Princess Mononoke
From the master director of anime (Except Anno IMO), a masterpiece appeared in Japan around 1997. Everyone in Japan knows of Hayao Miyazaki and they had high expectations for his next big work, Princess Mononoke (Mononoke Hime). And it blew everyone's expectations out of the water. I quickly became the highest grossing movie EVER in Japan's history, only to be overshadowed by the overrated Titanic. Because it did so well, and because almost all of Disney's employees have a great respect for Miyazaki, Disney decided to give it a chance in the states by bringing it through a daughter company called Buena Vista. However, they used horrible marketing techniques and the results were atrocious. Because it did fairly poorly in the test runs that it went on, it had almost no advertising at all despite rave reviews (That just shows that most people don't listen when reviewers say that something's great, and they should). In fact, the movie is even is Roger Ebert's top 10 of all time (number 8 I believe). And when I remember (can find again) where that page is, I will link that up. But, there was almost no advertising and it was only available in two obscure theatres in the area, one of them being the foreign one. And when the dvd of Mononoke came out here, it did OK, but it didn't do nearly well enough for Disney to be happy. On the subject of the dvd, early on it was stated that the dvd would only have the dub, which got many "hardcore" anime fans upset. And so, a large petition was signed and for once, it actually worked! So, the took a couple extra months to get the subbed version of the dvd, which is good. >)
But, sad news appeared eventually....
Even though Miyazaki's new film, Spirited Away is did extremely well in Japan (I believe it overcame Titanic), it may never be brought over because of the failure of Mononoke in theatres, even though it's almost completely Disney's fault in the first place. Disney didn't market Mononoke nearly enough, and marketed it even less to adults, so it never really stood a chance. I mean, there were gasps in the audience when the first decapitation occured. Lol-and a funny story at the theatre was when I was telling some guys that it wasn't a cartoon, but an anime. Yup. So, our chances of seeing Spirited Away in the US, even a dvd release are slim. Sucks.
(Update: A domestic release is more likely than when this was originally written)
In the meantime, check out other Miyazaki works including Castle of Cagliostro, Kiki's Delivery Service and others.
Heh. I saw it in theatres and you didn't. 