Why are pokemon movies no longer popular in North American cinemas

[Mew Master]

Considering that the trend with Anime is that the Anime eventually gets at least 1 movie release during the run. Hell, Inuyasha has what... 3/4 movies? Bleach has 2 I think, Pokemon has like... what? 14? xxxHolicxxx and Tsukasa each have one. Love Hina got two.

The culture is the big difference. In Japan I think it's more common for the Anime to get feature films and do fairly well. It'd be like the Spongebob Squarepants Movie in the states, and then they started making more. Feature films based off of cartoons don't do as well in western countries because cartoons are viewed more as "for children" rather than across all age ranges.

[Master Rudy]

Feature films based off of cartoons don't do as well in western countries because cartoons are viewed more as "for children" rather than across all age ranges.

That pretty much sums it up. Even with shows that are aimed at a more mature crowd such as Family Guy, South Park and Archer there are still ignorant people that instantly assume that if something is animated that it's for kids.

TV Tropes refers to this as the Animation Age Ghetto.

It's also the main reason why if you manage to find the rare beast that is a Blockbuster Video/local library that actually has anime that you'll usually find the likes of Bleach and Akira right next to Disney films in the kids section :-/