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Eiga Sumikko Gurashi: Aoi Tsukiyo no Mahō no Ko (The Magical Child of the Blue Moonlit Night), the second film in San-X‘s Sumikko Gurashi franchise, has sold 900,000 tickets as of Sunday, eight weeks after the film opened in Japan. Those who go see the film starting on December 31 will receive a special New Year’s card.
The film ranked at #9 in its eighth weekend last weekend. The film has earned a cumulative total of 1,075,601,020 yen (about US$9.45 million) as of December 19.
The film opened in Japan on November 5, and sold about 200,000 tickets to earn about 250 million yen (about US$2.22 million) in its first three days.
Takahiro Ōmori (Durarara!!, Natsume’s Book of Friends, Princess Jellyfish) directed the film. Reiko Yoshida (Violet Evergarden, Lu over the wall, K-ON!) penned the script, and Kaori Hino (Modest Heroes, Napping Princess) returned from the first film as the art director. Fanworks returned to animate the film, and ASMIK Ace is distributing.
In the film’s story, the main characters go on a camping trip one day in the fall, and that night they recall a legend: that once every five years, on the night of a large and blue full moon, magical creatures will visit the town. The characters look up, only to see a large and blue moon overhead.
Sumikko Gurashi debuted in 2012 as slightly negative characters who like to stay in the corner of a room. The characters include “Shirokuma,” a polar bear who is sensitive to cold; “Penguin?” (with a question mark in its name), a penguin who is unsure if it is actually a penguin; “Tonkatsu,” a piece of pork cutlet that was left uneaten; “Neko,” a shy cat; and “Tokage,” who hides his nature as one of the last dinosaurs.
The first anime film, titled Sumikkogurashi – Good to be in the corner, opened in Japan in November 2019. The film eventually sold a total of 1.22 million tickets, and it earned 1.4 billion yen (about US$12.8 million) at the box office in Japan as of February 2020. The film won the award for Best Animation of the Year at the 29th Annual Japan Movie Critics Awards in June 2020.
Source: Mainichi Shimbun’s Mantan Web
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