Ask John: Is Anime as Big as Live Action in Japan?

Question:
I was wondering if anime is bigger than live-action movies and shows in Japan. Also, do animators ever put real life celebrities in anime?

Answer:
While anime is unquestionably bigger and more popular in Japan than anywhere else in the world, even in Japan anime is not quite the universal success that Westerners may think that it is. It’s easier to address this discussion with theatrical films than with television, as it’s easier to find quantifiable statistics for theatrical box office than find television ratings.

Manga is a tremendous industry in Japan, and accounts for almost one out of every two books sold in Japan. Anime, however, is much more relegated to younger viewers and obsessive fans. Anime is judged successful on a different scale than live-action in Japan. In most cases, anime seems to be determined successful based on not the percentage of viewers that tune in, but based on the percentage of anime viewers that tune in. This can be determined from current examples including the Cowboy Bebop and the Gensomaden Saiyuki motion pictures. It should be obvious that an anime series has to be considered relatively successful for a studio to back the production of a theatrical feature film, yet according to Japanese box office statistics, Cowboy Bebop never even managed to break into the top ten highest grossing films during the weeks it was in theaters, and the Saiyuki movie managed to reach only the 10th highest grossing spot in the box office rankings during its theatrical release. While the Saiyuki movie earned under 2 million dollars theatrically, live action Japanese films brought in more than double that amount during the same weeks, and competing American films like A.I. and Planet of the Apes brought in as much as $80 million. While Saiyuki’s $2 million box office may be considered respectable for an anime feature, it proves that most anime simply doesn’t have nearly the drawing power in Japan that live-action films do. There are exceptions, of course, such as Sen to Chihiro no Kamikushi, which is currently dominating the Japanese box office and destroying all competition. With the notable exception of Tonari no Yamada-kun, virtually every Studio Ghibli release outgrosses even imported Hollywood blockbusters because Studio Ghibli films aren’t targeted primarily at anime fans, nor are they seen as “cultish” films for fans. The Ghibli films are a Japanese cultural phenomenon that bring in all viewers repeatedly.

If you’d like to do a bit of research on your own, the Hollywood entertainment business trade magazine Variety publishes daily updated international box office gross records, including those for Japan.

And for the second question, while it’s not exactly common for anime to include cameo appearances by famous living celebrities, such appearances are not unheard of. I’m sure that there are other examples that I’m forgetting, or examples that I’m not familiar with, but these are a few of the examples that I do know of. Kodomo no Omocha and Hime-chan’s Ribbon both included cameo appearances by members of the boy-band pop groups Tokio and Smap, respectively, who performed the opening themes for these popular shoujo TV series. The characters of the popular Weiss Kreuz anime series are supposed to be loose animated adaptations of the real Weiss Kreuz rock band members. Love Hina, Kodomo no Omocha and Excel Saga all include cameo appearances by their real-life manga creators. And Kite, Mezzo Forte, and Miami Guns all include thinly veiled parody cameos by Bruce Willis.