Japanese Box Office Analysis
Posted: September 24, 2014 Filed under: Anime, Ghibli, Movies 1 CommentI just saw Marnie Was there a few weeks ago and it makes me wonderhow well Ghibli films, and other anime for that matter, did in the box office in previous years. For the analysis, I am using Box Office Mojo’s data between 2002 and 2014 for this analysis. Here are the results of top Japanese films:
Battle Royale Across Media – A Statistical Look
Posted: December 8, 2013 Filed under: Movies | Tags: Battle Royale, BR, comparison, koushun takami, Manga, novel, Shinji Fukasaku Leave a comment
Battle Royale the movie is one of my all-time favourite movies. I have watched that film a decade ago and probably rewatched it more time than any other. I don’t normally like ultra-violent film but I am drawn in more by the concept and the relationship between the characters. I have recently finished reading the novel, of which the movie is based on,. It is very interesting to get more backstories of the characters and to notice the differences in how the stories happened. There is also a manga version which also have discrepancy from these two other media. That got be intrigued to see all the little comparison between the media and all the different statistics I can think of to do with the story. This post is simply just for my curiosity and for those who enjoy Battle Royale and may want to read something more and a little different on it.
[This post contains heavy spoilers. Please do not continue reading if you have not seen the film or read the novel/manga but want to do so without knowing what happens]
Top Recent Anime Movie Director Comparison
Posted: August 23, 2012 Filed under: Anime, Director, Ghibli, Movies | Tags: Anime, Ghibli, hayao miyazaki, hosoda mamoru, Japanese animation, kon satoshi, mamoru hosoda, Miyazaki, satoshi kon, spirited away, Studio Ghibli 10 Comments
One thing I sometimes wonder is how movies from all the great directors stack up. Over the last decades, the four directors whose films consistently come up on the best of list are Hayao Miyazaki, Mamoru Hosoda, Satoshi Kon and Makoto Shinkai. I also want to add Mamoru Oshii in to the mix as well. To judge which films are better than others, I look at their rating across the websites listed below. Note that the methodology is similar to the one I used to measure the Ghibli films:
More Ghibli Analysis
Posted: December 31, 2011 Filed under: Anime, Ghibli, Movies | Tags: Ghibli, Ghibli Studio, grave of the fireflies, hayao miyazaki, isao takahata, laputa, Miyazaki, movie, movie analysis, Movie ranking, my neighbour totoro, popularity, Princess mononoke, spirited away, takahata, totoro 4 Comments–
School life has really drained all the time I used to have to collect data and write this blog. Who would have thought I actually had more free time when I was working! Anyway, here is a long-delayed post, just before the end of the year.
This post is the second part of my previous post about Ghibli. It contains a few more analysis and interesting tidbits from the data I have collected.
RATING VS. POPULARITY
The chart below is a scatter plot of rankings for rating and popularity for all Ghibli-related films. The cool thing about this chart is that it also indicates the overrated and underrate films. For example, Whisper of the Heart is ranked 7th overall based on all the ratings but only 12th on the number of people watching and rating the film. This means that not as many people watch it as it deserves based on its rating
Ghibli Movies Ranking and Analysis
Posted: June 13, 2011 Filed under: Anime, Anime studio, Ghibli, Movies | Tags: Ghibli, Ghibli Studio, grave of the fireflies, hayao miyazaki, isao takahata, laputa, Miyazaki, movie, movie analysis, Movie ranking, my neighbour totoro, Princess mononoke, spirited away, takahata, totoro 29 CommentsI watched anime on TV quite religiously on weekend morning during my primary school years but moved away from it during my teens. That is until I came across this one studio called Ghibli. My brother took me to watch a movie called Princess Mononoke. It was amazing, with the combination of flawless animation and exciting action and story telling. I wanted more. This godt me to researching what other films the director has done and that led me to Spirited Away. At that point, the film still has 100% record on rotten tomatoes and I really made it my mission to track this down and watch it. I got a hold of a bootleg copy and was blown away by the film. It remains one of my favourites to this day. I also started to pay more attention to anime and the rest is history.
A decade on, Studio Ghibli still remains my favourite studio, anime or not. The movies from the studios are also among the first I would recommend to anyone that show the vaguest interest in anime. This particular post is my homage to the studio an a guide for those reading it to find out what the rankings of each movie based on all the English sources on the internet I can think of. This includes
| Source | Type | Weight | Comment |
| IMDB | Rating | 10% | Votes from global movie goers |
| Rottentomatoes | Review | 5% | Compilation of many Wester reviews |
| MRQE | Review | 4% | |
| DVD Talk | Review | 3% | General theatrical and dvd review site |
| DVD Verdict | Review | 3% | General dvd review site |
| Anime Academy | Review | 4% | Used to be my main source of reviews back when it updated more regularly |
| THEM | Review | 4% | |
| Anime Planet | Rating | 12% | |
| Anime Source | Rating | 4% | |
| ANN | Rating | 12% | Anime News Network |
| MAL | Rating | 15% | MyAnimeList – Most votes among anime sites |
| AniDB | Rating | 10% | Anime DataBase. Vote compilation sites with demographic breadown |
| AnimeNfo | Rating | 4% | |
| Blogs | Ranking | 10% | Including Canne’s Anime Review, Kitsune’s Thought, Omohide, wa-pedia, Herons! Make blogs and Japan Cinema |
Top Feature Film Anime as recognized by the Official Awards
Posted: June 16, 2010 Filed under: Anime, Ghibli, Movies 7 CommentsI got talking to one of my friends who mentioned that he only wants to follow an anime/films if they actually are listed with an some recognizable awards. This got me thinking of wanting to find out more about what official awards are out there and what anime films/series actually have the most award and therefore should be commended. I have done rankings based on what us bloggers think so now it will be interesting to see which one the industry rank as the best in anime.
Having scoured the net for a while, I have found 8 distinct awards (see list at the end of the post) out there that fit my criteria (being the award must be for animation or feature film and it can be both in Japan or international). This is not as few as I have feared and it should give somewhat a good feel of the award-ability of the titles. Based on the names listed in all these awards, I assign 2 points if the anime won a ‘best’ category and 1 point if it is either in contention or mentioned in a list.Since most awards tend to revolve around feature films, I have restricted this post to including only that and no anime series. That may be for another post if there are enough titles to make it worthwhile.
Here are animes with the highest point total. If you trust awards more than internet hear-says, I hope you will find this list useful to narrow down what anime film to consider watching (links in the title take you to wikipedia if you are so inclined to find out more about the title):
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1). Spirited Away (2002) – 14 points
- 2002 Best Animation Feature – Academy Awards [2]
- 2002 Best Animation Feature Winner – Annie Award [2]
- 2002 Academy Prize Picture of the Year Winner – Japan Academy Prize [2]
- 2002 Animation of the Year Winner – Tokyo Anime Award [2]
- 2001 Animation Grand Award – Mainichi Film Award [2]
- 2001 Grand Prize (Animation) – Japan Media Art Festival Award [2]
- 2001 Feature Film Award – Animation Kobe Award [2]
It cleaned the awards that existed during its time of release that I have on record during 2001-2 (Asia Pacific Screen Award first gave its prize in 2007). Not only did it do well financially (most gross film in Japan at that time; the first film that has made $200MM before it was released in the US), but fans and critics also unanimously sang its praises. You may like other Ghibli’s films more but you cannot deny the accessibility and attention this piece of animation managed to bring to anime.
Top Anime Directors in 2000s – Movies / OAVs
Posted: June 8, 2010 Filed under: Anime, Director, Ghibli, Movies, OAV, Top Animes of 2000s | Tags: Anime, Japanese animation 29 CommentsAfter having learnt how to put pictures on the blog and make it look more attractive, I want to present the top movie directors again in a more accessible, non-technical format. I have mentioned most of the top ones to death but it never hurt to actually highlight them out again since they all deserve as much attention as I can give them. For this exercise , I will combine both movies and OAVs together. The next eight directors (with multiple films in the list, ranked in order of how many times their works are being mentioned in all of the lists used to compile the results) are definitely among the best short-format anime directors you will find in 2000s.
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1). Shinkai Makoto
Why he is listed: 5 Centimeters Per Second (2007), The Place Promised in Our Early Days (2004), Voices of a Distant Star (2002)
My one-title recommendation (if you want to check one of his works out, I recommend this): Voices of a Distant Star
Other noteworthy works: She and Her Cat (1999)
Affiliated studios (studio that the direct has done the most works with): Comix Wave Inc.
Comment: The way this guy used lighting is as good as it gets. The quality of his animation is always top-notch. He can be quite a one-trick pony with his story-telling but when it’s told this well and look so good, I don’t consider that such a bad thing:) Hailed as ‘the next Miyazaki’ I really hope he can live up to such title for years to come! If anyone has not seen it yet, I would really urge you to check out Voices of the Distant Star for what this guy is capable of. This is the 25 minutes OAV that he, other than music and voice acting, essentially create by himself. It’s so well-done and the animation looks so great that it is pretty unbelievable that this is a one-man effort. Plus, it’s pretty short too so you won’t be wasting too much time if you happen not to like it!
Top Anime Directors in 2000s – Series
Posted: May 24, 2010 Filed under: Anime, Director, Movies, Top Animes of 2000s | Tags: Anime, Japanese animation 17 CommentsThis post is a continuation of the top 100 anime series analysis I posted earlier. This time, I want to look at the directors, who are most responsible for shaping the series to be as good as it is (at least that is my assumption anyway). To tell you the truth, I am as guilty as anyone in not being able to name the directors of a lot of my favourite anime series, so this is a pretty good exercise for me to recount them. Also, I hope you also find it useful as a brief guide of which director has the best track record and that you should probably pay some attention if you come across their names in any future anime. I will be listing the directors who have more than 1 features in my top 100, as that should somewhat suggest a sustained pattern of excellence for these directors, from most number of titles first.
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1). Sato Junichi
Why he is listed: ARIA The Origination, ARIA The Animation, ARIA The Natural, Princess Tutu
Latest Offering: Maria’s Great Sea Story (2009)
Other noteworthy works: He also direct Sailor Moon, Junker Comes Here and Gatekeeper
Comment: He tops the list but 3 of his 5 comes from the ARIA franchise. He also directs ARIA The Arietta (Another OAV from the franchise). The only surprise for me about this guy is he directed Sailor Moon back in the day! He definitely have some longvity over 1990s and now 2000s
Analyzing Anime Movie type from 2000-5
Posted: May 16, 2010 Filed under: All Anime Analysis, Anime, Movies | Tags: Anime, Japanese animation 4 CommentsHaving been able to collect data up to 2005, I got a bit curious about how the segmentation of the movies and how many ‘original’ anime films are actually released in each year, as opposed to ‘sequels’ or ‘franchise’. The root of this comes from the fact that in my top anime of 2000s analysis, there are only 34 films good enough to be listed in the whole decade (3.4 films a year). The number sounds a little on the low side (Only under 4 good anime films released per year?), so I want to substantiate that by looking at all movies being produced during the same period and put this number into a bit more perspective.
When analysising the group type of the films, I have separated them into 3 categories as followed:
a). Original – Films that are not based on any prior anime series or franchise
b). Sequel – Follow-on from anime series or movies
c). Franchise – Part of a franchise of anime or game series. Tend to relate more to more popular series
Analysis of Animes Released in 2000-2003
Posted: May 8, 2010 Filed under: All Anime Analysis, Anime studio, Movies, OAV, Series | Tags: Anime, Japanese animation Leave a commentI will briefly take a break from all the anime of the decade analysis and dive into a new topic that I have been working on. Having worked on all the anime people love enough to mention as the best of the decade, it left me wondering, how many shows are there really out there?
This led me to start compiling data of all the animes basing it on the the wikipedia page that list all the animes produced by year. It also has all the data so far that I find useful for other analysis like demographic, year released, director. It is a rather time-consuming exercise so I have only managed to cover 2000-2003 so far. The rest will follow. Also, do let me know if there is any other website which may offer a more comprehensive animes that were released by year. I still have to browse around Anime News network to cross-check the wiki list but so I may have to update this number later in case wikipedia is not as all-knowing as I hope it is… As for the date, I have categorized each one based on their release date in Japan, which is consistent with how I treat the top anime list.
First, let’s look at the total number of productions during these four years
| Year | Movie | OAV | Series | Total |
| 2000 | 11 | 19 | 40 | 71 |
| 2001 | 18 | 42 | 71 | 131 |
| 2002 | 23 | 37 | 69 | 129 |
| 2003 | 14 | 36 | 76 | 126 |
| Total | 66 | 134 | 256 | 456 |
A few observations from this:
Blue Sweater Story 
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