Director Makoto Shinkai's animated masterpiece -- often compared to quality on par with Studio Ghibli -- has earned more than $15.3m in its second weekend defeating Mel Gibson's WWIII medic military story "Hacksaw Ridge" that only earned $14.4m. The animated feature "Kimi no Nawa" or "Your Name" is leading the charts while other Hollywood blockbusters such as Clint Eastwood's biopic "Sully" and local Chinese Romance movie "Suddenly Seventeen" had only earned $5.5m and $10.7m respectively.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, in two weeks, "Your Name" has raked in more than $71.2m in China's box office for 10 days. The highly-acclaimed animated feature was soon overtaken by Mel Gibson's period war film "Hacksaw Ridge" earning $5.2m against "Your Name's " $4.8m profits just this Sunday.
"Kimi no Nawa" or "Your Name" is about two teenage high school students -- male and female respectively -- and their ability to switch from each other's bodies due to an impending natural disaster. "Hacksaw Ridge" is about Medic Desmond T. Doss -- a soldier who won a Congressional Medal of Honor because of his heroism without having to kill anyone, including an enemy, in the battlefield.
According to Deadline, in the US, the Los Angeles Film Critics had awarded Director and Writer Makoto Shinkai's runaway animated success as the Best Animated Film against Disney's "Zootopia" and "Moana". The previous year, Disney's "inside Out" won the award. "Hacksaw Ridge" saw huge box office success in the United States earning $60m during its first week.
Director Makoto Shinkai assured his enthralled audiences he would retain the theme of "spiritual connections" and "unpredictable events" -- as what happened in "Your Name" -- for his future films. Observers have pointed out that Shinkai's work parallels stories and concepts from renowned animated studio Studio Ghibli's works such as "Spirited Away" where a human befriends a forest spirit and its masterpiece "Princess Mononoke" wherein forest elements make an effort to preserve the environment.
