The recent surge in the popularity of Japanese anime movies at the North American box office may appear to be a sweeping cultural victory of Japan’s soft power, but according to Los Angeles-based filmmaker and journalist Mirai Konishi, the real drivers behind the numbers are fan gatherings and streaming services, rather than the medium’s dominance.
In a recent column on Eiga.com (via Yahoo News), Konishi points to Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba The Movie: Infinity Castle, which earned $70.6 million on its North American opening weekend in September last year, breaking the record set by Pokémon: The First Movie in 1999. The following month, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc also opened at No. 1, with images of young moviegoers in cosplay circulating widely on social media. However, Konishi is cautious about how to interpret these results.
“I hesitate to call this phenomenon a ‘victory for Japan,” he writes, arguing that the success of anime in US theaters is not because of the cultural power of the medium, but is a result of an overall shift in the American theater market. As he clarified, cinemas in the US had increasingly shifted from being places to watch movies to “event venues,” or “places to participate in a movie experience,” which seamlessly tied into anime and cosplay culture.
He argues that the biggest factor behind this shift is the spread of streaming services which ended up significantly reducing “theatrical window” between a movie’s premiere in cinemas and its streaming debut (it has shrunk from an average of 90 days before the pandemic to 32 days today), making the audiences less inclined to visit theaters unless the opening weekend feels like a must-attend event.
Konishi believes that only large-scale, event-style blockbusters, movies that make audiences think, “I have to see this on opening weekend, on the big screen, with a crowd,” can motivate people to leave their homes and watch movies in theaters.
“And Japanese anime fulfills those ‘event’ conditions remarkably well,” he adds, noting that fans of Demon Slayer and Chainsaw Man shared information on social media before release, prepared cosplay, bought merchandise, and treated the opening day “as a community celebration.” For them, going to the theater was not simply about watching a movie, but “sharing space with other enthusiasts love the same work.”
Bringing up the The First Slam Dunk movie, which grossed over 15.7 billion yen in Japan but earned just $1.05 million (approximately 160 million yen) in North America, Konishi emphasizes that not all anime benefit equally, especially if they don’t already have a steady fanbase in the US.
“No matter how high the quality of the work, if the prerequisite for it to function as an event—a group of fans eager to rush to see it on opening day—was missing, people simply wouldn’t come to the theaters,” he wrote.
He sums up his perspective by saying that Demon Slayer’s $70.6 million opening “is not proof that Japanese content has been universally accepted in America,” but rather the result of a specific alignment between established North American anime fandoms and the structural changes in American movie theaters. According to him, such outstanding box office numbers are only possible with works that have a lot of steady fans among younger generations, who are already familiar with anime culture through streaming platforms, and are excited to experiences theatrical releases of their favorite anime as “events.”
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