Ask John: What Impacts Could Disney’s Acquisition of Kaze Tachinu Have?

Question:
So what is going through Disney’s mind on picking up The Wind Rises for domestic release? And does this mean other licensors will be more willing to take the risk on getting The Cockpit on DVD? While Miyazaki is a brand name in America, the films of his which Disney normally prefer to release here are of the “family-friendly” and/or cartoon animal variety. Kaze Tachinu is “artsy,” even by Japanese standards. And if this arthouse plane porn film succeeds here, then it should open up a market for The Cockpit, right? Maybe even a re-release of Zipang?

Answer:
I suspect that the reason why Disney chose to pick up the domestic theatrical distribution rights to Hayao Miyazaki’s current film is quite simple. The movie topped the Japanese box office for eight straight weeks, and even in its tenth week of theatrical release remains in the top three most popular films in Japanese theaters. For the film to be so successful, there must be something exceptional about it, and Disney is obviously interested in associating that exceptional quality with its own name. While I haven’t had the opportunity to watch the film myself, I can assert from the film’s trailers and a variety of reviews that the movie does not focus at all on WWII. The film is strictly focused around Jiro Horikoshi’s efforts to construct his ideal airplane, and his romance and marriage to a terminally ill woman. The second World War and the devastating use of the planes the Horikoshi created certainly play a background role in the film, but the film is not overtly a war movie. By all accounts, Kaze Tachinu is a philosophical character drama imbued with the sense of humanity and tragedy that Hayao Miyazaki has injected into his films since Castle Cagliostro and Nausicaa. Rather, particularly unlike Ponyo and Howl’s Moving Castle, Kaze Tachinu is a return to the bittersweet tone of classic Miyazaki films including Laputa, Nausicaa, and Mononoke Hime.

The particular humanist focus of Kaze Tachinu places the film farther from more overt WWII inspired anime than may be immediately obvious. Dramatic WWII anime including Zipang and The Cockpit have a different goal than Kaze Tachinu. While Miyazaki’s film is a story about perseverance and faithfulness to one’s loves, a film that just happens to revolve around a pivotal figure from the WWII era, anime like Zipang and The Cockpit are much more specifically concerned with the war itself, with the psychology of soldiers and the impacts of military actions on national goals. Kaze Tachinu is a lushly animated biographical fantasy that obviously resonates with a mainstream audience, judging by its popular Japanese success. Anime like The Cockpit and Zipang were never mainstream or art-house oriented productions. The majority of American viewers that will potentially watch Kaze Tachinu are viewers that will appreciate the film’s lush animation and heartrending humanist emotion. Those viewers are not the hardcore anime afficianados likely to appreciate the formal, rigorous historical tension of Zipang or the more battle-oriented blunt militarist psychological examination of The Cockpit. Kaze Tachinu, obviously, is a mainstream hit while Zipang and The Cockpit have always been marginalized niche titles appealing to a small core of hardcore followers. I don’t think that Disney is worried at all over any potential racial or war-propagandist controversy surrounding Kaze Tachinu because such concerns are largely excluded from the film narrative itself. Any domestic distributor may try to capitalize upon the domestic release of Kaze Tachinu by re-releasing other WWII-themed anime, but I think that all of America’s active distributors are wise enough to recognize that connections and cross-over market appeal between Kaze Tachinu and anime like Zipang and The Cockpit is highly tenuous and minimal.