Japan Box Office: One Piece Film: Red Makes Impressive No.1 Debut with New Records

One Piece Film: Red, the much-awaited 15th feature film in the One Piece anime franchise, was finally released in 376 theaters across Japan on August 6, 2022, then earned a huge 2.254 billion yen (16.92 million USD) on 1.58 million admissions, easily making its No.1 debut. It was the best opening record for a film released in Japan this year so far surpassing Detective Conan: The Bride of Halloween in April, and also the best opening record in the history of the film’s distributor, Toei.

The film’s first Saturday-Sunday gross was about 280 percent of that of the franchise’s previous 14th film One Piece Stampede released in August 2019 and about 164 percent of that of the top-grossing film in the history of the One Piece anime franchise, the 12th film One Piece Film Z in December 2012.

Meanwhile, the critical reception of the film has been mixed. It only ranked third in Filmarks’ first day satisfaction ranking with an average rating of 3.80/5.0 based on 5,364 reviews. It is rated much lower than Gundam Reconguista in G: V Shisen wo Koete, which took first place with 4.14/5.0 despite being the fifth chapter of the compilation film series of the TV anime.

According to Oricon News, Toei is hoping that the film’s overall performance will reach the 10 billion yen mark, but that may depend on how well word of mouth spreads in the future, as with other recent hit films that have reached the milestone.

Kingdom 2 Harukanaru Daichi e (To the Land of Faraway), the second live-action film adaptation of Yasuhisa Hara‘s historical adventure manga, ranked fourth in its fourth weekend. The second Kento Yamazaki-starring film has earned 3.4 billion yen (25.5 million USD) so far, which is about 59.3 percent of the total domestic gross of the first film in 2019. At this rate, it is going to be hard to beat the record of the first film in the end.

Once disappeared outside the top 10, the live-action film adaptation of Non Tamashima’s romance shoujo manga Moekare wa Orange-iro / My Boyfriend in Orange returned to ninth place in its fifth weekend. The film’s cumulative box-office gross has reached 620 million yen (4.65 million USD) to become this year’s third top-grossing live-action film adaptation of Japanese manga/anime, behind Kingdom 2 (3.4 billion yen) and Osomatsu-san (1.58 billion yen).

While ranking No.1 in Filmarks’ first day satisfaction ranking, Gundam Reconguista in G: V Shisen wo Koete didn’t appear in either the overall or mini-theater rankings.