House byline
Entertainment correspondent
Ren Takahashi is a house byline for InfoHandle’s Entertainment desk.
Studio Ghibli reopened Earwig and the Witch in limited theaters this week ahead of an October 23 nationwide IMAX run pairing Whisper of the Heart and The Secret World of Arrietty in 4K remasters.
The Pokémon Horizons feature opened at Shinjuku Piccadilly with a midnight queue stretching into Kabukicho side streets, giving Toho Cinemas a holiday-weekend hit driven by schoolchildren on Sports Day break.
Separate festival floats overturned in Izumisano and Izumiotsu on Saturday, crushing participants who were balancing the four-ton wooden towers during yarimawashi turns.
Toho Cinemas said advance sales for a nationwide Studio Ghibli re-release led weekend box-office presales ahead of Sports Day, outpacing new domestic live-action openings in suburban multiplexes.
NHK’s new taiga drama premiere drew a 19.2 household share on Sports Day eve, beating variety counterprogramming as viewers stayed home ahead of holiday travel, according to Video Research preliminary ratings.
Chiikawa’s feature crossed 17.1 billion yen in receipts while a cancer-diary biopic opened atop the weekend chart with 441 million yen.
Tom’s Entertainment opens its anime adaptation of Akiko Abe’s novel Friday as part of a crowded October theatrical slate for Japanese films.
Shochiku opens the anime adaptation of Akiko Abe’s novel To You in the Beyond nationwide on Friday, with 116 minutes of island-set youth drama and stage greetings scheduled in Tokyo over the weekend.
Lawson’s online lottery for a Studio Ghibli stationery set sold through its allocation in under three hours, crashing the app for users outside major cities.
The Seishun Buta Yarou finale film streamed its first four minutes after a Shinjuku preview, ahead of a nationwide October 16 opening.
A touring Studio Ghibli 35-film retrospective sold out its Sendai stop in minutes, as Tohoku fans chase 4K restorations ahead of a November streaming window.
Bandai Namco Film Partners scheduled a two-title anime roadshow for October, pairing a re-mastered theatrical short with a new compilation film aimed at regional cinemas outside Tokyo.
Bandai Namco Film Partners booked a domestic autumn roadshow pairing two theatrical anime features after advance sales outpaced single-title averages in presales.
Toho Cinemas will simulcast Asian Games basketball medal rounds on big screens at its Shinjuku multiplex for weekday morning audiences who cannot stream at work, licensing feeds from the Japan Consortium.
Fuji TV will air a ninety-minute Asian Games track finals cut-down after midnight for Kanto night-shift workers, licensing sprint and relay highlights from the Nagoya host broadcaster pool.
Ghibli Fest added December screenings nationwide as IMAX operators reported renewed family ticket demand following a strong autumn anime film season.
Sep 26 daily admissions put the Odoru Daisousasen sequel ahead of Chiikawa, but Chiikawa's ¥16.5 billion cumulative gross keeps the longer box-office race in its favor.
Toho's post-Silver Week rankings put a new horror title at the front of new admissions, while the holiday holdover still filled premium screens. The story is less about one franchise than about how the autumn window is being sold.
Johnny & Associates affiliate promoters opened Arashi’s Tokyo Dome arena dates Thursday with repeated warnings against third-party QR resale listings, as Ren Takahashi’s entertainment desk tracks box-office identity checks and fan-club ballot rules fans use to separate official tickets from payment-app scam pages.
Toho’s latest Demon Slayer feature led national Silver Week box office as Chiba multiplexes restored full power midweek, letting coastal theatres run matinee slots that had been dark during Typhoon Dujuan outages while anime distributors chase holiday gross records.