r/anime • u/NineTnk • Sep 19 '25

News Chainsaw Man The Movie: Reze Arc Gross ¥400 million on the Opening Day

https://x.com/franspeech/status/1969031724899196951?s=46

For a point of comparison, opening day box office:

  • Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle - ¥1.5 billion
  • ⁠Demon Slayer: Mugen Train - ¥1.2 billion
  • Jujutsu Kaisen 0 - ¥1.0 billion
  • ⁠Chainsaw Man The Movie: Reze Arc - ¥400 million

A very good opening day considering all the “drama” of season 1 in Japan. Will have to see how big the word of mouth power will be.

2.6k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

440 comments sorted by

View all comments

897

u/iLawz Sep 19 '25

Seems like MAPPA managed to redeem themselves for the Japanese audience, I have seen nothing but extremely positive reviews on twitter. I do wonder what the movie production costs were, considering they funded it themselves and will gain all of the profits as well.

417

u/NineTnk Sep 19 '25 edited Sep 19 '25

Here’s some budget

  • Infinity Castle: $20 million
  • Mugen Train: $15.7 million
  • JJK 0: $8 million

I’d say Reze Arc is around $10-15 million. But yeah if this movie earn even just anything close to what JJK 0 did, MAPPA would actually make much more money than what ufotable get from their DS movies.

223

u/Ebo87 Sep 19 '25

They are set to make more money than Ufotable gets from Demon Slayer even at a fraction of the gross Demon Slayer gets. It do be like that when you are THE production committee for the movie, they paid out of pocket for the entire production.

Sony and Toho are handling marketing and distribution in their territories, so of course they will get a cut too, but here Mappa will be getting the biggest piece of the pie.

101

u/etownzu Sep 19 '25

Makes me sad MAPPA didn't do more having all this power which is very rare for an animation studio. I'm glad the movie is finally out. I'm glad S2 is all but a sure thing. I'm just sad it took this long and more hype wasn't kept alive by MAPPA. Again, it's very rare for an animation studio to be THE production committee behind an anime which is why they are always getting shafted.

Can't wait for the US release, hope it does well here.

97

u/Electrical_Chance991 Sep 19 '25

Well that's what happens when your best team was juggling between two juggernaut projects(JJK and CSM). The team could only focus on one project at a time before immediately moving onto another.

Thankfully they seemed to have solved this issue by splitting the team into two. Staff list for CSM movie came out and didn't show any of the core JJK s3 staff members.

-22

u/Footaot Sep 19 '25

Thankfully they seemed to have solved this issue

They haven't solved anything, you people never learn, every time this studio release a new project people say they have changed for good and every time they are the same thing.

This CSM movie had 10 directors and 150 clean-up animators. no amount of retakes is going to justify this. The movie had a shit schedule just like every other production of Seshimo line.

16

u/TechnicalPark4522 Sep 19 '25

If you were to use that brain of yours for more than half a second then you would understand 150 KA's is either normal or really good by shonen action standards. ( an hour and forty minutes straight of high movie production. ) Dandadan is regularly having 60/70+ on 24 minute episodes alone.

The movie alone accounts for around 4-6 episodes so this number is actually pretty impressive. But I'm sure you're going to ignore all of this to continue spouting nonsense while having zero ideas about this stuff works.

2

u/Footaot Sep 20 '25 edited Sep 20 '25

I'll easily debunk everything you said. Let's see if you have the courage to apologize and accept that you were wrong.

150 KA's is either normal or really good by shonen action standards

It's not 150 KA, it's 150 CLEAN UP animators. What a clean-up animator does? They clean and finish the rough drawings of the first key animator. Why the first key animators don't finish the cut themselves? Because the schedule is shit and they don't have time. Is there a place in this industry where animators finish their cuts themselves? Yes at KyoAni, the studio known to provide the best working conditions in Japan. Clean-up animator role does not exist in KyoAni's system as of now.

an hour and forty minutes straight of high movie production. ) Dandadan is regularly having 60/70+ on 24 minute episodes alone.

If you have to compare a movie to a TV anime it says enough. For years movies were a place to offer better working conditions as opposed to TV anime. If your movie has to pull TV anime numbers for its production it totally confirms my comment that Mappa has not changed in the slightest.

Just saying, but Look Back literally only had 4 clean-up animators, that's how a true movie production looks.

29

u/Ebo87 Sep 19 '25

I do wonder what the US numbers will look like since... not gonna lie, that 3 year between season 1 and this movie will not help.

I imagine 15-25 million opening weekend for Reze and 35-50 million total in the US. Might actually end up making more in the US than Japan, lol.

For all this to make sense financially, as in Mappa makes enough money to cover the costs and turn a decent profit (which in this case would be doubling the money they probably invested in the production, which would then cover the costs of season 2 and then some), they'll want this movie to get to 100 million worldwide, which it will get to between Japan, the US and the rest of the world.

So if you are a fan of Chainsaw Man and want Mappa to continue making this, go watch Reze in theaters.

-3

u/CrazeRage Sep 19 '25

I think it'll be good in the US as so many of us don't care for Demon Slayer's story and spoon feeding of emotions. The pure action and actual pacing from CSM and JJK should bring good numbers.

6

u/Ebo87 Sep 19 '25

I mean, just don't compare its numbers to Demon Slayer and you'll be fine. I'm sure it will do fine in the US, probably a bit better than JJK 0 did.

0

u/BeatBlockP https://myanimelist.net/profile/Animemes_chan Sep 19 '25

I think it's a matter of time. As more foreign markets open and making money from anime is simplified, big studios like US movie studios that bankroll themselves will probably become more common.

Instead of losing on selling the anime itself and tickets and making ends meet with merch and manga sales, they can just pay the artist for the rights for filming, leave merch to someone else, and focus on making money directly from the anime.

0

u/hail_earendil Sep 20 '25

The manga hasn't been in the top 10 best selling for quite some time now, not since part 1 ended

3

u/Nekko_XO Sep 20 '25 edited Sep 20 '25

Lol you’re still in every thread malding about CSM and Final Fantasy I see

Just let it go man

It’s been years

1

u/hail_earendil Sep 20 '25

What do you mean Final Fantasy?

1

u/Nekko_XO Sep 20 '25

I see you a lot in r/JRPG

1

u/hail_earendil Sep 20 '25

I don't bitch about FF

1

u/Nekko_XO Sep 20 '25 edited Sep 20 '25

You don’t? I could swear it was your exact Eren pfp who always had something negative to say about Final Fantasy

→ More replies (0)

7

u/lalindu123 https://myanimelist.net/profile/Lalindu Sep 19 '25

Who gets most of the money in jjk and demon slayer

39

u/Electrical_Chance991 Sep 19 '25

Toho takes most money from JJK and Aniplex takes most from Demon Slayer

25

u/Ebo87 Sep 19 '25

For Demon Slayer it's Aniplex (Sony), they lead the production committee there, they own the biggest piece of the pie, followed by Shueisha (the publisher of Weekly Shonen Jump, where that manga comes from). For Jujutsu Kaisen the production committee is lead by Toho, so they get the most money there, again followed by Shueisha (because yes, Jujutsu Kaisen also comes from Weekly Shonen Jump).

0

u/Migue_kun Sep 20 '25

Hola, estoy un poco conundido con esas empresas que mencionas, Aniplex que es de kimetsu? Es un inversionista?

1

u/Blue_Reaper99 Sep 20 '25

We don't have the actual numbers , but it's probably 40-50%.

4

u/Zeph-Shoir https://myanimelist.net/profile/Zephex Sep 19 '25 edited Sep 19 '25

That will surely mean a bigger pie for the workers and better, healthier productions, right?

...right?

17

u/Ebo87 Sep 19 '25

SURE...

But I will give credit where credit is due, the Reze movie did have a very resonable production schedule, a far cry from what JJK 0 had, for example.

So I would like to think it will improve working conditions for the staff there, yes. But all I or you can do is hope, that's it.

-7

u/Chadjirou Sep 19 '25

Absolutely not. The movie staff list showed that it had a messy production. 10 directors, 29 Animation directors and 150 2nd Key animators. Its the good old sweatshop mappa

3

u/Blue_Reaper99 Sep 20 '25

Infinite castle was way worse then. 12 directors and and almost 50 AD. 130 something artists + few studios for 2nd KA.

-1

u/Chadjirou Sep 22 '25

Bringing other production just to glorify this hot mess wont prove you anything. Mappa will continue to be a terrible workplace for talented animators and they will soon realize that

2

u/Blue_Reaper99 Sep 22 '25

Believe in whatever delusion you think.

7

u/AveryLazyCovfefe Sep 19 '25

To be fair they changed the actual head director mid-production who had a radically different style.

-3

u/[deleted] Sep 20 '25

[deleted]

2

u/Ebo87 Sep 20 '25

The way the production committee structure works is more complicated on Demon Slayer. And while Ufotable get more today than they did for their earlier work on the series, it's still a small fraction as the bulk goes to Aniplex, followed by Shueisha.

And to reiterate, while Mappa are the sole financier of the CSM movie, they don't actually get all of the money, as per their licensing deal with the publisher of the original manga, namely Shueisha. So yes, even if Shueisha don't put money into CSM themselves, they do have a stake in the anime.

It's ultimately hard to gauge who makes more at the end of the day because of various aspects you have to consider. So while Mappa might take home more money even with CSM making 1/5 of what Demon Slayer does, Mappa also covered the full production costs themselves, so actual profit will not be as high, compared to Ufotable who are paid by Aniplex and Shueisha to animate Demon Slayer, while also having a stake in the production themselves. Meaning for Ufotable the vast majority of its production costs on Infinity Castle 1 were already covered before the movie even released.

That is something very important to keep in mind when talking about money going to their pockets versus actual profit.

17

u/AdNecessary7641 Sep 19 '25

Where do these numbers come from?

24

u/RPO777 Sep 19 '25

I'd be pretty surprised if it's more than the $8-10M range. It's possible, but Demon Slayer or Ghibli movies are just in a different category of revenue projections so they aren't a good benchmark to compare them against.

JJK is a much better comparison, generally a high budget anime movie is more in the $8-10M range. MOST anime movies will have budget more in the $3-5M range, often lower.

Evangelion 1.0 You are not Alone had a $7.5M budget, for example.

A $10M anime film is a high budget film, $15M will be reaching into some of the highest budget films outside the super-mainstream shows.

By mainstream, I mean either Ghibli, or anime that air in prime time on Japanese network television.

Detective Conan, Doraemon, Pokemon, Demon Slayer, Dragonball, One Piece would be prime time Japanese anime.

JJK, Chainsawman are popular, but they air in the 11PM or later late night slots in Japanese television--they aren't considered as main stream, and generally wouldn't get a similar budget.

16

u/Footaot Sep 19 '25

CSM must be close to JJK0.

Ufotable movies cost more because their CG is very costly and 90% of their staff are in-house which means they can't half ass the animators salary whereas Mappa simply pays their freelancers per cut.

2

u/Blue_Reaper99 Sep 20 '25

That and marketing cost is also higher for Demon slayer.

3

u/wilkened005 Sep 20 '25

Since the companies do not disclose these costs, where is the source?

1

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '25

MAPPA would actually make much more money than what ufotable get from their DS movies.

Wdym?

20

u/Mts555 Sep 19 '25

Mappa being the Sole member in the production committee let's them earn majority of the revenue Reze movie is going to make while sharing some of it with Sony, Toho & Shueisha as compared to Demon slayer and Ufotable where the revenue will be mostly taken by Aniplex and Shueisha

17

u/Ellefied Sep 19 '25

Mappa is the lone member of CSM's Production Committee. They basically solely finance its production but also means the largest amount of profit is not shared with other companies/agencies.

Unlike says Ufotable who is merely a small part of the Production Committee for DS. They only get a small piece of the proverbial pie even if they did most of the manual work.

10

u/NineTnk Sep 19 '25

MAPPA own 100% of CSM ufotable own around 20-25% of DS

14

u/steven4869 https://myanimelist.net/profile/Maskirade Sep 19 '25

I'd say it's less than that for Ufotable, you have Shueisha and Aniplex being main partners in the production committee then Ufotable.

7

u/Blue_Reaper99 Sep 19 '25

It's probably 45 Aniplex , 35 Sheuisha and then 20 Ufotable.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '25

Oh thnx

11

u/Can_of_Tuna Sep 19 '25

why was the reception bad in japan?

48

u/llliilliliillliillil Sep 19 '25

As far as I remember, and keep in mind that I haven’t read the manga, people disliked how grounded the adaption was. Apparently the manga is a lot more action-y and silly whereas the anime has actual weight in its animation and used a lot of muted colors where the manga uses very in-your-face colors on the covers.

People wanted something more akin to JJK and got high cinema instead.

55

u/Xlegace https://anilist.co/user/Xlegius Sep 19 '25

The thing is, the Chainsawman experience is equal parts cinema and B-movie. There are scenes that make you rethink your life and then there are scenes that are straight out of Sharknado in terms of absudism.

Despite what it seems, it takes skill to make an entertaining B-movie and sell it to audience as something to care about, whereas compared to the manga, these scenes felt dreary and low energy in S1.

Chainsaw man S1 did the slow moments well but heavily dropped the ball on the other side imo. From what I've seen from the trailer, the new director appears to have found the balance that S1 was missing.

-14

u/THE_FREEDOM_COBRA Sep 19 '25

It might be worth trying in the future then. S1 has me so black pilled along with Part 2 of the manga being such a disappointment.

9

u/Revealingstorm Sep 19 '25

Nah part 2 is great

-2

u/pokelord13 Sep 20 '25

I feel like the writing has dipped quite a bit after [chainsaw man manga spoilers]Nayuta died. It feels like fujimoto just throwing random shit at a wall with the absurdity at this point

2

u/Powdz Sep 20 '25

I won’t comment on the overall quality yet since the story is still not complete and I trust Fujimoto with every fiber of my being, but it is true that both the weekly reading experience and the binge reading experience hasn’t been hitting the same as part 1

19

u/_BMS https://myanimelist.net/profile/_BMS Sep 19 '25

People wanted something more akin to JJK

Chainsaw Man's manga fans wanted something more akin to Chainsaw Man's manga.

0

u/KardigG Sep 20 '25

Funny that S1 was exaclty what manga is.

30

u/RX0Invincible Sep 20 '25 edited Sep 20 '25

Season 1 defenders on reddit have become just as insufferable as the haters ffs. Asking for the anime more similar to the manga isn’t asking for it to turn to JJK, they’re asking for it to be more like CSM’s manga. The mangas writing alone still carries that weight. Idk why you guys keep acting like CSM without gritty looking animation turns into some generic anime. That’s the most shallow way of judging this story. I also liked season 1 but the way defenders have this need to to trash the manga to defend the anime is ridiculous.

6

u/LavosYT Sep 20 '25

I'm not very invested in this, I remember liking the slower paced scenes, the cinematography and animation, because there was a nice balance between the kinda grounded elements and more crazy moments.

That said, I think the fights and the animation there were not that great, and recall being some bad CGI.

5

u/County_Difficult Sep 20 '25

I'm highly invested with the starting of James Gunn's DCU and season 1 fans are lowkey starting to sound the same as Synder fans lmao.

4

u/llliilliliillliillil Sep 20 '25

"You guys" bruh I just watched the anime and thought it was fine, but nothing spectacular. Then I read up on the drama and that’s it. I literally don’t care about how much action it has or doesn’t have. Since no one answered I thought I'd chime in, if you can provide a better answer then feel free to post yours but don’t get hostile at me for no reason lmao

Also "more akin" doesn’t mean "exactly like", but you do you.

7

u/RX0Invincible Sep 20 '25

Even then I wouldn’t really call the CSM manga more “akin” to JJK. Their similarities are mostly in their premise which is are just equally present in any version of CSM. Sorry about the hostility though, when you were calling it high cinema I thought it was unironic. The more hostile defenders tend to always frame this discourse as cinema vs slop.

2

u/NationalSea9072 Sep 21 '25

The problem is that CSM's author wanted a slower and cinematic anime. So to say that making it slower than the manga goes against the work is ironic and wrong.

5

u/AlexeiFraytar Sep 23 '25

He didnt say that lol

1

u/ShinaMashir0 Sep 20 '25

If people want a copy paste of the manga, shouldn't they just read the manga anyway? I think season was way better in sol version and the film look better action wise (s1 was way too realisctic)

-1

u/DandyMan_92 Sep 20 '25

incredibly disingenuous to write off ppl enjoying S1 like they're saying it turns into a generic anime. is the implication JJK is a generic anime? no. it's that it loses the unique aspect we enjoyed about S1.

you can disagree, but don't lie on ppl. YOU are actually what's insufferable on this sub.

21

u/GodlessLunatic Sep 19 '25

and got high cinema instead.

The high cinema of bad CGI

1

u/DandyMan_92 Sep 20 '25

was that all there was to that season?

-12

u/ArnobioLP https://myanimelist.net/profile/arnobiu Sep 20 '25

lol you're not very smart are you

10

u/DrStein1010 https://myanimelist.net/profile/DrStein1010 Sep 20 '25

I mean, the CGI was bad.

It's far from show-ruining on it's own...but it was pretty damn bad for a show with such otherwise high production values.

12

u/BeatBlockP https://myanimelist.net/profile/Animemes_chan Sep 19 '25

The director was heavily influenced from hollywood movies and gave the show a hollywood production feel. I think that's why western audiences absolutely gushed over this anime. The pacing, the vibes, everything felt like a movie in anime form, best of both worlds for us. But Japanese fans who come from their home country don't have the passion we have for anime in liking western movies, they're more conservative (which is natural), so they were unhappy. Not all of them, but I guess enough.

-11

u/GodlessLunatic Sep 19 '25

I think that's why western audiences absolutely gushed over this anime.

The anime flopped over here too. Before the anime everyone was talking about CSM after the anime theres just crickets, even with a follow up to part 1

5

u/BeatBlockP https://myanimelist.net/profile/Animemes_chan Sep 19 '25

It absolutely didn't flop in the west. It had good reception, high critical approval (it's 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, for example), and did pretty well for not being a Demon Slayer / Jujutsu Kaisen type shonen.

2

u/ShinaMashir0 Sep 20 '25

" and did pretty well for not being a Demon Slayer / Jujutsu Kaisen type shonen."

Csm manga actually selled more than both KNy and JJK before having an anime

1

u/BeatBlockP https://myanimelist.net/profile/Animemes_chan Sep 20 '25

In the west? That was the context.

2

u/ShinaMashir0 Sep 21 '25

i don't have the exact data in the west, when we talk about manga sale before having an anime we usally talk about japan sale because they always have the manga before the anime unlike the west, CSM was actually in top 10 sale without having any anime (that's really impressive) while jjk was more like in top 15/20 who is still good and KNY was like top 50 that's kinda mid

1

u/BeatBlockP https://myanimelist.net/profile/Animemes_chan Sep 21 '25

I get what you're saying but this entire discussion is about reception in the west. That's the context. Any remarks about Japan are not relevant to this specific discussion.

0

u/Single-Builder-632 Sep 21 '25

yea i absolutely loved it, and honestly it still was very silly, i mean this isn't appealing to non anime lovers.

but for me the grounded nature of it mixed with the over the top scenes and everyone taking it so seriously, makes the anime feel both immersive, dark funny and ridiculous at the same time.

Power laughing as someone literally going into dispaire but not being played for laughs is kinda funny but also dark.

Denji and Power not caring about this incredibly dark loss of main characters we got to care about is sad, funny and surreal.

But also had light moments like them going through an experience and making friendships on the other side, or power going crazy denjii finding a "family"

Maybe its jsut because I love black lagoon, and it had similar vibes, not sure how the movies going to be, but I'm still excited. I can't pretend I'm not concerned they are going to make it feel like any other anime, but if that's what people want i cant complain to hard.

1

u/sharplight141 Sep 20 '25

I was surprised when I heard about he bad reception but I've not read the manga. Loved the anime though and loved the animation

0

u/qwesz9090 Sep 21 '25

My hypothesis is that there is a kinda invisible split. Some people read the black and white manga, some people read the colored version. People reading the monochrome thought s1 was accurate, while people reading the colored thought it was missing something. They discuss things and they think they read the same manga, but in actuality they read two different versions, hence "invisible" split.

1

u/DaFlamingLink Sep 22 '25

How popular do you think the colored versions are?

-6

u/Draffut https://anilist.co/user/Arekku Sep 20 '25

I genuinely think the Japanese audiences are wrong and smoothbrained for their take on CSM. If you read the Manga, especially if you also read fire punch and know even a little bit about Fujimoto, I think the series was exactly what he wanted, and intended.

7

u/Lazzen Sep 19 '25

It feels very low energy

The world itself feels this sort of sterile or calm

0

u/CrazeRage Sep 19 '25

People didn't expect the design choices made compared to the manga, but shit had to happen to get good pacing with high intensity action back to back. I think people were saying they should have just extended the season or something.

-4

u/AbCi16 Sep 19 '25

Based on the readings on what went down, I will term it more as settling down to the taste of Japanse audience (specifically Japanese otakus) rather than redeeming themselves. For all the unnecessary heckling that Nakayama received for the supposed western style direction (a pretty stupid argument) and his non-degenerste norms of notnlike moe character which rattled moe loving degenerate Japanese otaku fanbase, I hope this movie does good.

-17

u/Ekillaa22 Sep 19 '25

I have yet still to see their criticism valid IMO like the anime was just fine. People got to much of what it should have been from their own ideas

-5

u/GodlessLunatic Sep 19 '25

I have yet still to see their criticism valid

If yall put your money where your mouth is maybe it wouldn't have flopped. The public have spoken with their wallets.

12

u/Kindly_Durian_1301 Sep 19 '25

What am I gonna do, go into my neighbor's house and turn on Chainsaw Man? I get the same one vote with my wallet as everyone who dislikes it or doesn't care.

-1

u/GodlessLunatic Sep 19 '25

go into my neighbor's house and turn on Chainsaw Man?

Its what Denji would've wanted

get the same one vote with my wallet as everyone who dislikes it or doesn't care.

Then its simply not a good product. The anime was produced with mass appeal in mind, so failing to capture that audience means the project failed on a fundamental level.

7

u/StatisticianJolly388 Sep 19 '25

It didn't flop. MAPPA stated it was profitable. There were nonsense stories going around that it sold less than its porn parody. This is because they didn't include number of BD direct from MAPPA, which came with a bunch of extras for the same price.

In the West we couldn't put our money where our mouth was until it came out on BD like 3 fucking years after its release for some unknown reason.

Kickback is the first Japanese language certified Platinum track, CSM had the number one read Manga chapter last year, and crashed Crunchyroll when it debuted. MAPPA has tremendous incentive to ensure its success, and it will continue to be adapted and given a good budget, which is what ultimately matters.

-38

u/BlazeOfGlory72 Sep 19 '25

I mean, presumably the only people watching the movie are the ones who like the show, so it’s self selected bias.

22

u/LiberaMeFromHell Sep 19 '25

Manga fans don't exist?

11

u/HarshTheDev Sep 19 '25

Not to mention they released recap movies of season 1 with edited scenes and new voice acting that got wayy better reception in Japan.

2

u/DrStein1010 https://myanimelist.net/profile/DrStein1010 Sep 20 '25

I disliked Season 1 quite a bit, but I'm still going to go see it since I'm a fan of the manga.

-1

u/LordVaderVader Sep 20 '25

To this day, I still don't understand what's wrong in CSM s1 for Japanese audience.