There has been an awakening. While the new Star Wars movie crushes box office records across the US and Europe, let’s take this moment to consider that not every market awards box office victories based on cash money.
Japan, for example, tracks movies based on the number of ticket sales, not how much money was made by those ticket sales. And going by that criteria, Star Wars: The Force Awakens was only the #2 movie in Japan over the weekend.
Top spot was taken by (*deep breath*) Yo-Kai Watch the Movie 2: King Enma and the 5 Stories, Nyan!, the second animated movie in a series that is dominating Japan in a way not seen since the height of Pokemania. Yahoo says that 975,000 tickets were sold for the movie on Saturday and Sunday.
Star Wars, on the other hand, could “only” draw 800,000 people to cinemas.
Note for fans of a cash money chart system: because a much higher percentage of Yo-Kai Watch 2’s audience were buying cheaper children’s tickets, it made $US8.71 million, while Star Wars’ sales were worth $US10.3 million. So chin up, JJ Abrams, at least you’ve got that.
Comments
9 responses to “Star Wars: The Force Awakens Was Beaten In Japan By… Yo-Kai Watch”
Why’s that kid hanging out with a flying sperm monster?
Yeah, I hear so much about Yo-kai Watch from Kotaku, but none of the monster designs seem appealing enough for it to be the cultural behemoth they say it is.
Because..Japan.
There’s even one with a butt for a face.
I tried watching an episode on ch9 a fews days ago. I liked the human chars – the art style is solid and cute, and it reminded me of pokemon and digimon.
Then an old guy with glasses and the body of a dog (or maybe it was a dog with the head of a human) stole a camera and started taking photos of a young school girl. As if the monster wasn’t creepy enough to begin with, they had to make it a pedophile too >. <
Now all the yokai in that show creep me out enough that I havn’t been able to sit through even a few seconds more of it.
I managed to catch Yo Kai Watch on TV the other day, and I concur completely. My wife and I looked at each other knowingly while our kids were watching, mentally saying to each other, “What are we letting our kids watch?”
I should also mention that the sperm monster above seemed to attach itself to a little boy, who then needed to go to the bathroom all the time o.O
I read this initially as King Enema. Yeah, I bet King Enema has more than 5 stories to tell, and he won’t be needing no watch to tell them by, either.
I read it as that too >.>