I recently viewed Spirited Away, on a large projector screen for my Asian Humanities class. Even though I had seen the movie a bunch of times on my home television sets, I was blown away by the animation when I saw it in that classroom. The experience raised issues with me about the treatment and marketing of anime films in the US.
Princess Mononoke was the first movie out of Disney's deal with Studio Ghibli to come to the American Theaters, they appeared to go all out and hired an all-star Hollywood cast that included, Billy-Bob Thorton, Gillian Anderson, Jada-Pinkett Smith, and more. However, the film was poorly marketed and the film was only seen in select cities. After the "failure" of the film's showing in the US any other theatrical releases of Ghibli's films was put on indefinite hold.
What did they expect? I never once saw a commercial for Mononoke back in '99 when it came out here. It's truly a shame, because this is one of the best animated films of all-time. You would think a movie of that quality shouldn't have failed in the hands of Disney, but it did. Which led to the subsequent treatment of Miyazaki's next film, Spirted Awat. Again, poor marketing and a limited viewing window caused the movie to "fail." Which made everyone more surprised when the film won the 2003 Academy Award for best animated film. The very next day, theaters rebooked the film and promptly doubled its sales in just two weeks.
The execs at Disney and other distributing companies say that it is too risky to heavily market anime, but it doesn't even seem they are trying to reach out to even the core audience who wants to see these movies. I never had the opportunity to see Spirited Away on the silver screen, because I wasn't anywhere near one of the selected cities. Fortunately, I was blessed to see Howl's Moving Castle in a local theater, and I hope Disney and America have learned their lesson, but I'm not holding my breath.
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