Crunchyroll President Says Success Of ‘Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle’ Proves “How Wrong Many Of The Myths About Anime Fandom Are”
In the opinion of Crunchyroll President Rahul Purini, one of, if not the most definitive lessons that can be taken from the absolutely massive, record-breaking success of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle is that many of the long-held, particularly negative stereotypes regarding anime and its fans are completely outdated.
Debuting in Japanese theaters on July 18th, the latest animated adaptation of Koyoharu Gotouge’s popular manga near-instantly cemented its place in both cinematic and anime history by breaking its home country’s records for highest-grossing opening day (¥1.64 billion JPY ($11.11 million USD)) and highest grossing three-day opening weekend (¥5.52 billion JPY ($37.42 million USD), as well as earning enough in said opening weekend (¥5.52 billion JPY ($37.42 million USD)) to place as the second-highest grossing film of 2025.
Continuing to break records with its September 12th release in US and Canada, Infinity Castle took home an opening day pull of $70 million USD across both countries, in doing so posting North America’s biggest opening for a September animated release and its best overall for an anime film – this last record notably secured by dethroning 1998’s Pokémon: The First Movie, whose box office total amounted to $31 million USD in its opening Veterans Day weekend.
Given Infinity Castle‘s meteoric rise to the top of the charts, the aforementioned Purini, under whose direction Crunchyroll distributed the film in international territories, was asked during a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter’s Asia Bureau Chief Patrick Brzeski as to what, if anything, Tanjiro’s latest victory could reveal “about how the audience is changing for anime?”
In reply, the Crunchyroll CEO asserted, “I’ve been saying for three or four years now that anime fandom is no longer niche — it’s mainstream and gigantic.
“What this movie did was show that to the world in a way where there’s a lot of historical context to compare against. At Crunchyroll, we’ve had data and research showing how big and broad anime has become, and we could show it in the context of other shows on our platform. But Infinity Castle’s success is the perfect way to demonstrate this to the broader entertainment world, because it’s happening at the box office, where there are 100 years’ worth of benchmarks. It’s now undeniable how big anime has become.
“Another thing we’ve known about — which again showed up in the North American box office — is how wrong many of the myths about anime fandom are. Many people have always said, ‘Oh, this is a Japanese medium, so it must be heavily indexed toward an Asian audience.’ We’ve known for a while that this isn’t the case. It’s a very diverse audience. It overindexes across all different ethnicities. Whether it’s Hispanic, African American, or South Asian, it overindexes.
“Again, this has been in our data for a long time, but this box office success has been the perfect opportunity for other parties to see it firsthand, via exit polling and more traditional metrics.”
To this end, Purini was asked if there was any truth to the recent analysis that anime’s new popularity was a strictly “Gen Z and Gen Alpha” phenomena, to which he declared, “It’s absolutely true. Gen Z and Gen Alpha are a huge part of this fandom. But that doesn’t mean they’re the only age groups.”
“We saw a lot of parents coming to see Infinity Castle with their kids, and there were many fans in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. Anime fandom does over-index among the young, though.”
For North American fans who have yet to see it, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle is still currently screening in theaters – but as always, especially with anime films, your mileage may vary.
