Japan gives moviegoers some pretty cool reasons to watch movies in the cinema.
With the advent of huge TV screens and great audio systems, moviegoers have been able to avoid high prices for cinemas by recreating a theater experience right in their own homes. Who can blame them? Why should we sit in a crowded room with sticky floors while people text and talk their way through an entire movie?
But Japanese movie studios are doing a pretty good job of enticing people to go to a movie theater by offering some really great promotional goods. This practice has really excelled with anime movies as viewers have received amazing tie-in materials often made by the creator of the series.
Take the recent Naruto movie Boruto – Naruto the Movie as an example. The first two million viewers across Japan received an official movie book titled Naruto – Hiden・Zai no Sho by Masashi Kishimoto and featured the story of the day Naruto became Hokage.
The movie One Piece – Strong World, which came out in 2009, gave the first 1.5 million people a tie-in manga called One Piece – Zero written by series author Eiichiro Oda.
▼ Pictured here on the left with the promotional manga
from the One Piece movies Z and Gold as well.
In 2017 people who watched Fairy Tail – Dragon Cry walked away with a 200-page booklet by Hiro Mashima that featured the storyboards used to make the movie.
For the 2016 Detective Conan – The Darkest Nightmare film, series creator Gosho Aoyama wrote a thank you letter for the release of the 20th movie. Viewers also received a special serial code with an illustration as well as autographs and messages from the main cast on the back.
The animated Genocidal Organ movie handed out bookmarks with the main characters and key visuals in three different varieties. Viewers were also able to download phrases said by characters via a QR code.
And Nintendo showed off their mastery of these giveaways during the theatrical release of Pokémon the Movie – Hoopa and the Clash of Ages back in 2015.
Attendees who brought their 3DS could receive Hoopa in either Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire or Pokémon X/Y. The first three million people also got a Hoopa original Pokémon card and a Hoopa for the arcade game Pokémon Tretta.
▼ Raise your hand if the only reason you went to see
Pokémon the Movie 2000 was to get the Ancient Mew promo card!
With these types of goods offered at the movies, we could definitely see why people are willing to go out to watch their films. Seems like a win-win deal, especially if these giveaways will basically guarantee at least three million people see a movie.
Although it probably helps if the movie is any good. We couldn’t imagine even giving out freebie Attack on Titan beauty masks could have saved that film from disaster.
Source: Naver Matome
Featured image: Twitter/@iRis_a_himi