Anime in Cinemas

This map is drawn mostly around live action, but I can't leave this band empty when talking about Japanese film. Akira crossed the ocean in 1988. Satoshi Kon's Perfect Blue came out in 1997. And in 2002, Spirited Away won the Golden Bear in Berlin — the first time an animated film had won the top prize at one of the world's three major festivals. The following year it won the Academy Award too, the first Japanese film ever to do so. The box-office records were rewritten as well. Spirited Away's total of roughly ¥31.68 billion was overtaken in 2020 by Demon Slayer: Mugen Train, which earned ¥32.47 billion. Here's the story I want at the center of this section. While shooting Requiem for a Dream, Darren Aronofsky wrote to Satoshi Kon and asked to use shots from Perfect Blue. After the film came out, Kon wrote on his own blog that it felt bleak that the party being paid this respect had less name recognition and a smaller budget than the party paying it. The two of them met in person in 2001. Both sides of this story survive in their own words — the one who says they were influenced, and the one who was said to have influenced them. Among all the stories of influence this map has covered, that's very rare.