Japan’s auteurs and anime triumphed in 2023

CULTURE / Film / 2023 in Review

Japan’s auteurs and anime triumphed in 2023

While Hayao Miyazaki’s return to filmmaking, “The Boy and the Heron,” did not attain the ?10 billion milestone that the beloved animator’s movies had once routinely surpassed, it debuted at the top of the North American box office and became the first original anime film to lead the box office in the United States and Canada. | REUTERS

By Mark Schilling
Contributing writer

Dec 15, 2023

Japanese films dominated the domestic box office in 2023, accounting for eight of the year’s highest-earning films as of Dec. 13, according to the Pick Scene entertainment news site.

In the top spot was “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” an animated feature based on the iconic Nintendo game. The film made ?14 billion ($95 million) following its April 2023 release. Given that the film was a worldwide smash, raking in a total of $1.362 billion, its enthusiastic reception in Japan, where the Super Mario franchise was born, shouldn’t have been a surprise.

All three of the top box-office hits were animated films, the latest indication of the genre’s enduring strength in the Japanese market. At No. 2, with ?13.8 billion, was “Detective Conan: Black Iron Submarine,” the 26th entry in the “Detective Conan” film series about the adventures of a genius teenage detective trapped in his childhood body. This total set a series record, beating the ?9.78 recorded by 2022’s “Detective Conan: The Bride of Halloween.”