Demon Slayer: Mugen Train Arc Box Office Review

The weekend after Mother's Day, I took my dad to see Kimetsu no Yaiba: Mugen Ressha-Hen, and it did not disappoint.

Movie poster posted and sourced from Crunchyroll.com

Demon Slayer has rocked the world with its debut of the feature-length movie that hit Japanese theatres on October 16th, 2020, and more recently in American theatres on April 23rd, 2021. As a casual fan of the animated TV show, I was excited to hear about a movie release last year and checked on the movie's status every so often with a quick Goggle search.

During my fall term, I took an advanced-level producing class. Due to COVID-19, this class was completely remote and was altered to more research-based assignments. One of those assignments was to pick a current event in the movie industry, and discussing the overwhelming success of an anime/manga-based movie was a very alluring subject.

Screenshot from one of the slides in the presentation I made for class. View the complete presentation below (use for reference only, please do not present as your own):

cmengel_currentevent_FINAL.pdf

Download PDF • 1.19MB

My presentation was based on a New York Times Article, written this past October, that detailed how Demon Slayer became the biggest box office weekend in Japan's history. The presence of COVID-19 closed theatres for a long period of time, and during that portion of October, the pandemic was still a large concern across the world. Once some theatres opened, though, revenue slowly came back, but not as prominently as it did the weekend of this particular movie's release.

According to Japan's box office, Kimetsu no Yaiba doubled over the country's largest opening weekend, originally being held by Miyazaki's Spirited Away for almost 20 years. The New York Times article also mentions that over 3.4 million people spent about $44 million on tickets just for its domestic debut alone. At the same time, Demon Slayer really didn't have any competition since Hollywood pushed back much of its popular upcoming releases due to the pandemic. The author did mention that this movie has special significance to animation history since it showed everyone "how quickly and frequently audiences will return once they feel safe".

Screenshot of Japan's Highest-Grossing Films provided by Wikipedia.

Now that it's June of 2021 and I've finally seen the movie (subbed) at my local theatre after the U.S. release, I wanted to go back and look at the American box office statistics.

Right off the bat, Demon Slayer's did pretty good, accumulating over $21 million during opening weekend and grossing over $45 million overall. While Japan did do significantly better with their opening weekend and later grossing over $367 million, it seems the movie's U.S. release did proficiently, especially considering the fact that both the subbed and dubbed versions of the movie played in theatres across the states. According to an article on CNET, Demon Slayer was running next to Mortal Kombat, but came in as a close second. Mortal Kombat accumulated about $23 million in the U.S. box office during opening weekend.

According to the same article on CNET concerning the movie, the U.S. opening weekend box office numbers are the highest ever for an anime. The article mentions, "Many insiders believe the success of both movies are reflective of a cinema market focused on serving niche audiences."

Demon Slayer box office article written by author Mark Serrels on CNET.com.

Overall, these box office numbers, internationally, are astonishing. I may be a bit biased since I am a fan of the series, but it's amazing to see an anime make waves in theatres across the globe. What's especially interesting to me is that quote from the CNET article about niche audiences-- it's kind of true. Part of the success of movies is what audiences are swarming to the theaters and what they want to see. This is a thing producers, writers, and creatives think about every day when marketing work: who is my audience? Who is spending money at the theatres the most? What do people like right now?

Those working on the Demon Slayer anime and movie saw a perfect opportunity and seized it. They knew the anime and manga drew in a large crowd in Japan and the U.S. alike, and they were able to get the movie out at a time where people craved entertainment the most during this chapter of world history. These are the moments in cinema news that I see and get inspired by the most.

Flame Hashira Kyojuro Rengoku THOUROUGHLY enjoying his food. (Photo sourced from Yali Perez's article on Funimation.com)

There is a component to this movie that amazes me. Anime was not always a popular genre in the states by a VERY large crowd. When I was in middle school, if you were open about your interest in anime you were labelled a bit oddly. It was unfortunate, but those who liked anime and manga found their people and enjoyed their hobbies online, in chat rooms, and at conventions. What's crazy (and exciting) now, is that anime is more widely accepted among a larger audience of people. When I scroll on TikTok, I'm ecstatic to see the countless people getting into different shows, giving recommendations, and cosplaying as their favorite characters.

So, I guess what I'm trying to say in this post is, Kimetsu no Yaiba: Mugen Ressha-Hen has made animation and cinema history in such an interesting way, and I'm excited to see what other anime movies come out afterwards.

Also, Season 2 is gonna slap.