‘Your Name’ Becomes First Non-Miyazaki Anime to Top $100 Million in Japan

Since launching on August 26 in Japan, Makoto Shinkai’s Your Name (Kimi no Na wa) has been an unstoppable force at the Japanese box office, and it has now become Japan’s highest-grossing non-Miyazaki animated feature of all-time with a tally-to-date of US$111 million.

Here’s a few other box office achievements since its release:

• The number one film in Japan for five consecutive weeks.
• Currently the top-grossing Japanese film of 2016, and the highest-grossing film in Japan since the 2014 release of Frozen.
• Currently the seventh-highest-grossing Japanese film of all-time, and the 19th-highest-grossing film amongst all movies ever released in Japan.
• The first non-Miyazaki anime to cross the 10 billion yen (approximately US$100 million) mark at the Japanese box office.

Shinkai, whose previous works include 5 Centimeters Per Second and The Garden of Words, also wrote the screenplay for Your Name, a genre-mashing sci-fi/fantasy/romance that revolves around two teenagers who have never met one another yet start appearing in each others’ dreams. Shinkai has cited the film’s body-swapping themes as being inspired by a historic Japanese fairy tale, Torikaebaya Monogatari, about a pair of gender-bending siblings.

Masashi Ando (Spirited Away, A Letter to Momo, Paprika) served as the film’s key animation supervisor. Comix Wave produced the film and Toho distributed in Japan.

Funimation has acquired rights for North American distribution, and has stated plans to release both theatrically and on home video.

Since the smash-success of Your Name, the popular angle in the Japanese media has been comparing Shinkai to Miyazaki, and the 43-year-old directed addressed that comparison in a recent interview, saying, “I want to make two more films with Toho before I turn 50. I can never stand unrivaled like Miyazaki, but if I have been given the privilege of making films for the slot, I am confident of delivering something others can’t make.”