifeless the voice actors usually are in English dubs.

      Yes, they sound duller than their Japanese counterparts, but that's a cultural thing. If the English voices were instructed to use the same timber and intonations as the Japanese actors, they'd be accused of extreme over-acting. What is normally accepted in Japanese language and conversation doesn't translate well into English.

      It seems they try to time their words to fit the mouth movements of the characters, making the speech sound very unnatural.

      That's what the whole dubbing (ADR: Active Dialogue Replacement) process is about. If only we didn't care as much about matching lip flap. The Japanese lip flaps often don't match up as well as the audio on the English dubs! I suspect we are too concerned with the finished product ending up looking like a low-budget kung-fu movie.

      I watch a lot of anime. Always in Japanese with English subs. Which brings me to the next point - why do foreign movies have to be dubbed? Few things annoy me more than people who will not watch a movie simply because they "have to read" it.

      Foreign movies have to be dubbed because the market conditions dictate it. There are statistics that show that dubbed version of movies will outsell subbed versions. And it's not even close, most of the time. Luckily, for us diehard fans DVD's give us the best of both worlds.

      --
      AnimeNEXT anime convention
  4. Re:The real question to me is.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Look at who is touting these great anime films: Cmdr Taco. QED.

  5. Re:It's going to have a tough time, because... by ajs · · Score: 2, Insightful

    [Examples of movies that translate poorly to English, as a reason that they'll "have a hard time" in the US]

    Porco Rosso [...] Princess Mononoke [...] My neighbor Totoro / Totoro [...] Naussica of the Valley of the Winds [...] Ghost in the Shell [...] Perfect Blue [...] Wings of Honneamise

    Ok, so let's look at the movies that we Americans DO like for examples of those excellent title ideas, shall we?

    Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone -- Top grossing movie in the US, 2001. WAY too long, name sounds like someone who should be living on the street. Harkens back to all those bad 70s movies that tried to bring european legends to the big screen. Yuck!

    The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring -- Second highest grossing movie of 2001 in the US. Again, WAY too long. Sounds religious. "Fellowship of the Ring" sounds like it should be the title of a gay porn movie.

    Shrek -- Third highest grossing movie in the US of 2001. I make noises like this when I sneeze. WHAT THE UNDEAD MOTHER OF STARBURST FRUIT-CHEWS WERE THEY THINKING?!

    Monsters, Inc. -- Fourth highest grossing movie in the US of 2001. Here we combine the child-unsafe hint ("Monsters", thus excluding many of your target audience by parent decree) with the mundane horror of American corporate life ("Inc."). Clearly either a) someone was on crack or b) this was translated from the Hindi.

    Rush Hour 2 -- Fifth highest grossing movie in the US of 2001. This is a sequel, so you can't account for naming, but still... a movie about the worst part of everyone's day?! And they TOLD YOU THAT in the title?! Again. Gotta be the crack.

    Go ahead. Pick a year. You can do this with ANY set of movies.

    Japanese movies will continue to do well in the US, with the only barrier being how well they are promoted (of course, the bad Japanese movies won't do any better in the US than they do in Japan... for the most part).

  6. Re:Will the DVD be in Japanese? by westlake · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Too bad Americans are too fucking stupid to read subtitles

    Too much can be lost in a subtitle.

    This is particularly true in readings by a classically trained actor like Stewart, who can breathe life and meaning into words which would otherwise lie dead on the page.

  7. Re:It's going to have a tough time, because... by NitroWolf · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Hey, I'm not disagreeing with you at ALL that there are tons of stupid name for purely American movies. I agree with you 100%.

    That doesn't negate the fact that if Japan wants the movies to be accepted in America, they are going to have to come up with better names, even surpassing the names Americans come up with for our own crap.

  8. Re:Oh Joy! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    You can't categorize anime. It's not a genre and not a form. At best I suppose it could be described as a media - although that is technically incorrect too. Anyway. Anime can be any number of things. There are the dark/dystopian creations like Jin-Roh, Berserk and Metropolis.

    The faerytale stories like Kiki's Delivery Service, Laputa - Castle in the Sky and Spirited Away.

    The cyberpunk stories like Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Serial Experiment Lain, .Hack.

    Besides that there are romantic comedies, totally wacky stuff like FLCL and Excel Saga, very basic fight-driven episodic stuff like Pokémon and Digimon (which most mature anime watchers would prefer to skip) and much much more.

    Let's turn it the other way around. Your question is as broad as: I just don't get why people like movies. Plus the racial overtones... caucasian heroes in every movie and foreigners as evil terrorists.

    Anyway, what is the attraction? Is it the size of the artificially enlarged breasts? Really, I want to know.