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Why are Japanese movies so bad?

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yamcha

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I can't watch most modern Japanese movies because they are so bad. The cinematography can be quite good but the storylines are so dumb, boring and insignificant. So I did some research and found out that all their top-grossing films in the last 2 decades have been cartoons. So I get it. Japan is not a movie culture but a cartoon culture now. They used to make great movies from the 50s to 80s.
 
You might enjoy Dogs and Demons by Alex Kerr - the book is a bit dated now but he gives a whole chapter to the conservatism of the Japanese film business (and reaches the same conclusion as you) and another one to the infantilism of mainstream Japanese culture.
 
Thank you Lothor. I have just bought it along with Lost Japan: Last Glimpse of Beautiful Japan, kindle edition from amazon. I wonder if there is a place I can add a review to them here. I love travel writing especially if there is some misadventure involved. I have read for Fukui's Sake and Hitchkicking with the Buddha too but my all-time favorite is Speed Tribes.

Thanks again and let me know if you want the ebook version of Lost Japan: Last Glimpse of Beautiful Japan .
 
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Thanks for the offer, though I've got the book somewhere. I've not read for Fukui's Sake but Hitchhiking with the Buddha (the book used to be called Hokkaido Highway Blues, which I think is the better title) is one of the best books I have ever read on Japan. For anyone who has not read it, it's about a Canadian guy who tries to follow the cherry blossom front from the tip of Kyushu to the top of Hokkaido along the Japan sea coast in the late 90s and has a spectacularly bad time of it - he meets the most boorish, deranged and belligerent Japanese people possible on the way. It's incredibly funny and also extremely sad, the guy just wants to be treated as a person but at every opportunity Japanese people seem to be emphasising his otherness.
 
I think he was really just hoping to find a Japanese girlfriend on the way.

Let me know if you want Fukui's Sake. The book is pretty well written considering he the author was just in his 20s and unlike the other gaijin writers, this guy had an English Gf and no interest in Asian women.
 
I am reading the book and it is really good. I saw online that there is a Japanese translation. Do you or anyone else here mind trying to get it for me so I can send it to a friend? I have a collection of about 4,000 ebooks and several hundred audiobooks that I am happily willing to exchange.
 
Sent you a private message.
 
i don't think Japan movies are that bad, I watch a lot of shows when I'm out there even if i don't understand it at all. i think there a part in the shows in movies that we westerns find so unbelievable that will make the show bad for us. Kind of like K-pop and J-pop why is it so bad in America. Listen to Radiolab podcast on K-poparazzi.

K-poparazzi

In the U.S., paparazzi are pretty much synonymous with invasion of privacy. But today we travel to a place where the prying press create something more like a prison break.
www.wnycstudios.org

Jump to 9:00 and towards the end. The podcast is 40 long. really good

I hope this will give you a little little understanding
 
I find that Japanese pornographic/adult movies have the best storytelling, and action.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for literal movies.
However, some lewd dramas can be okay.
I was a K-drama junkie, until I realized Japan had more adult themed dramas, so I jumped ship.
God forbid they show a nipple in a Korean drama.
 
Acting ability among Japanese is poor. Its the culture.

Also the very culture of acting in Japan is bad. Originality is as frowned upon there as in the society at large. There are set forms to follow and Japanese acting is essentially a flow chart of pre-defined tropes.....when to avoid eye contact, when to turn and face a wall, when to lash out in anger, how to lash out, when to act all coy...its just the same damn thing over and over. Who wants that? Japanese people I guess.

I also think the art of acting is looked at as more separated from reality here than it is in Hollywood. Hollywood actors will go hang out with real people and copy them and put that reality into their performance. With Japanese its always that boring old flow chart.
 
Yeah, I noticed that the acting is robotic when it comes to vanilla movies, and dramas.
The acting in Korean dramas is way better, and seems organic.
 
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