The Future of Anime Movies?

To match this week’s theme of what I’ve been posting, lets have a discussion about anime movies. Not one particular one, but how they are changing in the future. I have written about the nature of shonen jump movies is changing (with them becoming more canon than they were) but we need to discuss how things are actually happening and changing in that field in general. Due to the popularity of anime increasing across the world, I think there is a massive change going on for all of them. There is some trends that keep increasing and improving themselves over the years while others are a little bit worrying. The two major things are the continuing focus of creating canon stories in movies and live action films.

And to let you know, it does feel like movies covering source material are still happening here. Original films and adaptations of smaller pieces of manga are continuing because of their expanded life and feeling in the box office. We aren’t just talking about Weathering With You, there are a lot more creative movies and works still being made and that’s wonderful. I do not think we have to be worrieda bout original films in the future for any of this.

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Increasingly Canon Films

I am not sure if this is an over production thing or just a new trend to put more animation and art focus onto story lines following famous television series, but there are more canon movies appearing here. It’s not just a recent shonen jump thing, it’s an industry wide thing. The Girls Und Panzer sequel films, the Princess Principal sequel films, the Hathaway film trilogy, the fgo movies. Each of these are sequel to something or an adaptation of part of a franchise that could have been a television series but have shorter and more compact stories told over an expanded space. I think there is a lot of intrigue and value for creating these series and making them as beautiful as they can be. Serials are fun.

So yeah, if this is a way creators and people working in studios can escape it all from hard television schedules to work on a bit more relaxed time frame, I am all for it. I just hope that is what is going on because I honestly have no idea regarding any of these facts.

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Unfortunate Live Action Adaptations

I feel like we, as anime fans, knew that hollywood would search for more media to create into live action films due to the general lack of creativity in studios. Did we know that anime would be a larger victim? Well, yeah. Anime has been on a live action adaptation for a while now? Well, yeah. There was an Akira live action film that has been threatened for a long time now and that still hasn’t happened. What has happened is more products happening regardless. That live action Ghost in the Shell film happened, that live action Attack on Titan thing happened, that Battle Angel Alita thing happened (and it was decent actually), and there are more things happening. Your Name is on hiatus, a Gundam film is happening, and we have a lot of live action television series being made as well centered on One Piece, Cowboy Bebop, Yu Yu Hakusho, and who knows what else.

I can’t help but be really tired of these things. Especially since the trend of creating soul less remakes of animated things from a certain company with a mouse as its major logo continues. Honestly, that feels like where all of this is going for most of these films too. Now, besides One Piece, I think that each of these can be adapted because most of these are very grounded and can be used to create good stories if they have that heart and soul. Sadly, I can’t see that happening. After a bunch of video game adaptations gone bad, it feels like anime is just the next thing up to the plate to be struck out outside of comic books and books in general.

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Conclusion

So, from my point of view, the world of anime and movies seems to be improving and declining at the same time for different reasons. These are only two of them. There are still standard shonen jump films and there are standalone movies, so that constant is always there. The bigger question is what comes after the fact? What more can be added to the anime movie film experience? What is beneficial? What isn’t? All sort of complicated things to answer, but I think that’s ok. Everything in life has their own complications.