Frozen 2 came out this weekend! After six long years of waiting, the popular movie franchise released a sequel, and I jumped at the opportunity to go watch it.
My friends and I purchased tickets online as soon as we could. It was quite a struggle, considering the website was only in Japanese. We all wanted to watch it in English (so we could hear Idina Menzel’s and Kristen Bell’s beautiful voices), so we tried our best to look for the the English version. My friend ended up choosing the option under “[dubbed]” because she thought that meant that it was English dubbed.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to catch her mistake until after she paid the $60 for the movie. I slowly asked her if she was sure that dubbed meant that it was the English version. We all paused and thought about it. If the movie was originally in English, wouldn’t dubbed mean that it was dubbed in Japanese?
After realizing our mistake, we went into a flurry of panic because:
- The Japanese movie had no subtitles, so it was purely in Japanese.
- We wanted to watch in English.
- The site said no refunds or changes.
- We REALLY wanted to watch it in English.
- We, broke college kids, just spent $15 each on a movie we probably couldn’t fully understand and enjoy.
After our panic, we ended up sitting around and moping for a good hour or two. My friends were ready to stay inside and just watch another movie at home, but I really wanted to see Frozen 2. I managed to somehow get them out of our warm kotatsu and dragged them all the way to Ikebukuro in the rain. Ikebukuro is about 25 minutes away, so it was quite a trip, considering it was around 50F outside and it was pouring.
When we got to the theaters, I was amazed at how big and clean it was. Completely different from America’s theaters. They had 4 floors and their food purchasing system was all automatic. You could choose your snack through a machine and pay for it there, then pick it up at the same counter. It was very convenient and fast.
Anyway, we found our way to the ticket counter, where I embarrassed myself by asking to change the tickets. After much confusion and a lot of Google Translating, we somehow got to switch to the English movie, and also change to our movie option to IMAX.
My friends were very relieved, but the tickets ended up costing $22 each instead of $15. Everyone was a bit iffy about that, but we went in to go watch it anyway.
The theater was huge. HUGE. It was so much bigger than American theaters back home. The only downside to it was that there were no luxury recliners – just regular movie seats. That aside, the resolution on the screen was amazingly crisp and the sound system was quite amazing – I expected nothing less from an IMAX system.
From there, we relaxed and we watched the movie. I won’t write about any spoilers, but what I will say is that the movie was beautiful. Despite being labelled as a children’s movie, that movie was a lot darker and deeper than I expected. The songs were amazing, and even now, I can’t stop listening to them.
If you hadn’t gone to watch Frozen 2 yet, I highly recommend watching it, especially the IMAX version! It was worth every single penny.
Christine's Adventures Abroad 