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The story
5ch users discussed why Japanese live-action films keep falling short of anime films at the box office, citing concrete examples. They pointed to manga-based live-action adaptations like Sakamoto Days and Kingdom, an industry too dependent on sequels to generate new IP, and the box-office landscape that shifted after Demon Slayer — sparking a mix of defense and criticism.
What people said
She's the one who became a household name playing Sakura.
As long as you keep churning out Jump live-action "cosplay movies" like Sakamoto Days, you'll never win.
If we're talking cosplay live-action, there's also Kingdom —
that one's actually doing decent numbers though.
Lol, the only live-action films outdoing this one are Very Soon, It Will Be Goodbye and Kingdom.
Make school-play-tier movies like this and of course people avoid them.
Sakamoto Days
Pathetic that you can't make money unless it's a Jump live-action adaptation… lol
If you exclude Kokuho — which is basically a jackpot fluke ("kakuhen," pachinko slang for an unexpected hot streak) — isn't it kind of mediocre?
Godzilla Minus One ← sequel
Can you guys only remake existing stuff now, just like Hollywood? lol
They used up all their strength to make one strong new IP on Kokuho.
If Japan made that kind of nostalgia movie, it'd star people like Yujiro Ishihara, Saburo Kitajima, or Akiko Wada — but who'd actually watch that?
They keep failing at live-action adaptations of popular manga and anime, yet the industry is overrun with garbage people incapable of reflection or self-criticism.
Because the whole industry is hopeless, they let Yamazaki "dye" every manga adaptation in his own style and don't even feel ashamed.
Japanese live-action film needs to accept it ranks below manga and anime.
What does "Yamazaki-dyed" even mean?
Lol, other than Kuranosuke Sasaki, I don't recognize a single one of the new Bayside Shakedown cast.
Even 5 billion yen looks shaky at this rate.
That's before Demon Slayer even showed up.
Guess Demon Slayer really was a game changer.
Well, the all-time box office #1 was already Spirited Away, so live-action's been losing all century.
It was pretty off-putting how Japanese film industry people, unable to attack Miyazaki because he's too big a legend, went after Shinkai's anime instead.
And they went after Anno's live-action films too.
Ryusuke Hamaguchi: "…"
"Sequel, more sequels!" ← this is exactly why you keep losing to anime lol
He's a coward with no guts to make anything new — like Muzan (the Demon Slayer villain) hiding behind his power.
Honestly Kokuho gives off even more of a "why is this boring thing doing so well?" vibe than Conan.
It bugs me that Nanoka Hara, who played the lead in Suzume, hasn't broken out at all.
There's also Riho Yoshioka! Though she's basically a commercial-only actress.
Only Disney movies break 10 billion yen anymore.
Even Michael couldn't hit 9 billion — that's THE END.
The fact that she doesn't even consider anime as "movies" says it all…
Lol, this turned out exactly as predicted.
Background and Key Points
Japan’s box office has favored anime over live-action for most of this century — Spirited Away has held the all-time domestic record since 2001, and posters noted no live-action film has topped an anime release since the 2018 Code Blue movie (itself a TV drama spinoff). Demon Slayer: Mugen Train’s 2020 run, which became the highest-grossing film in Japanese history, is widely cited as the real turning point that entrenched anime’s dominance. On the live-action side, manga/anime adaptations like Sakamoto Days and Kingdom are part of a long-running industry practice of turning serialized Shonen Jump and manga properties into films, while directors like Takashi Yamazaki (Godzilla Minus One) and franchises like Bayside Shakedown represent the sequel-and-remake-heavy strategy posters say has replaced original filmmaking.
The thread didn’t split over whether Japanese live-action is struggling — that was broadly accepted — but over why, and how much blame lands on the actress herself. Some read her comment as implicitly dismissing anime as not “real” cinema, a framing several posters found condescending; others insisted she wasn’t attacking anime at all and that the reaction was overblown. A separate disagreement centered on whether recent hits like Kokuho signal genuine health in live-action or are, as one poster put it, a lucky “kakuhen” fluke masking an otherwise mediocre run.
What the thread leaves unaddressed is the production-economics side: anime films are typically greenlit only after a manga or series has already proven its fanbase, letting studios like ufotable pour resources into a built-in audience, whereas original or adapted live-action projects carry far more financial risk without that pre-validation — a structural asymmetry the posters gesture at through casting and sequel complaints but never name directly.
*This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “Japanese Actress Asks: “Why Do Japanese Films Keep Losing to Anime…?””.
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