A One-Week Booking That Ran Until June
Cosmic Princess Kaguya! opened in Japan on February 20, 2026, as a one-week event run at 19 theaters. That is the footprint a distributor gives a concert film or an anniversary re-release, not a first-run feature. The film had also been streaming worldwide on Netflix since January 22, so anyone in Japan with a subscription could already watch it at home at no extra cost.
Audiences turned up anyway. The booking expanded past 100 theaters, the one-week window stretched into four months, and the run closed on June 18 with ¥2.7 billion (approx. $18 million). A revival run opened on September 18 in premium formats including MX4D, 4DX, SCREENX, ULTRA 4DX and Dolby Atmos. Japanese entertainment news outlet Oricon reports that the total has now crossed ¥3 billion (approx. $20 million) from 1.5 million admissions.
Oricon calls the result exceptional for a streaming-first title, and the framing is fair. Theatrical runs for films that premiere on a streaming service are usually a formality: a qualifying week, a premiere event, a handful of screens for the people who want the big sound. This one behaved like a hit.
Shingo Yamashita's First Feature
The film is the feature directorial debut of Shingo Yamashita, a name most fans know from opening sequences rather than feature credits. Oricon's write-up points to his opening work on Jujutsu Kaisen season 1, Chainsaw Man and Urusei Yatsura.
Animation production is split between Studio Colorido (A Whisker Away, Penguin Highway) and Studio Chromato, the studio Yamashita heads, which makes its production debut here. Saeri Natsuo shares the screenplay credit with Yamashita, and Conisch handles the score. Character designs come from Hechima for the virtual world and Akihiro Nagae for the real one.
The story is a near-future rewrite of The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. Tokyo high schooler Iroha Sakayori, living on her own between school and part-time work, finds a baby who grows into a girl her own age within days. The girl claims she came from the moon. The two enter Tsukuyomi, a virtual space where streamers perform live. Iroha writes the songs and Kaguya sings them. Oricon's description keeps to the same core: a stage built out of dreams and hopes, and girls connected by song.
Yūko Natsuyoshi voices Kaguya, Anna Nagase plays Iroha, and Saori Hayami plays Yachiyo, the star streamer Iroha follows before she ends up on the same stage.
The soundtrack explains a lot of the repeat business. Six producers from the Vocaloid scene wrote original songs for the film: ryo (supercell), kz (livetune), 40mP, HoneyWorks, Aqu3ra and yuigot. That lineup reads as a greatest-hits bill for the Nico Nico Douga generation, and it gives the premium-format revival an obvious reason to exist.
Looking Ahead
The revival run is still playing in Japan in MX4D, 4DX, SCREENX, ULTRA 4DX and Dolby Atmos. No closing date has been announced, so the ¥3 billion figure is not final.
International fans do not have to wait. The 142-minute film has been on Netflix worldwide since January 22, 2026, with an English dub featuring Jeannie Tirado as Kaguya and Dawn M. Bennett as Iroha. There is no manga to catch up on either, since this is an original screenplay rather than an adaptation.
There is no word yet on whether Netflix plans a wider theatrical push for a film that just proved it can sell 1.5 million tickets against its own streaming release.