WHY Aren't Anime-Based Movies Selling?

The first movie I ever watched that was based on a Japanese anime or manga series was Christophe Gans 1995 film Crying Freeman, starring Mark Dacascos, which I genuinely enjoyed even though I had not watched the original series or read the original comic books. The last one I watched, just last Saturday, was an adaptation of the seminal anime/manga classic, Astro Boy, who was created by the so-called godfather of animation, Osamu Tezuka. In the case of Astro Boy I had watched one of the TV series starring him (there have been three, one in the 1960s, one in the 1980s, and one that ran about three or four years ago), and I still enjoyed the film, shortcomings notwithstanding.

I've noticed, though, that the reception of Joe Public all around the world (with the exception of Japan) has not quite been as warm as mine was of these two movies, or of anything based on anime or manga in general. Three of Hayao Miyazaki's films, Princess Mononoke, Howl's Moving Castle and now Ponyo, have all made very decent box-office, the vast bulk of it in Japan and Korea, but have otherwise made very little impression on the global box-office.

Films like Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and Speed Racer were the kind of flops that could lose studio executives their jobs (and quite possibly did) and the aforementioned Crying Freeman never even made it to theatrical release in the United States. Considering how badly the current Astro Boy film is doing in theaters, it may as well have been sent straight to the DVD shelf. And the less said about 20th Century Fox's Dragonball, the better.

This is strange because judging from things like comic book conventions and amateur comic book drawings of fans all over the world, one would think anime is one of the most popular media out there, a global phenomenon. Heck, the word anime isn't even Japanese; it's French for "alive."

Why, therefore, do so many people outside of the Land of the Rising Sun ignore anime feature films, or feature films based on anime? Is it some residual resentment left from World War II? Is it a general global inability to digest Japanese pop-culture (a thesis which the success of movies like The Ring would debunk, I'm sure)? I'm curious.

It's really quite a shame as there are quite a number of good works of anime that, with the advances in today's technology, could be adapted pretty well with the right people behind them. We're talking about an industry that is capable of bringing books, plays, comic books, toy lines, video games, television shows and even blasted theme park rides to the big screen with resounding success. The successful and profitable translation of anime to the big screen shouldn't be as big a challenge as it has been for the last several years (though I'm really not crazy about the upcoming Akira adaptation, as I feel it is a classic that should be left alone).

Come on, Hollywood! Bring me my Robotech!