Chainsaw Man Tops Box Office; 5 Centimeters Opens Second
Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc held firm at the top of the Japanese box office for a third straight weekend. The film, based on the Reze Arc of Tatsuki Fujimoto’s manga, sold around 406,000 tickets and earned roughly 643 million yen, or about 4.25 million US dollars, from Friday to Sunday.
Its running total had climbed to about 3.74 million tickets and 5.4 billion yen, which comes to roughly 36 million US dollars. It first claimed number one by unseating the Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle film, which had led the chart for nine weeks in a row.
The big new arrival was the live action version of Makoto Shinkai’s 5 Centimeters per Second, which opened at number two. It sold about 278,000 tickets for around 420 million yen over its first three days, helped along by the Sports Day holiday weekend.
That adaptation stars SixTONES member Hokuto Matsumura, with Yoshiyuki Okuyama directing, Ayako Suzuki writing the script, and TOHO distributing.
Between a juggernaut anime film and a heartfelt live action romance, the top of the chart shows just how much room anime and its adaptations now command in Japanese cinemas.
My take: It is wonderful to see two such different anime related films leading the box office at once. I am especially glad audiences are turning out for a quiet, emotional story like 5 Centimeters per Second.
