The pensioner Shizue Kato did not like the new anime box office “Demon Slayer” and, on the other hand, he saw “Kokuho”, a rare live action cinema in Japan, where he governs animation.
“Many of our friends already saw the movie, and they were surprised that we wouldn’t have yet,” Kato told AFP When he left a Tokyo cinema on a recent week day. “I read the original novel,” said her husband Kuni.
Speaking almost three hours, “Kokuho” is about two “Onnagata”, male female roles players in Kabuki, a rarefied form of classic Japanese theater.
Lee Sang-il’s film, filmed by the director of Tunisian photography Sofian the fan, follows the friendship and rivalry of the son of a murdered Yakuza gangster and a child born in a Kabuki family.
The plot is exciting but remarkably quieter than the other success of this summer, the second anime movie “Demon Slayer” and the mega manga franchise.
That dark fantasy, the first of a trilogy, is about the final confrontation of Tanjiro Kamado by Sword Sword Kamado to kill demons and make his sister human again in a caleidoscopic castle. He has established albums, as well as his predecessor in the series and other anime films, becoming the fastest film in Japan to raise 10 billion yen ($ 67 million).
He surpassed “Titanic” to become the third highest film in Japan, behind the last “Demon Slayer” and the highest of Studio Ghibli, but still animated, “Spirited Away”.
Rompecorazones
The anime is the king in Japan. Of his 10 best films, only three are live action, and only one of them, “Bayside Shakedown 2”, is Japanese manufacture.
The others are “Titanic” and the first “Harry Potter.”
The same is increasingly true elsewhere: Chinese animated fantasy “Ne Zha II” is the highest grossing film of 2025.
In the transmission platforms, Netflix’s most watched film is the lively “Kpop Demon Hunters”, and the firm says that their viewers saw anime for a billion times in 2024.
But “Kokuho” is a success in Japanese cinemas at least, the fastest domestic manufacturing action film that passes 10 billion yen from “Bayside” in 2003.
It helps that both the main actors, Ryo Yoshizawa and Ryusei Yokohama, are ralias in Japan. “Ryo Yoshizawa has this beautiful face,” said Toyoko Umemura, 65, who came with his daughter to watch the movie.
“His performance was also great,” she said AFP
GODZILLA RGE
“Kokuho” has even revived the interest of marking in Kabuki, according to Shochiku, the entertainment company that manages the famous Kabuki -za theater in the Ginza de Tokyo district.
The film benefited from his distributor was Toho, the Japanese giant behind “Godzilla” and the deep Sony pockets.
Toho’s internal projections were for a few billion yen in revenue, Nikkei Business Journal reported, until “Kokuho” premiered in Cannes in May.
Then he took off, and Toho used some of the same techniques of his anime blows, no less “Demon Slayer”, to generate buzz on and offline.
The film’s career has also extended, while mouth mouth extends. Many people went to see him twice.
According to Parrot Analytics, demand, a measure based mainly on real consumption plus the search and activity of social networks, was 25 times greater than the average film in Japan.
The former Warner Bros executive, Douglas Montgomery, CEO of Global Connects Media and professor at the Temple University, said the anime provides a “more consistent return” for studies, especially commercialization.
“The film works as a marketing leads to property (intellectual), where real money is won later. This makes it more difficult for live action movies, since the sources of income are increasingly short,” said Montgomery AFP
“The lesson (from ‘Kokuho’) for the Japanese film industry is that it can pay risk something different,” he said, with the warning that reproducing a “rare jewel” would be difficult.
