Factoid: Frozen is Japan's3rd Highest Grossing Movie

I stumbled over some news articles (here and here) from last June-July about the popularity of the movie "Frozen" in Japan. The film grossed close to a quarter billion dollars and is the third highest grossing film in Japan.

What I found particularly interesting was the list of the top ten highest grossing films that The Atlantic posted:

Looking at this list, several things struck me:

1. 5 out of 10 movies are foreign to Japan (Titanic, Frozen, the first two Harry Potters, and Avatar
2. 5 are animated (Spirited Away, Frozen Howl's Moving Castle, Princess Mononoke, and Ponyo)
3. 7 are fantasies featuring children (all except Titanic, Bayside Shakedown, and Avatar)
4. Only Bayside Shakedown (probably a terrible translation of its title) is a live action Japanese film (FYI-it is a police thriller involving murder, conspiracy and corruption)
5. Only Titanic and Bayside Shakedown lack either a fantasy or scifi element.

The first point above goes to the effect of globalization on the movie industry. Japan has the 3rd largest GDP in the world, but half their top grossing films are foreign.

The other points more less speak to cultural proclivities. The Japanese seem to favor animation, stories about children, and stories with mystical elements. Though deeper analysis should be left to sociologists, I will speculate that animation and child characters both give an indirect expression of the world.