‘Your Name’ Anime Has Excellent Opening In China — Makoto Shinkai’s Latest Film Opens At No. 1 With $41 Million
Your Anime, the biggest anime movie currently airing in East Asia right now, just had a phenomenal opening in China. The latest Japanese animation movie by Makoto Shinkai opened in China at No. 1, earning a whopping $41 million.
According to a written article by Anime News Network, it reports that Makoto Shinkai’s Your Name anime film ranked No. 1 at the box office in China this past weekend. The film sold a total of ¥30 million (about 450 million yen or $4.4 million) in pre-sale tickets prior to its opening weekend. When it did open, up to 7,000 theaters in China made sure to feature the anime title. Apparently, the Chinese viewership really wanted to see Your Name as 2.77 million tickets worth ¥70 million (about 1.2 billion yen or $10.9 million) were sold. A total of 66,000 screenings of Your Name happened on the first day. The next day, Your Name earned $17.4 million more.
Your Name by Makoto Shinkai earning No. 1 in China is an accomplishment on its own, especially when we look at the competition it is facing. For starters, it was going against a movie created out of the imagination of J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. That movie opened up at No. 1 on its opening weekend earning $39.7 million. It was bumped to No. 2 on the weekend Your Name opened. It earned only $15.5 million at the Chinese box office which includes a $3.31 million in Friday and $3.3 million in IMAX showings. After that, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children took No. 3 with $10.2 million. It, too, made its debut last weekend alongside Your Name.
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For those who are unfamiliar with Your Name (officially known as Kimi no Na wa), it is about a high-school couple one month after a comet has fallen for the first time in a thousand years in Japan. Mitsuha, a high school girl living in the countryside, wants to live in the city because she is tired of life in the country. Taki, a high school student in Tokyo, lives with his friends while working as a part-timer at an Italian restaurant. He also has a strong interest in fine arts involving architecture. One day, Mitsuha dreams of herself as a young man. On the other hand, Taki also has a dream where he is a female student attending high school in the countryside. This happenstance causes something fantastic to happen: they swap bodies.
It should also be noted that Your Name is getting plenty of attention now for its popularity in China, but it first dominated in its home country of Japan. The thing about anime feature films is that usually Studio Ghibli films, especially those directed by Hayao Miyazaki, are the ones to surpass $100 million. Your Name is the first non-Miyazaki film to surpass that box office mark.
Along with the aforementioned accomplishments, Your Name is currently the No. 1 film in Japan for five consecutive weeks, currently the top-grossing film of 2016, and the highest-grossing film in Japan since the 2014 release of Disney’s Frozen, and currently the seventh-highest-grossing Japanese film of all time. It is also the 19th-highest-grossing film among all films released in Japan.
[Featured Image by CoMix Wave Films/Toho Animation]
