Screening Counts Usually Reserved for Demon Slayer and Conan
The Secret of Mermaid Island, the first Chiikawa movie, hit Japanese theaters at 7:00 a.m. on Friday, and the numbers around it are the story. According to a report from Japanese entertainment-data outlet Oricon News, TOHO Cinemas Shinjuku booked 29 opening-day screenings, the Shinjuku Wald 9 multiplex added 21, and plenty of other theaters cleared 20 showings apiece. TOHO Cinemas Ikebukuro topped them all at 41.
For context: when Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba the Movie: Mugen Train opened in October 2020, TOHO Cinemas Shinjuku ran it 42 times in a single day. That film went on to earn ¥40.75 billion (approx. $270 million), still the highest-grossing film in Japanese box-office history. This spring's Detective Conan film (名探偵コナン ハイウェイの堕天使), which has passed ¥13.62 billion (approx. $90 million) since its April 10 release, logged 59 screenings in a single day at T-Joy Yokohama, a theater in the city where its story takes place. Chiikawa is now playing in that league.
The demand is real, not just scheduled. When Oricon checked the official reservation site, 18 of Ikebukuro's 41 showtimes were already sold out. Japanese social media reacted with a mix of shock and jokes: one commenter wrote that the Chiikawa screening list "is basically a train timetable at this point."
The Fan-Favorite Mermaid Story, Animated at Cypic
Chiikawa started as a manga that illustrator Nagano has been posting on X since 2020, and it runs on a simple contrast: tiny, adorable creatures living in a world that is far harsher than their faces suggest. That gap has made the series a hit with adults and kids alike, and this is the first time it has reached the big screen.
The film adapts the long-form storyline fans call the "Siren arc," which Toho's original announcement described as an unusual, and unusually popular, extended episode of the series. Production is handled by Cypic, the studio formerly known as CygamesPictures, with Kei Oikawa directing and Nagano herself writing the script. Toho is distributing, which explains the aggressive screen counts at its own TOHO Cinemas locations.
Looking Ahead
Oricon reports that theaters have made the film the centerpiece of Japan's summer-vacation movie season, and that the film has a realistic shot at a ¥10 billion (approx. $65 million) total gross. Fans online were already calling that number on day one. The next test is the opening weekend, which will show whether Friday's sellouts were a launch spike or the start of a genuine long run.
Internationally, there is nothing to report yet. The Oricon piece makes no mention of an overseas theatrical release. For now, The Secret of Mermaid Island stays on Japanese screens, where an empty seat is already hard to find.