NEW YORK — Choo choo, watch out for the Demon Slayer train.
“Demon Slayer the Movie: Mugen Train,” an anime film based on a popular manga series, raked in roughly $21.1 million during its opening weekend in the U.S. The feature film broke the country’s box office record for biggest foreign language debut, according to distributors Funimation and Aniplex of America.
“Demon Slayer” is already a successful anime series adapted from the shonen manga known as “Kimetsu no Yaiba” in Japanese. The Japanese film made a splash when it premiered domestically in October, followed by a strong box office performance in the Asia-Pacific region. It also became the top grossing movie of all time in Japan, dethroning Hayao Miyazaki’s “Spirited Away.”
The series was expected to create a $2 billion economic impact in Japan, Nikkei reported in December. With over 120 million paper and digital copies of the entire series published, the success of the feature film and the many tie-in food and consumer products, “Demon Slayer” stimulated a retail market dampened by the pandemic.
“Kimetsu no Yaiba” tells the story of a teenage boy named Tanjiro Kamado, who goes on a quest to save his younger sister. She was turned into a demon by Muzan Kibutsuji, the main antagonist of the series, whose attack killed the rest of Tanjiro’s family.
“Demon Slayer” is in theaters now.
