Boy and the Heron, Godzilla Minus One Take North American Box Office

Japanese film is having a moment in North America, as Studio Ghibli’s The Boy and the Heron and Godzilla Minus One take 1st and 3rd at the box office.

By Noah Oskow

Japanese media has never seemed as mainstream in North America as it does today. From the films of Kurosawa Akira opening in American theaters and the popularization of Americanized Godzilla films in the 1950s, to Astro Boy and Speed Racer enticing children to gather around TV sets in the ’60s, to the slow growth of anime from subculture to popular entertainment mainstay from the ’80s till today, the gestation of Japanese entertainment in America morphing from peculiar to conventional seems nearly complete. This weekend, for the first time, two films in the North American box office top-three will be Japanese movies.

The films in question are beloved animation director Miyazaki Hayao’s potential swan song, The Boy and the Heron, and the first new Japanese Godzilla film in seven years, Godzilla Minus One. Both films belong to parts of Japanese pop culture that have now firmly endeared themselves amongst fans worldwide. Godzilla has been thrilling viewers abroad for 3/4ths of a century; the output of Studio Ghibli…