Top Grossing Japanese films in 2015

Found this interesting piece of box office news:

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news...-listed/.98019

Interestingly, the only "auteur" film in the top 10 is a Hosoda film (the 2nd place). The number of live action manga adaptations is pretty overwhelming as well. I only watched 2 of the movies listed there so far but I am interested in that Hosoda film (its been a while since I watched a Hosoda film, over 3 years), he is a great director.

Japanese cinema today appears to have lost its cultural centrality if compared to the 1950s and 1960s, when Japanese cinema was dominated by auteur films and not by manga adaptations.

Crazy that Pokemon still does that well in Japan.

Well, it's the same with Adam Sandler's films in the US. Pokemon declined in 2015 though, in previous years the movies were making 3-5 billion yen, now is only 2.6 billion yen.

Still, almost nobody outside of Japan watches these movies (I myself only watched 2 out of these 39, the Attack on Titan film and the Love Live movie). But they are very entertaining overall, like American blockbuster films but with worse special effects (in the case of live action films like Attack on Titan).

I am mostly interested in the number 39 of the list:

*sigh*. WHY did they have to make that? Better question actually, WHY did they create a spin-off high school gag series?

Just seems like further evidence to me that Attack on Titan turned out well on accident.

What's a better live action movie they could've made?

Ummm...Well they did Death Note already and that was pretty good.

From little I've seen of Psycho-Pass, it seems like fine material for a live-action.

It would have to fix a bunch of problems to really elevate it, but Death Parade could work.

Hmmm...

This movie is probably the most popular live action Manga adaptation among western live action movie fans:



It's an adaptation of this manga:



Although Oldboy was made in Korea so it's not a Japanese film. But I guess the original Manga is probably superior to the film (I found the film rather silly) or maybe not I haven't read the Manga (yet). Still Oldboy is in the top 70 of the IMDB top 250. The only anime films higher than that are PM, Spirited Away and Grave of the Fireflies.

I guess the most popular live action manga adaptation from Japan might be Battle Royale though that might not count since it started out as a novel.

I liked the Gantz live action film duology very much:


Adapted from this:


Japan has been making live action adaptations of Manga or "anime" (as muricans like to call it) in large quantities since the 1970s.

Egh... I don't want to see that again.

PM?

...

You don't mean Puella Magi do you?

I had no idea that got an adaption.

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J-Splatter needs more love!

I actually want to see it again. I have more mature tastes now so I might be able to appreciate it better.


Princess Mononoke

Lots of manga have live action adaptations.

In 2015 we got Parasyte, classic 1994 manga:



And in 2012 we got 20th Century Boys film trilogy:



Each character:



Although the movies are usually inferior to the mangas, extremely inferior in fact. Specially 20th Century Boys, one of the greatest mangas ever was adapted into a good but still comparably mediocre melodrama film trilogy.

Weren't there a lot of James Bond knockofs and simplistic heroic yakuza stories we just remember the auteur stuff because that's what film wonks like? Also this top heavy trend is also in Korea but they make gorgeus expensive historical dramas and action movies.

Gotcha.

That looks weeeeeeeeiiiirrrd.

Looks interesting. Shame if the movies don't do it justice.

20th Century Boys is pretty great so far. I'm only fifteen chapters in but yeah you should check it out Omni.

Don't want an Anime adaptation though, i think more often than not at least with my favourites the Anime fudges up.

20th century boys is one of the greatest manga ever.

That sounds like a consensus to me.

*bump

I think i read some filmakers there moan about. It will be mostly live adaption, either novel, manga, anime, any franchise, things like that.

Indeed. Japanese film industry is dead as a self sustaining creativity source. Miyazaki himself was asked if he wanted to direct a live action film after Princess Mononoke and he said he wasn't interested because he said live action Japanese film is effectively dead artistically since the 1970's. Miyazaki was exagerating a bit but it's true that we don't have a large number of live action auteur films that are popular with audiences like Kurosawa and Ozu made anymore.

In other countries the same trend exists but in Japan I think the trend of the death of traditional cinema was stronger due to the explosion of popularity of manga which happened in the 1960's and 1970's, just as traditional cinema was declining in popularity: manga sales went from less than 100 million books and magazines in 1960 to about 1.4 billion in 1980 while movie ticket sales decreased from 1 billion in 1960 to about 164 million in 1980 (http://www.eiren.org/statistics_e/). By mid 1990s manga sales reached 2.4 billion books and magazines while film admissions were only 158 million, that is, in 1995 about 16 manga books and magazines were sold for each movie ticket in Japan.

Manga in essence stole from film the position of main channel of popular visual culture in Japan. While the most popular films in Japan today are manga movies, that is, films made not using live action footage but animation using manga-style line drawings such as Miyazaki's or Shinkai's. The Japanese animation industry itself while smaller than manga is already much larger than the live action film industry. Videogames and TV dramas are also much more popular than movies in Japanese culture today.

This shows how peripheral cinema has become in Japanese culture. A lot of Japanese film directors complain that the Japanese government doesn't give them enough money compared to countries that heavily subsidize film like France. I personally think that France's government is being stupid: if people don't want to watch movies anymore then movie makers do not have the right to force people to pay for them.

That's a shame. I thought the Japanese audience was fearcely loyal to the industry.

If they were there would be more Kurosawas after the 1950s. They call the period from 1945 to 1970 the golden age of Japanese cinema for a reason.

Anyway people in the 50's didn't have many different forms of entertainment so they went to the movies more often. Today Japanse people have manga, internet, videogames, TV shows, etc, many forms of entertainment. So people go to the movies less often. Specially in Japan where they have manga which is something the west has not developed to the same degree.

Anyway, it's good that Japan's artistically minded people focused their energies on other fields besides film. Manga and animation for instance are art forms that are not well developed in the west and Japan's focus on those art forms allows these art forms to flourish.