Japan's 'Demon Slayer' anime trumps 'Spirited Away' at box office amid Covid-19 pandemic

An animated movie with parallels to some of the challenges that many ordinary Japanese people are facing is setting box office records and is on course to be the most profitable domestically produced film of all time.

Demon Slayer: Mugen Train is based on a hugely popular manga series that has also been adapted for television. The release of the big-screen version had been eagerly awaited by fans, but the Japanese movie industry also had high hopes for it after being hit hard by restrictions on cinemas in the early months of the coronavirus pandemic.

Those hopes have been realised: more than 3.4 million people - close to 3 per cent of the total population of Japan - brushed aside concerns about being exposed to the coronavirus to see the film over its opening weekend, bringing in box office revenues just short of US$44 million.

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That figure was well beyond industry expectations and more than double the previous weekend opening record, set by Frozen 2 in November 2019, and made it the largest movie release in the world over the October 16-18 weekend.

That stunning run has continued since, with box office receipts hitting the 10 billion yen mark (US$95.3 million) over its first 10 days through Sunday - the fastest a Japanese movie has reached the mark.

By comparison, the classic Studio Ghibli tale Spirited Away, the animated fantasy film that debuted in 2001, took 25 days to reach that figure, and Demon Slayer: Mugen Train has already surpassed the total box office takings in Japan of Lord of the Rings or The Matrix.

The opening weekend of Demon Slayer brought in box office revenues of nearly US$44 million. Photo: Kyodo alt=The opening weekend of Demon Slayer brought in box office revenues of nearly US$44 million. Photo: Kyodo

Oricon News, which covers Japan's entertainment sector, estimates that Demon Slayer is on course to surpass the US$293.57 million that Spirited Away achieved in total box office earnings.

The film is the tale of a young boy who battles demons in Japan in the early 1900s. It is based on the manga series that sold more than 100 million copies during its publication run from 2016 to 2020.

Japanese film-lovers seem to have shaken off concerns about the coronavirus to go to cinemas, but were also unable to resist the lure of a film that has become something of a phenomenon. There is also a sense that many people just want to get some normality back into their lives after nearly nine disrupted months.

"My husband was a bit worried about us going to the cinema, but my daughter was desperate to see it," said Fumio Takenaka, a housewife from Yokohama. "We talked it through and decided that we would be careful and that we should be OK."

Takenaka, 48, initially tried to get advance tickets at a cinema that has a policy of only filling every other seat in the auditorium, but the screenings were fully booked. Eventually, she got tickets to see the movie with her 7-year-old daughter, Ayano, at another cinema in Yokohama.

"As soon as we got there, I felt quite reassured," she told This Week in Asia. "We all had to have our temperature taken before we could go into the auditorium, we were told we had to wear a mask at all times and there was hand sanitising liquid at every entrance."

Drinks were permitted, but no food was allowed in the auditorium, with information on what was permitted repeated several times over the loudspeaker before the film started.

"We enjoyed the film and I would say that for me, it was very pleasant to get away from all the stresses that we have to put up with in everyday life at the moment," she said. "For a little while, I didn't have to worry about if any of us are going to catch the virus or how serious it could get."

To date, Japan has reported just over 94,000 cases of Covid-19 in a nation of 126.5 million people, with an average of around 600 new infections daily. The latest figures from the health ministry put the total number of fatalities at 1,694.

Makoto Watanabe, a professor of media and communications at Hokkaido Bunkyo University, said the movie appeared to have struck a chord with his students as well.

"My impression is that while the story is set around 100 years ago, the storyline itself is very contemporary," he said. "The key part of the story is that the main character, Tanjiro, is conflicted because he is meant to kill his sister, Nezuko, because she has been transformed into a monster.

"Instead, he has to protect her, so this is at its heart a story of the strong love between a brother and sister and the importance of family ties," he said. "Those are all traditional values for Japanese people and I think that even children would grasp that concept."

Other messages within the tale include the warning that danger - in the form of monsters or, in our present world, the coronavirus - are all around us and that there are very few people we can truly trust, with the exception of one's family.

Another parallel that emerges in the film is that Tanjiro and his sister are on their own, a situation that a good number of Japanese families have experienced considering that fathers often work late and are stressed and uncertain about the security of their jobs, while more mothers have had to take on part-time jobs to get by.

And while Watanabe agrees that people are tired of having to distance themselves from friends and family and not enjoy an occasional trip to the cinema since the pandemic started, he still believes the biggest factor behind the movie's success is the story itself.

"I think a lot of people have had enough of being nervous about everywhere they go and that they need a bit of escapism, which is exactly what this is," he said.

"But, at the same time, I think plenty of people will walk out of the cinema and identify with Tanjiro because our lives today often seem like one long struggle against monsters of one kind or another."

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

Copyright (c) 2020. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.