Regarding the ¥1 billion opening and ¥15 billion total discussion on the last page: Neither are easy to do, especially the latter.

There are usually only one or two films that open above ¥1 billion a year on average. There have even been some years without any. 2019 had a particularly higher number (5) mostly due to Disney releasing all they had that year. I doubt anything on their 2020 schedule, prior to COVID, would have opened above ¥1 billion or come close.

And a ¥15 billion total is far more rare and more difficult. First, only 12 films have ever done it. It's sort of the milestone that sets the "true" uber-blockbusters apart from the other uber-blockbusters. And second, it's just very difficult to reach, with only 2 films even doing it last decade (2010-2019). And if you look at the past 15-years, only 5 films have managed to reach it. 2019 had a sequel (Frozen II) and follow-up (Weathering With You) to the third and fourth biggest films ever, and neither of them could even do it. And while Avatar did it in 2009, it barely got there and would have missed if not for the 3D boom (80/90% 3D share).

¥15 billion is never considered a target or goal for anything before they're released or even afterwards until it becomes a possibility during the run itself. Even Hayao Miyazaki's final film (or at least marketed as such), The Wind Rises, fell well short of the mark in 2013. On paper, this should have been as much of a "lock" as anything.

Indeed that's why I set the target range of 10B-15B

Corpse, do you have a little more information for this weekend regarding Demon Slayer on reservations or I don't know anything else ?

I'm looking at them now and will post about them shortly.

While I'm looking at them, I'm seeing the scalpers are out in full force for Evangelion. Now that restrictions are lifted in Tokyo, it's having its stage greeting showing on Sunday in Shinjuku and people are buying the tickets up only to sell them online to the fans that weren't in time in reserving their seat. Scalpers are pricing them at ¥50,000 (~$460) all the way up to ¥120,000 (~$1,100) right now depending on the seat itself.

Here's one going for ¥125,000 (~$1,150).

Aaaaand they just announced that resold ticket holders will NOT be allowed into the stage greeting showings. Too bad for the people that bought them for 50x+ the regular price earlier this evening. Out the equivalent of several hundred or even over a thousand dollars for taking part in the scalpers schemes.

I'm going to wait until this evening/tonight to really report on the Saturday reservation status. Reservations went up late this week for Toho Cinemas, and for most theaters in and around Tokyo, due to them working with local governments regarding the restrictions being lifted and working with them. The only restriction that is mostly universal, aside from a few locations, are theaters still closing early (8/9PM) Tokyo and its neighboring prefectures. They're all back to 100% capacity and allowing concessions again.

Just looking at the locations I checked out:

Evangelion is looking good, but a lot its ticket sales are for Sunday right now due to the stage greetings being scheduled then. Once the Sunday stage greeting showings sellout, Saturday will start to fill up more. I'm not sure yet if it's in store for an increase, since it also has a giveaway event going on, but a strong hold at the very least should be expected.

Demon Slayer is getting at least 3x as many showings as it's been receiving for the past couple of weeks, including getting additional premium format showings and the Dolby Cinema expansion. It's also back on either the second or third biggest screen at many locations. I'm pretty sure this week will be as wide as it's been since early January. As for its sales, again, reservations went up late and haven't been available for long, but they're looking strong. A large increase will happen as expected due to the giveaway.

Monster Hunter looks weak at the moment. It'll likely come in a distant third place. Not surprising, even if it's a big franchise, because audiences regularly shun Hollywood adaptations of domestic material. However, while I think this release date is good and was probably intended to take advantage of the new video game also releasing this weekend to hype it, perhaps that wasn't the best choice. The game will likely sell over 1 million copies (maybe even 1.5m+) this weekend, and some workplaces are closing on Friday so their workers can play the game (this also happens when a new Dragon Quest game is released). So its fans are probably going to be too interested in the game to check it the movie out this weekend, if they do at all.

But like I said, reservations went up late in Tokyo (~50% of the market) and its neighboring prefectures (~75% of the market), so it's a bit early to get a good read on them right now, especially since Toho Cinemas is the busiest chain and went up recently. I'll go back and check them out tonight.

Really ? It's the first time I've heard something like this especially in a country where everyone works a lot like Japan, it's really an event so this video game then.

Regarding Demon Slayer, if the next 2 weeks look like the first week of January it would be good but I think that at this time the weekdays were rather weak because of the end of the holidays, I hope they will be stronger next week with gifts and spring break.

I spoke with a few people on Twitter who are hoping for a weekend around $2M-$3M and weekdays around $7M-$8M. These are great numbers, I hope next week looks like this.

When the earlier Dragon Quest games were releasing, typically on a Thursday or Friday, many children would skip school, and many adults would call off work in order to buy and play the games on launch day. This affected productivity for some workplaces, so they began giving their employees the day off when a Dragon Quest game would launch. But seeing this, the Dragon Quest developers would then decide to release their future games on Saturdays to avoid schools and workplaces from being disrupted.

Monster Hunter Rise, the new game in the Monster Hunter franchise, is releasing this Friday on Switch which has a huge base of players (nearing 20 million in Japan). It might even be releasing on a console with more players than any previous title (at the time of release) in its history, so sales this weekend will be enormous. And Monster Hunter has become just about as big to the public over the years, and reports of high number of call offs were being reported so some workplaces are giving their employees the day off in order to avoid productivity slowdown. A lot of kids will probably be skipping school as well.

There's a lot of film adaptations of canon material prior to Kimetsu no Yaiba (e.g. Youjo Senki, Suzumiya Haruhi, No Game No Life, Kizumomogatari, Made in Abyss, Seishun Buta Yarou etc.), so in that sense it's following an established and increasingly popular trend. It is certainly the most popular example by orders of magnitude however, so it could accelerate things. ("Film as canon story" is also popular with original anime like Madoka, Girls und Panzer, Lyrical Nanoha etc., but I agree we should treat them separately.)

But the really curious thing about Kimetsu's run is that it's achieved long-running morning/prime-time anime (e.g. Naruto or One Piece) levels of popularity without actually being one. Shingeki no Kyojin is the most direct template for its success, in the sense of being a shounen action manga adaptation taking the country and world by storm despite airing in a late-night slot and running in discrete 1-2 cour chunks. I'm struggling to think of another example in between those two that's seriously comparable.

So Kimetsu has a foot in both worlds as both a short-running late-night anime and a mainstream shounen magazine flagship title (of the kind usually getting long-running anime), and I find myself wondering which it'll influence more. In some ways I'm not sure if its lessons are easily applicable to either. Long-running series like One Piece can't follow its model at this point, and the super-niche series that take up nearly all late-night slots - and thus accounting for the vast majority of anime period - will never enjoy the level of exposure offered by a magazine like Shounen Jump.

If it has a lasting impact, it may be in further opening up the in-between space that titles like Jujutsu are currently trying to inhabit, or that Shingeki occupied in years past.

I was generally referring to the more mainstream titles you mentioned like One Piece or Naruto that have tons of films, but they're largely original stories. Should have clarified. Adapting an arc for a theatrical release from most Shonen series isn't exactly doable though, they're just way too long in most cases, so that's probably been part of the reason we haven't seen more. But also adapting an arc for a theatrical release that will be required viewing in order to continue the anime was likely considered too risky, possibly causing loss of viewership.

Someone who's watched season one of Demon Slayer can't really start season two later this year unless they watch the movie for instance. But that's obviously not going to be a problem given what the film has done. It's probably even had the opposite effect by further boosting the amount of people who went back to watch season one in order to watch the film, and in turn, bolstered the viewing audience for season two later this year since it'll continue where the film ended.

Although I am interested if the more niche or late-night anime have also had theatrical releases adapt the next arc of the manga or anime to where it's required viewing to continue on with the story? You can adapt canon material, but it not necessarily be a continuation of where the most recent adapted material has left off on.

Jujutsu Kaisen, for example, if it does end up having a movie, is *probably* going to adapt its prequel volume since I've heard that the arc that will follow where the anime concludes later this week is on the short side and heavy on the flashback material. Not really film material. And the arc after that is way too long to adapt into a film (almost 50 chapters, I believe). I haven't read it yet since it's been out of stock for 4 months now (...), but Volume 0, according to what little I've read to avoid spoilers, would make for a proper film adaptation versus adapting it into a future season of the anime somewhere. But it wouldn't be a continuation, exactly, of where the anime is leaving off since it's a prequel to the series, so it'll be interesting to watch if that happens.

5 final commercials for DS: Mugen Train (one for each main cast member) launched yesterday, they're running widely on TV and have a ton of views on Youtube, looking good for one last boost before the run ends.



https://kimetsu.com/anime/trailer/

As in adapting material that occurs after the TV series' material? Yes. Specifically as a step in-between two TV seasons? Hm, probably no, because niche series often just don't get sequels. Canon films also seem to be mostly intended as lower-risk alternatives to a full sequel, or for when there's not enough material for another season. It's a way to adapt the next/final arc of the source without paying for 12+ episodes.

At least one intended to go the "put a film between seasons" route: Kizumonogatari, announced in 2010 after Bakemonogatari finished. Of course then it went into production hell and was delayed for a comical amount of time, releasing well after the TV sequels it was supposed to precede. Those sequels just sorta ignored the issue and left viewers to fill in the gaps themselves (or read the novels).

And Kizu is a prequel so technically this isn't as disruptive as it could have been, but the original Kizu novel did come out after the Bake novels so they were originally intending to follow the source material's order at least.

All of the other examples I cited (plus others coming to mind now like Saekano) had films after their TV series, and have not received additional TV seasons since. Theoretically they could, if there's material left (some adapt the final volumes of the source, so nothing remains) and the committee wants to invest, but time is an enemy in the late-night industry and waiting even a few years tends to be the death of a series' popularity.

Nice post (as usual).

Maybe we'll see if Demon Slayer's insane success, as a late-night anime (though I highly doubt season two doesn't go primetime), can result in a shift for the late-night anime industry. Perhaps it can help by exposing more to a wider audience (as it appears to be doing in the manga industry for more recent/newer series), and/or either influencing or convicting committees to change their strategies in how they adapt or release content.

Yeah, unless there are explicit content reasons or production committee reasons that would preclude it, they'd be pretty mad not to give the second season a more mainstream time slot. The large number of streaming platforms in Japan means it's always been pretty accessible anyway (season one is on 22 different services) but a prime time slot is still a big deal.


This I'm less sure about, because you can only dedicate the marketing resources of a Kimetsu no Yaiba to a handful of series, and it's a tough sell unless the source material already has a broad reach. The sheer number of late night anime every season (40+, at least outside of the covid production dip) guarantees the vast majority can only ever appeal to their small hardcore niche.

The industry *does* need to limit its output though, not because doing so would be more profitable but because it's killing its workers with impossible schedules and atrocious working conditions that only get worse every year. The current model is raking in a ton of money for those workers' corporate overlords though, both domestically and overseas, so there's probably little chance of that happening. Not until the boom slows down and there's a catastrophic day of reckoning, anyway.

The spring break starts tomorrow in Japan and the gifts on Saturday and Demon Slayer managed to increase again this Thursday compared to last Thursday. It's phenomenal.

It's also tripled its seating and doubled it showtimes on Friday versus the seating/showings it's had over the past couple weeks. And it'll go even wider on Saturday when it adds the Dolby Cinema screens/showings and additional premium format showings.

Saturday's counts should be the highest they've been since mid-January. I'll have a reservations update for Saturday posted here in a bit for it, Evangelion, and Monster Hunter.

The next two weeks are basically being marketed as its sendoff event by ufotable and Aniplex. It'll still be playing until its home video release in June, but once Detective Conan opens on April 16th, it's going to lose the vast majority of its seating/showings.

Not surprised to see them give a good bit of screens to monster hunter. Still pretty convinced it'll bomb, though.

Quick Saturday reservation update:

Evangelion is the strongest, and is going to repeat at #1 pretty easily I believe, especially since the stage greetings are likely to boost its Sunday by a fair bit. Still not sure if it'll experience a weekend increase, but expect a strong hold. Its recent weekdays have been quite strong as well, with each day continuing to improve upon its hold versus last week.

Demon Slayer is looking very good and will be way up versus last weekend. The Dolby Cinema showings are particularly strong, with several of them close to selling out (always hard to sell those last dozen or so seats), so a high avg. ticket price this weekend is likely. I even see some locations where it was either on par with or maybe performing slightly better than Evangelion, but they were pretty sparse. However, this just tells you how insane this film is if it can compete with such a strong #1 film right now at any theater in its 24th week of release. It's not going to beat Evangelion on Saturday or over the weekend, but it could achieve its biggest weekend in over 2 months, all the way back to January 9-10th.

Monster Hunter improved a lot from what I was seeing yesterday, but it really varies by location. Some locations it's looking pretty solid, while others are quite abysmal, so it's kind of all over the place right now. It shouldn't bomb, especially since the premium format showings are far stronger than its standard showings, but it also won't be a hit either. Demon Slayer is performing better than it at most locations, but Monster Hunter does have the seating/showtime advantage to where it could make up that gap. I think it'll debut in third behind Demon Slayer, but it could come close to it. A bit too early to make this call right now.

And I want to mention Part 3 of the Girls und Panzer Finale film. It doesn't have too many theaters or screens, but it's making the most of what it's got with some very strong reservations. The first two parts to what I believe is a six-part finale had very similar openings (Part 1 with ¥146 million, Part 2 with ¥145 million), so I'd expect this weekend's film (Part 3) to at least have a similar debut despite its limited 64 theater count.

Corpse, can we therefore expect a Demon Slayer weekend under ¥300mn ?

I wouldn't say that. We just need to wait until Saturday pre-sales come out to get a rough idea of how the day and weekend may play out. Very unprecedented situation, and any sort of predictions right now are just guess work and nothing more.

Reservations have already seen a decent uptick this morning for it and everything else. In Demon Slayer's case, Toho Cinemas (Shinjuku) is already around 50% booked for the entire day now 24 hours in advance. No doubt it reaches 70/75%+ capacity there.

Okay okay, anyway if Demon Slayer succeeds on a weekend around ¥300mn-¥400mn, or about 200k admissions. It will be very difficult to bring back another 800k admissions the next 5 days and the 1 million gifts will surely not sell.

I'd be great if the 3 films can get around ¥400m or beyond, but no matter what happens, it will be a interesting weekend.

Hollywood needs a good performance in Japan, after all only TENET made money in the post-pandemic box-office.
And I really hope that the Girls und Panzer film also performs well

I'm surprised by any doubts regarding what Demon Slayer can do this weekend and upcoming holiday week. It's been performing above and beyond for over 160 days now, setting many records that will almost certainly never be broken along the way. Even its weekly numbers over the past few weeks have been higher than any other film on record at this stage of release.

Its weekdays have been equal to, or sometimes higher than, its weekends for months now. What do you think those weekdays are going to be like next week during a holiday period with an ongoing giveaway event and Dolby Cinema expansion with 4x as many seats and 3x as many showings as it's had versus the last several weeks/month(s)?

Whatever it does this weekend, and it's going to be a lot (perhaps jumping several hundred percent to probably 3-4x the 24th weekend record and having its best weekend in possibly 10(!) weeks), the weekdays are very likely to eclipse it.

At the very least wait and see what happens before having doubts.

You really can't underestimate the new generation of shounen manga. Besides from Jujutsu Kaisen, many potential emerge including Black Clover, Fire Force, Dr. STONE, and in this upcoming season Edens Zero and Tokyo Revengers.