n December 2025, a movie about a devil hunter crossed ¥10 billion at the Japanese box office. Three years earlier, the same studio made the biggest gamble in modern anime — and the whole internet called it a flop. In its first week, Chainsaw Man sold 1,735 Blu-rays. This is the story of the studio that bet everything on a single show, and why the flop wasn’t the whole story.
CHAPTERS
0:00 — The ¥10 Billion Payoff
0:35 — The Studio That Did the Work
1:16 — The First Failure
1:47 — The Hit That Didn’t Pay
2:33 — The Bet
3:21 — The Flop Headline
4:15 — The Reveal
5:35 — The Payoff
6:35 — Why the Blu-rays Were Never the Bet
THE STORY IN SHORT
Most anime is funded by a production committee — the network, the publisher, the distributor. They put up the money, they own the rights, and the studio gets a fee. MAPPA did the opposite with Chainsaw Man: it paid for 100% of the show itself, with no committee. The discs flopped. The rights paid off.
ACCURACY NOTE
The 1,735 figure is Oricon’s retail number for the first Blu-ray volume’s first week — it does not count copies MAPPA sold through its own online store. The $162 million figure is the Reze Arc movie’s worldwide box office, not MAPPA’s earnings — distributors take their cut. MAPPA is a private company and publishes no revenue or profit figures, so when president Manabu Otsuka calls the season “a complete success,” that is his word, not a number anyone outside the studio can check. MAPPA owns the anime rights to Chainsaw Man; the manga belongs to Tatsuki Fujimoto and Shueisha.
SOURCES
– Anime News Network / Tokyo Keizai (May 18, 2023) — Otsuka: “As far as investment goes, one could say it was a complete success”; first-week Blu-ray volume: 1,735 copies (Oricon)
– Bungeishunju Plus / Bunshun Online (April 2026) — Otsuka: the 100% funding decision was “less about confidence and more about determination”; profits to be reinvested in creators’ working conditions
– Anime Corner (March 31, 2026, summary of Otsuka’s essay) — Kids on the Slope (2012) lost money; Yuri!!! on Ice sold 430,000+ discs, MAPPA kept only a small royalty
– Box Office Mojo — Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, $162,440,471 worldwide
– MyAnimeList News / Oricon News — Chainsaw Man: Assassins Arc announced at Jump Festa 2026 (December 21, 2025)
– AnimeSignal — MAPPA Co., Ltd. founded June 14, 2011; privately held, publishes no revenue or profit figures
This video uses original 2D illustration. No dialogue or thoughts are invented — every Otsuka quote is a real, sourced quote.
Music: “Dark Fog” (CC-BY)
#ChainsawMan #MAPPA #AnimeIndustry