This Week in Anime

The Anime Movie Magic

Steve
Of course! I'm something of a cinema enjoyer myself. I was rooting for The Substance to take home the big prize because it was the most anime out of all the nominees. However, I'm certainly not upset about the Sean Baker sweep, either. And more to the point, the <>real anime we're getting in theaters is indeed multiplying. Never before have American audiences had so many opportunities to watch Nicole Kidman wax poetic about the Japanese cartoons they just paid $15 to watch on a huge silver screen. But as with all things in life, quantity does not guarantee quality.

We can start by acknowledging that these trends didn't come from nowhere. There's a rich history of franchises where TV, film, and everything in between intertwine. UC Gundam is a perfect example. It started with a TV show, was compiled into a set of three films, and later received the film-only sequel Char's Counterattack. Audiences, therefore, have been primed for a while to hop between the couch and the theater to get their anime fix.

Oh I definitely dragged my parents to the first Pokémon movie.

The idea of "canon" is fun and slippery. Looking back, a lot of anime creators treated the innate separation between TV and film as an opportunity to break those boundaries. Is End of Evangelion more canon than the TV ending? Is Adolescence of Utena a sequel, or its own thing? Do we even need to care about how the Tenchi Muyo films might fit?
And that makes some logical sense, too. With a TV show, you're telling a story in sequential and largely uniform chunks that are aired on a predictable basis, so you can reasonably expect the audience to keep up with it. Before the streaming age, however, it was a lot more fraught to expect the same familiarity with a movie that may have only been in theaters for a month. The solution is you make the movies related to the story, but not essential, i.e., not canon.
And I liked that! It offered more space for experimentation. But, like you said, the environment has shifted.

Plus, generally, you want a movie to be standalone. That requires a different kind of writing than that which goes into a longer, serialized story. We've all seen how spectacularly MCU has collapsed into its navel post-Endgame.
That might seem counterintuitive to the recent rise of the anime theatrical compilations, which are neither standalone nor really movies, but they're different in several key ways.

This is funny because Mugen Train inverted an already familiar pattern. Typically, an anime would come out, get popular, and then be edited into a film or two to reap some easy and relatively cheap theatrical rewards. And plenty of shows still do this: Bocchi the Rock, for example. Mugen Train, when it came out, appeared to be a typical sequel film following up on the first season. But, perhaps due to Demon Slayer's unprecedented popularity and cash flow, the producers realized they could also milk it in TV form. Thus, we went from the TV-> Movie pattern to Movie -> TV.

Was this a profitable idea? Obviously. Was this a good idea? Well...

Sequel movies themselves aren't a new phenomenon, however. And Demon Slayer isn't alone in being a shonen anime that's choosing to adapt certain arcs into films. That's how Chainsaw Man is approaching the Reze arc later this year. The key difference here is that I fully expect us to get a TV cut of Infinity Castle after the films are finished. They will not let their golden goose die before they squeeze out every last egg from it. Speaking personally, Mugen Train is where I fell off the Demon Slayer wagon. I felt the movie was just okay, and then I didn't appreciate that they had the gall to expect me to watch it again, piecemeal, when the second season started. Part of that was due to Mugen Train presenting itself as a bona fide movie. There's a subtle yet important difference between that and the way more recent compilations have been produced and advertised.

And stuff like the DAN DA DAN and GQuuuuuuX previews work for me because they're honest about what they are. Nine times out of ten, if you ask me whether I want to watch the first couple of episodes of a highly anticipated show in the comfort and splendor of my local AMC, my answer is going to be, "Yes!" No need to pretend they're real films. I won't turn down an opportunity to watch my cartoons with surround sound.

Everyone wants to jump on the train once you get a few successful examples. As far as cash-grab marketing gimmicks are concerned, however, I'm on board with these. Not to get too Nicole Kidman about this stuff, but there is something special about the theater. Watching the opening of GQuuuuuuX, gasping in delight at what it was doing, and experiencing that in a crowd of people who were also on the same page as me—that's cinema.

It also sure beats watching the rest on Amazon Prime (yuck).

That would be nice! I have a feeling our cohosts might end up chatting about the specifics of this streaming kerfuffle later in the week, so I'll leave them to it. As far as accessibility is concerned, there's an irony in these theatrical previews, from a certain angle, arguably being more available to the general audience than the current fractured streaming landscape. Even a wide release is not perfect and doesn't cover the entire country. But on the other hand, I'm far more inclined to pop over to the multiplex than sign up for another damn subscription service. I'm done with apps. No more apps.

Good point! Film screenings were some of my favorite parts of conventions pre-COVID, and the communal anime experience was the whole draw of anime clubs back in the day. While not a perfect substitution, these compilations evoke some of those feelings. Just a bunch of us nerds getting together and seeing a few episodes of something new and hopefully exciting.

Moreover, suppose the industry is growing larger, consolidating power, and attracting the attention of the gargantuan conglomerates that control every single other aspect of our lives. In that case, we may as well reap the rewards where we can find them. Nothing wrong with stopping to smell the roses or munching on hot buttered popcorn while watching a ghost steal a kid's testicles.

It sure is.