Pensioner Shizue Kato did not fancy the brand new “Demon Slayer” anime blockbuster and as a substitute watched “Kokuho”, a uncommon reside motion cinema hit in Japan, the place animation guidelines.
“Lots of our mates already watched the movie, they usually have been amazed we hadn’t but,” Kato advised AFP as she emerged from a Tokyo cinema on a current weekday.
“I learn the unique novel,” her husband Kuni mentioned.
Lasting nearly three hours, “Kokuho” is about two “onnagata”, male gamers of feminine roles in kabuki, a rarefied type of classical Japanese theatre.
Lee Sang-il’s movie, shot by Tunisian cinematographer Sofian El Fan, follows the friendship and rivalry of the son of a slain yakuza gangster and a boy born right into a kabuki household.
The plot is gripping however markedly extra sedate than this summer time’s different hit, the second film from the “Demon Slayer” anime and manga mega-franchise.
That darkish fantasy, the primary of a trilogy, is about sword-swishing Tanjiro Kamado’s ultimate showdown to slay demons and make his sister human once more in a kaleidoscopic fortress.
It has set information, similar to its predecessor within the sequence and different anime movies, turning into Japan’s quickest movie to gross 10 billion yen ($67 million).
It overtook “Titanic” to change into the third-highest grossing movie in Japan, behind the final “Demon Slayer” and Studio Ghibli’s extra intellectual — however nonetheless animated – “Spirited Away”.
– Heartthrobs –
Anime is king in Japan.
Of its prime 10 movies, solely three are reside motion and simply a type of — “Bayside Shakedown 2” — is Japanese-made.
The others are “Titanic” and the primary “Harry Potter”.
The identical is more and more true elsewhere — Chinese language animated fantasy “Ne Zha II” is the highest-grossing movie of 2025.
On streaming platforms, Netflix’s most-watched film ever is the animated “KPop Demon Hunters” and the agency says its viewers watched anime over a billion occasions in 2024.
However “Kokuho” is successful in Japanese cinemas a minimum of, the quickest domestic-made reside motion movie to go 10 billion yen since “Bayside” in 2003.
It helps that each the principle actors — Ryo Yoshizawa and Ryusei Yokohama — are heartthrobs in Japan.
“Ryo Yoshizawa has this lovely face,” gushed Toyoko Umemura, 65, who got here along with her daughter to look at the movie.
“His appearing was additionally nice,” she advised AFP.
– Godzilla roars –
“Kokuho” has even revived flagging curiosity in kabuki, based on Shochiku, the leisure firm that manages the well-known Kabuki-za theatre in Tokyo’s Ginza district.
The film benefitted from its distributor being Toho, the Japanese large behind “Godzilla”, and from the deep pockets of Sony.
Toho’s inside projections have been for just a few billion yen in revenues, enterprise each day Nikkei reported, till “Kokuho” premiered at Cannes in Could.
Then it took off, and Toho used a few of the identical strategies from its anime hits — not least “Demon Slayer” — to generate buzz on and offline.
The movie’s run in theatres has additionally been prolonged, whereas phrase of mouth unfold. Many individuals went to see it twice.
In accordance with Parrot Analytics, demand — a measure based mostly primarily on precise consumption plus search and social media exercise — was 25 occasions increased than the common movie in Japan.
Former Warner Bros govt Douglas Montgomery, CEO of World Connects Media and a Temple College professor, mentioned anime offers a “extra constant return” for studios — not least from merchandising.
“The movie features as a advertising result in the (mental) property, the place the actual cash is made later. This makes it more durable for live-action movies because the income streams are fewer and shorter,” Montgomery advised AFP.
“The lesson (from ‘Kokuho’) for the Japanese movie business is that it may well pay to take probabilities on one thing totally different,” he mentioned, with the warning that reproducing such a “uncommon gem” can be robust.
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