Fun With Marketing: Children’s Films in Japan

I’ve been thinking a lot about what Chinese consumer power is going to mean for images of Asian people in Hollywood films — (even if offending Asian Americans doesn’t effect a studio’s bottom line enough for it to be an issue, offending Chinese viewers, or the Chinese government, has real monetary consequences). I’ll probably write something longer about it once I think it through a little more, but in the meantime, I thought I’d share something that’s fascinated me since I was a kid: the way children’s films are marketed in America vs. Japan.  These are commercials for the same movies, but check out the tonal differences:

(note: this is essentially taken from an e-mail I wrote to someone around ’07, so that’s the time period all the examples come from)

Water Horse: Legend of the Deep

U.S. (this was probably ripped from Australian TV, but this is the same commercial they showed in the U.S.):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzCdHlZKcJ0

Japan:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbAUiAthEc8

Meet the Robinsons

U.S.:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb1mT5eZs1M

Japan:
(embedding doesn’t seem to be working right, but there is a link below)

ルイスと未来泥棒 by ramius13