Chainsaw Man Reze Arc Holds Number One in Japan for Second Weekend

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc held the top spot at the Japanese box office for a second straight weekend. The film sold 523,000 tickets and earned 799,728,500 yen (about US$5.40 million) from Friday through Sunday. Its cumulative total now stands at 1.96 million tickets and 2,989,518,900 yen (about US$20.19 million).

The film had a remarkable opening, displacing the Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle – Akaza Sairai film, which had sat at number one for nine consecutive weekends. Reze Arc’s opening day alone drew 272,000 tickets and over 420 million yen (about US$2.8 million), and its first weekend totaled 807,000 tickets for 1,251,178,500 yen (about US$8.46 million).

New to the chart this weekend, the live-action sequel Chinmoku no Kantai Hokkyoku-kai dai kaisen (The Silent Service: The Battle of the Arctic Ocean) opened at number three. The film sold 195,000 tickets and earned 282,233,100 yen (about US$1.90 million) in its first three days. Kōhei Yoshino directed the sequel, with Ado performing the theme song. The original Silent Service film opened in September 2023 and earned 370,136,800 yen in its opening weekend.

Elsewhere, the anime film adaptation of 100 Meters by Uoto slipped from number eight to number ten in its second weekend, earning 73,777,820 yen (about US$498,600) for a cumulative total of 270,214,400 yen (about US$1.82 million). The film had its world premiere at Annecy and opened in Japan on September 19, with GKIDS planning theatrical screenings in the US in mid-October.

My take: Chainsaw Man holding at number one for a second weekend is a genuinely strong result and confirms the film is not just riding opening weekend hype. It is shaping up to be one of the bigger anime film stories of the year, and it will be interesting to see how far the total climbs.