Genres never really die, but they often mutate into something different on foreign soil. John Ford's cowboys became Akira Kurosawa's samurai, and Kurosawa's samurai became Sergio Leone's serape-clad, cigarillo-chewing "The Man With No Name." And the list goes on.
The same is true of that quintessential Hollywood genre, the all-singing and all-dancing musical, whose last rites had long since been pronounced by the time "La La Land" (2016) brought it back to triumphant box office life.
However, the Hollywood-style musical never really took root in Japan, though the local industry has made hundreds of films with singing and dancing in more "natural" settings.
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