I don't know anything about Japan, so honest question, is something like My Neighbor Totoro considered a children's movie in Japan? Is that the audience there, where it generally isn't here?
I don't know anything about Japan, so honest question, is something like My Neighbor Totoro considered a children's movie in Japan? Is that the audience there, where it generally isn't here?
For years there's been a bias in Japan that anime is for kids and nerds. That perception has been slowly shifting just as it has in the US--look at the box office triumph of comic book movies here.
For Ghibli I think you can see that by comparing something like "Mononoke Hime" to the studio's earlier films.
* I should point out however that in Japan manga is just a medium. It's widely understood that just as there are kids books and adult books, kids movies and adult movies, etc. that there are manga for kids and manga for adults.
"For years there's been a bias in Japan that anime is for kids and nerds."
Is this not true in the US? Because that's the impression I've always had of anime. I'm a bit of a "normie" and was once a sorority girl, for reference, and I always associated anime with the most out there group of extreme nerds at my high school. It's definitely grown in popularity since then but I wouldn't say it's really shed the nerdy image...
I think science fiction/fantasy/etc. are increasingly mainstream in American culture. Look at the jaw dropping attendance numbers for events like comic book conventions or the box office dominance of comic book movies. I would guess that anime is more mainstream now than in decades past. Is is as fully integrated into popular culture as Spider Man movies? Not sure.
Out of Studio Ghibli's works, Totoro is probably the most "baby" of them, aside from maybe Ponyo. Very different from something like Spirited Away, or especially Princess Mononoke, which are absolutely more "adult" films.
I don't know anything about Japan, so honest question, is something like My Neighbor Totoro considered a children's movie in Japan? Is that the audience there, where it generally isn't here?
For years there's been a bias in Japan that anime is for kids and nerds. That perception has been slowly shifting just as it has in the US--look at the box office triumph of comic book movies here.
For Ghibli I think you can see that by comparing something like "Mononoke Hime" to the studio's earlier films.
* I should point out however that in Japan manga is just a medium. It's widely understood that just as there are kids books and adult books, kids movies and adult movies, etc. that there are manga for kids and manga for adults.
"For years there's been a bias in Japan that anime is for kids and nerds."
Is this not true in the US? Because that's the impression I've always had of anime. I'm a bit of a "normie" and was once a sorority girl, for reference, and I always associated anime with the most out there group of extreme nerds at my high school. It's definitely grown in popularity since then but I wouldn't say it's really shed the nerdy image...
I think science fiction/fantasy/etc. are increasingly mainstream in American culture. Look at the jaw dropping attendance numbers for events like comic book conventions or the box office dominance of comic book movies. I would guess that anime is more mainstream now than in decades past. Is is as fully integrated into popular culture as Spider Man movies? Not sure.
Out of Studio Ghibli's works, Totoro is probably the most "baby" of them, aside from maybe Ponyo. Very different from something like Spirited Away, or especially Princess Mononoke, which are absolutely more "adult" films.