Demon Slayer, record US start for Japanese animated film

A hellish train, a bloodthirsty demon and a handful of brave heroes in pursuit of him: that is the promise of

, the Japanese animated film that breaks all records.

If it ranked at the top of the Japanese box office in February, dethroning

, Hayao Miyazaki's classic released in 2001, it has just set a record in the United States.

Read also: The unparalleled triumph of

, the most viewed film in Japanese cinema history

Produced by the Japanese studios Aniplex, a Sony subsidiary, the film was directed by Haruo Sotozaki, a specialist in what we call "animated" with in particular

or

. While

was released on October 16, 2020 in Japan, it was only available to Americans last week. This weekend, he had the best start ever recorded in North America for a feature film in a foreign language, pocketing nearly $ 20 million. The film thus dethrones

, a Chinese film which had collected 17.8 million in American theaters in 2004 over the same period of time. In total, the adaptation of

has already reportedly hit 399 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing Japanese animated film of all time.

This film is directly inspired by the

manga series

-

in Japanese -, released between 2016 and 2020, written by Koyoharu Gotoge and illustrated by Aya Yajima. In all, 23 books that tell the story of Kamado Tanjiro, a boy who seeks at all costs to return his sister to her human form, after she has been transformed into a demon. Together, they will act to fight creatures more cruel than the others. It is the biggest bookstore success in Japan in 2019 and 2020. And 100 million copies have been sold worldwide. Faced with such a craze, the books had already been adapted in 2019 into a 26-episode television series. A video game and another for mobile phone are in production.

For French fans, however, it will take a little more patience. While the release of

is well scheduled for 2021, no specific release date has yet been brought forward.