Ideally studios chase the success of KPop Demon Hunters and go after East Asian folklore. I like that trend.
KPDH is basically all the good and wholesome things about anime and I love that it’s having a moment right now. While there’s a ton of content out there, if you want the most similar thing I’ve seen, it’s 22/7, but that hasn’t been translated to English yet. You can only get it with subtitles. And it isn’t a movie, it’s a series. It’s also a band which exists outside the series (and their best music isn’t shown in the series). But it’s also about an idol group, but one brought together by an unseen force which propels the group into super stardom. No demons in this one, but all eight (!) of them have compelling back stories that are worth watching.
As far as movies though, Hosoda is about to drop a new one early next year (it was originally going to be late this year). Scarlet. It appears to be based on Hamlet, like The Lion King. But with a girl. Cue the whole Kimba debate…
I think studios can be reliably trusted to learn exactly the wrong lesson from KPDH and flood the market with derivative cash-grab slop instead of taking a risk on something novel and different.
There are still enough western stories left untold that there’s no need to pillage other cultures for a quick buck. I would love to see more representation of all cultures, myths or not, but I don’t think the best way to do that is through churning out movies from Hollywood about them because that’s what’s in now. There has been more good representation recently, but that’s not the takeaway from KPDH in my opinion. Josie and the pussycats is arguably superficially pretty similar, so it’s not like the overall concept of girl group saves day through music and friendship hasn’t been done in western media, this just had more fighting. I think the takeaway is that people aren’t exclusively looking for established universes or known creative teams. Studios are unwilling to take chances on unknowns and it’s causing a drought of creativity and originality. There’s also a lot of created by committee issues that arise when studios do try something new that ruins the whole thing. I don’t want to see a movie where every line was focus tested. I want to see a cohesive film with a point of view.
Ideally studios chase the success of KPop Demon Hunters and go after East Asian folklore. I like that trend.
KPDH is basically all the good and wholesome things about anime and I love that it’s having a moment right now. While there’s a ton of content out there, if you want the most similar thing I’ve seen, it’s 22/7, but that hasn’t been translated to English yet. You can only get it with subtitles. And it isn’t a movie, it’s a series. It’s also a band which exists outside the series (and their best music isn’t shown in the series). But it’s also about an idol group, but one brought together by an unseen force which propels the group into super stardom. No demons in this one, but all eight (!) of them have compelling back stories that are worth watching.
As far as movies though, Hosoda is about to drop a new one early next year (it was originally going to be late this year). Scarlet. It appears to be based on Hamlet, like The Lion King. But with a girl. Cue the whole Kimba debate…
I think studios can be reliably trusted to learn exactly the wrong lesson from KPDH and flood the market with derivative cash-grab slop instead of taking a risk on something novel and different.
There are still enough western stories left untold that there’s no need to pillage other cultures for a quick buck. I would love to see more representation of all cultures, myths or not, but I don’t think the best way to do that is through churning out movies from Hollywood about them because that’s what’s in now. There has been more good representation recently, but that’s not the takeaway from KPDH in my opinion. Josie and the pussycats is arguably superficially pretty similar, so it’s not like the overall concept of girl group saves day through music and friendship hasn’t been done in western media, this just had more fighting. I think the takeaway is that people aren’t exclusively looking for established universes or known creative teams. Studios are unwilling to take chances on unknowns and it’s causing a drought of creativity and originality. There’s also a lot of created by committee issues that arise when studios do try something new that ruins the whole thing. I don’t want to see a movie where every line was focus tested. I want to see a cohesive film with a point of view.