'My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising' Breaks Anime Box Office Record

Anime isn't known for American box office success, and when there are successes they appear to be Studio Ghibli fare, Pokemon movies, and other family-friendly features. More mature anime seems to get small releases and thus little chance for blockbuster success. However, Japanese animated films for teenagers and grown-ups are growing at the box office thanks to specialty event-style distribution.

FUNimation Entertainment's latest release, My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising, premiered domestically last Wednesday and reportedly first-placed the box office, grossing $2.5 million on its opening day. The manga adaptation had reached a domestic total of $8.5 million by Sunday, including the official opening-weekend $5.1 million, ranking fourth. Showing at only 1,260 theaters, the movie had the second-best per-screen average of all small theater releases.

Heroes Rising is My Hero Academia's second feature. In the fall of 2018, FUNimation released My Hero Academia: Two Heroes domestically, holding the anime box office record for films rated PG-13and R so far. Two Heroes grossed $1.4 million on the U.S. and Canada opening weekend. Having debuted Tuesday before, its total was around $4 million through its opening weekend. Released on less than half as many screens, the theater average was higher.

Because other big anime features of the past received small theatrical releases, the average attendance per screen for those non-kid-friendly films was also higher. The new feature My Hero Academia only saw about 300 tickets sold per venue, while in 1999 one of Ghibli's earlier PG-13 attempts, Princess Mononoke, sold about 3,500 per screen. Some big per-screen hits include Akira in 1988, Perfect Blue in 1999, and Metropolis and Cowboy Bebop: The Movie in 2001.

For a comparison of anime box office for titles not suitable for children, an approximate opening-weekend attendance / ticket sales ranking:

1. My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising (2020): 0.55 million
2. Weathering with You (2020): 0.52 million
3. Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004): 0.51 million
4. My Hero Academia: Two Heroes (2018): 0.2 million
5. Night is Short, Walk on Girl (2017): 0.039 million
6. Cowboy Bebop: The Movie (2001): 0.039 million
7. The Wind Rises (2014): 0.038 million
8. The Boy and the Beast (2016): 0.032 million
9. Princess Mononoke (1999): 0.028 million
10. Steamboy (2005): 0.021 millions

I kept the numbers by millions of tickets because that's what I always do, plus it makes the above titles more noticeably lower than the list of the top 10 anime releases in general, irrespective of the MPAA score, by opening-weekend attendance:

1. Pokemon: The First Movie (1999): 6.1 million
2. Pokemon: The Movie 2000 (2000): 3.6 million
3. Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie (2004): 1.53 million
4. Pokemon 3: The Movie (2001): 1.46 million
5. Dragon Ball Super: Broly (2019): 1.1 million
6. The Secret World of Arrietty (2012): 0.81 million
7. Digimon: The Movie (2000): 0.79 million
8. My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising (2020): 0.55 million
9. Weathering with You (2020): 0.52 million
10. Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004): 0.51 million

However, in terms of worldwide box office grosses, three PG-13 launches rank in the top 10, which can not be broken down by ticket sales: Weathering with You ($193 million), and Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke ($161 million) and The Wind Rises ($136 million). Of the others, only Pokemon: First Film ($173 million) and Arrietty's Hidden World ($146 million) rank among the highest. Miyazaki and Makoto Shinkai have always done much better outside the US.

Yet oddly enough, the movies My Hero Academia aren't that big in Japan (although they are still considered hits even if not among the top 50 best-selling anime releases), so their success in America is noteworthy. Weathering with You was a comparable success in both territories, but of the other titles on the mature domestic anime list, the two Miyazaki films and The Boy and Beast did much better overseas than was common here. I confess I don't know why My Hero Academia's American fanbase is analogously greater than mine.

Meanwhile, new animated features of Pokemon also missed theatrical release. While 2017 Kunihiko Yuyama features Pokemon the Movie: I chose you! And Tetsuo Yajima's 2018 feature Pokemon the Movie: The Power of Us both hit theaters very briefly courtesy of Fathom Events, the new computer-animated feature Pokemon: Mewtwo Strikes Back–Evolution, led by Yuyama, Yajima, and Motonori Sakakakibara, made its debut in Netflix last week. And there, it's one of the top 10 most popular titles available (by Netflix).