Chainsaw Man Just Toppled Jujutsu Kaisen at the Box Office — and Anime Won’t Be the Same
Three and a half years after Jujutsu Kaisen 0 stormed US theaters, MAPPA’s Chainsaw Man Reze Arc has sliced past it at the box office, underscoring the pulling power of a sharpened PG-13 formula.
Quick one: MAPPA just watched its own movies race each other, and the scrappy newcomer pulled ahead. Chainsaw Man: The Movie - Reze Arc has now out-earned Jujutsu Kaisen 0 at the US box office. That is wild on its own, but the real eyebrow-raiser is that Reze did it with a hard-edged, not-for-kids rating.
The numbers (and how fast this happened)
Jujutsu Kaisen 0 hit theaters in 2022 and quickly became a monster hit, eventually finishing its US run with $34.5 million, according to Box Office Mojo. About three and a half years later, Chainsaw Man: Reze Arc blew past that total in just 15 days. An X post from box office watcher Luis Fernando pegged Reze at $35.3 million after two weeks, which put it at the 5th highest-grossing anime film ever at the US box office. Since then, it has kept climbing and currently sits at $37.8 million domestic. And it is still in theaters.
The next rung on the ladder is close: Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero sits at $38 million domestic (via Box Office Mojo). One more strong weekend and Reze could hop it.
- Domestic (US): $37,841,398 so far
- International: $120,000,000 so far
- Worldwide: $157,841,398 so far
Why this is a bigger deal than a simple record
For years, the safest path to a big anime box office in the US looked like this: keep it PG-13, keep it broad, make it easy to take the whole family. Jujutsu Kaisen 0 fit that lane nicely and, for a lot of US audiences, was the clean on-ramp to the JJK world. Gorgeous animation, crowd-pleasing story, huge hype, giant turnout.
Reze Arc does not play that game. It leans into an R rating and everything that comes with it: blood-soaked brawls, bleak vibes, salty language. This is not a bring-the-kids anime. By the usual logic, that should cap your ceiling. Instead, the movie punched right through it. R-rated anime rarely posts numbers like this, and the fact that Reze did suggests the market is a lot more open to harsher, uncompromised stories than it used to be. In other words, you don’t have to shave off the edges to find an audience.
MAPPA vs. MAPPA (friendly fire)
There’s also the fun bit of context that both of these box office milestones belong to the same studio. JJK 0 was a full-on phenomenon for MAPPA and a gateway for new fans. Now, Chainsaw Man shows up with a very different tone and eats its predecessor’s lunch. Not exactly how you expect this to go, and that contrast makes the win even louder.
What I’m watching next
Reze Arc hasn’t wrapped its run, so the climb may not be over. Does it leapfrog Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero next? And if it does, how high can an R-rated anime feature realistically go in the US? I’m genuinely curious where it tops out.
If you want to catch up, the Chainsaw Man TV anime is streaming on Crunchyroll in the US.