The coronavirus pandemic has yielded many surprising insights for the global film and TV business. One of the most curious new facts to emerge is that Japanese anime might just be the world’s most COVID-resistant form of popular entertainment.
During the height of pandemic lockdowns in 2020, when total U.S. box office sales fell 80 percent for the year and Japan’s theatrical market slipped 45 percent, Japan’s total anime industry contracted just 3.5 percent, with a market value of about $21.3 billion (more than 2.4 trillion yen). In that same fraught year, the anime business also produced its biggest theatrical hit of all time: Demon Slayer the Movie: Mugen Train, an action-packed period fantasy that earned nearly $48 million in North America, $365 million in Japan and $504 million worldwide, becoming the biggest theatrical blockbuster of any kind in 2020 (it beat the Chinese war film The Eight Hundred, which took in $461 million in its home market). And the outsized earnings for anime have only continued. The top three titles at the Japanese box office in 2021 were all anime hits; and Jujutsu Kaisen 0, a dark fantasy anime based on a manga series of the same name by Gege Akutami, brought in $106 million there earlier this year, as well as a healthy $34 million in North America for a $187 million worldwide total.
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