“Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba the Movie — Mugen Train,” the anime film that became the biggest entertainment event of the year in Japan, has now become the biggest-ever box-office hit in Japanese film history.
The film officially attained this milestone with an announcement by distributor Aniplex today that its total earnings had reached ¥32.47 billion, beating the former all-time record holder, Hayao Miyazaki’s “Spirited Away,” which made ¥30.8 billion in 2001 and an additional ¥880 million this year in revival screenings, for a total of ¥31.6 billion.
Like many successful manga adaptations, “Demon Slayer” had a big built-in fan base, with nearly 120 million copies of the comic by Koyoharu Gotoge sold in all formats by December 2020. And the anime based on the manga became a global hit as it aired and streamed on multiple platforms domestically and internationally, including Fuji TV and Netflix.