I went to Best Buy to check out some similar titles. I wanted to pick up some classic movies that were in a similar genre, that dealt with similar material. These were also fairly recent and had won a variety of awards including Oscars. I think the oldest was 1976, the rest were made in the 90's.
Not one was at Best Buy.
That is kind of scary. The best movies ever made in the genre and with a similar plot to what I am working on now... had no representation at a store that sells en-mass to the consumer.
I got to strolling around. Checking out the sheer volume of certain genres. Little bit of Action. Whole lot of Comedy. Decent size of Drama. The leader by far was Horror. Care to take a guess what the second biggest was...?
Anime.
...
I like anime.
But it isn't really a genre. Anime has representation in every genre. Fantasy. Crime. Epics. Adventure. Action. Drama. Hell, even Porn. But there it is sectioned off, all by its lonesome.
This is perplexing to me... live action films are so rigidly segregated by genre. And anime is not.
There is this myth... well not so much a myth... as it is believed to be true in Hollywood, that in order to sell your product effectively you need to be within a specific genre of filmmaking. That way people can "find what they are looking for." That way they know what kind of story to expect going into a theatre, or better yet, when buying it in DVD form to take home. At least, that's how the myth goes.
But anime defies this.
Maybe it is just some ill-conceived dream of mine, that one day all movies can live in harmony without the barriers of genre. I can't wait for the day that a movie lives or dies on its merits as a piece of film. But until that day:
I can dream...
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