Makoto Shinkai's latest major film, Suzume, has been highly successful in several countries, including its native Japan, as well as China and South Korea. There's no question it's been an absolute smash hit that continues to put its widely renowned director's name in the spotlight. Unfortunately, this round of financial applause isn't quite being felt all the way around the world.

Suzume hasn't had quite the same level of box office in North America as it has elsewhere. This could be due to a somewhat crowded cinematic landscape that's currently being gobbled up by The Super Mario Bros. Movie. At the same time, it may also speak to how non-franchise anime still has a lot of catching up to do in the West to truly be considered mainstream.

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Suzume's Best Box Office Hauls Aren't in North America

Suzume and Souta open a magical door

Suzume has scored almost $300 million at the global box office so far, with over $100 million of this (14.48 billion yen) being from Japan. The rest of the monetary majority comes from China and South Korea, with the movie now releasing in North America and other areas around the world. Given that the film released in Japan in November 2022, its making so much money by this point only makes sense. Likewise, Japanese media is increasingly successful in neighboring East Asian countries. That's supposedly the case with Western countries as well, but it wasn't quite reflected in America.

Its opening weekend saw Suzume score around $5 million at the North American box office. This isn't entirely terrible, especially given the movie's success in other regions and the fact that it was likely far cheaper to produce than animated films in Hollywood. At the same time, it's a rather paltry sum for the movie, with its box office sure to shrink drastically in the coming weeks. It won't doom Suzume by any means, but it does set a bad precedent for anime movies unrelated to major franchises.

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For the past several years, the influence of anime and its fandoms has only increased in North America. This is namely the case for "classic" mainstream franchises such as Dragon Ball and One Piece, not to mention Boruto (and its predecessor Naruto), My Hero Academia, Demon Slayer and Chainsaw Man. These properties are massively popular, and this can be seen in the box office revenue for films such as Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero and Demon Slayer: Mugen Train. The latter film made over $20 million at the box office during its opening weekend, and this was while the COVID-19 pandemic was still a prevalent issue in many areas. That's around four times what Suzume made in much better circumstances, which speaks to the reality of anime's popularity.

While anime as a whole has definitely become more popular, it's mainly the aforementioned franchises and a few others that have truly thrived from this. Only the most mainstream anime are really reaching a level of ubiquity in North America, with even classics such as Fist of the North Star and the groundbreaking cyberpunk film Akira being less well-known among the younger generation. Thus, simply bringing an anime production to a venue like theaters isn't enough to generate interest, though it could be if said project is related to a popular franchise. Suzume is nothing at all like some of those franchises, so it's like expecting the fans of Pixar movies to show up for The Bob's Burgers Movie simply because they're both animated.

It also misses the attached renown of being directed by Hayao Miyazaki, with director Shinkai being less of a household name worldwide. Add in a lack of marketing and tons of more popular competition from the likes of Mario, John Wick and others, and it's somewhat easy to see why Suzume wasn't an instant success like some might expect. This could see future anime films involving romance or less fantastical/action-based concepts glossed over for North American releases if the potential gains aren't significant enough. It's an unfortunate reality, but it does show that anime fandoms in the West have several nuances and caveats in terms of what generally interests them.

Suzume is now playing in select theaters across North America.