Adult Animation Has Potential to Bring Audiences Back to Theaters: The Tone-Deafness of the Cannes Discussion Revolving Around an Already-Established Medium
The perception of animation intended for adults has long been divided among audiences in the East and the West.
For those who grew up on Japanese animation, the concept of adult animation isn't a foreign one, with many animated films certainly not aimed at children smashing box offices, such as anime film Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba - The Movie: Mugen Train not only becoming the world's highest grossing movie of 2020, but also Japan's highest grossing movie of all time.
However, the idea of adult animation bringing butts to seats at the theater seems to be a new concept for the panelists at the "What Is Adult Animation Film's Strategy and Where Is It Headed?" panel at this year's Cannes Film Festival.
The panelists included Jan Kounen, the Dutch-born French filmmaker behind Epiphania, Doberman, Blueberry, and My Cousin; Charlotte de La Gournerie, one of the producers behind the three-time Oscar-nominated Flee; Bruno Felix, founder and co-CEO of the Amsterdam-based production company behind They Shot the Piano Player and Where Is Anne Frank?; and Amel Lacombe, CEO and founder of Paris-based indie distributor Eurozoom.
Conspicuously, none of the panelists hailed from Japanese animation.
As reported by Variety, during the discussion, Lacombe, whose company is also Europe's leading theatrical distributor of Japanese animation, mentioned that she saw great success when she released a remastered version of the Japanese classic animated film Akira.
When speaking about the naysayers for her venture, Lacombe remarked:
"Everyone said 'It won't work because they can find it everywhere on DVD and Blu-ray.' But people want to see it on the big screen, share the emotion, and enjoy it as the spectacle that it was intended to be."
Further on in the article, Kounen also cited Akira as a major artistic inspiration and his favorite movie.
However, as Variety goes on to describe how streaming platforms helped popularize a craze for Japanese anime, with Netflix being a leader in promoting Japanese anime internationally - with panelists such as Felix proclaiming, "Our time is coming as animation producers," it's difficult for me to take the Cannes discussion at face value.
While it's revolutionary for films such as Flee to breach multiple genres and formats, causing the Oscars to nominate the film such previously disparate categories as Best Animated Film, Best Documentary, and Best International Film, it seems disingenuous for these animation creatives to position themselves as the forefront of a new adult animation wave, especially when they themselves publicly admit to riding off the success of Japanese adult animation.
Worst of all, to do so while not inviting Japanese creatives to stand on the same platform with them seems downright disrespectful and exclusionary, towards an industry that has been long-established, and ultimately paved the way for the adult animation they created that is just now seeing success.
Also, to the panelists: Please, please educate yourself on more Japanese adult animation outside of Akira - There's simply so much more out there!
So, while I agree with the sentiment that adult animation is plenty worthy of the box office no matter where you are, this Cannes panel wasn't it for me.
Go and stream A Silent Voice or the Berserk movie trilogy on Netflix - or better yet, go find a way to stream Your Name online - and find out how it's done by true masters of the medium.
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