![]() Where Meitantei Konan is perhaps unusual is in the scale and duration of its success – domestically and internationally. Meitantei Konan is typical in that it began as a manga before becoming a popular television anime show and then blossoming into an extensive transmedia universe of texts, including gekijōban anime films (Denison Citation2020). To aid in this discussion, the example of Meitantei Konan ( Case Closed, Aoyama Gōshō, manga Citation1994–present) is used as a brief case study because its long-lasting media mix provides both a typical and exceptional example of anime-centred media franchising. This mapping of the gekijōban as a concept within Japanese franchising then informs my investigation of the place of gekijōban films within Japan’s vast contemporary transmedia networks. I then chart the franchising practices and processes belonging to live action and animated media mix franchises in order to investigate the history of the gekijōban, in particular considering the central role of television as a lynchpin within Japanese franchising practices. I begin with a discussion of how the gekijōban fits within existing scholarship on Japan’s most notable franchising practice: media mix. To do so, I use a discursive and historical approach, producing a reception study (Klinger Citation1997 Staiger Citation2000) of the way the gekijōban has been understood by a range of scholars, commentators and industry professionals. To understand why the gekijōban has achieved this intense mixture of ubiquity and obscurity, this article considers how gekijōban films have emerged as a particular category within Japanese filmmaking. The success of this film, titled Gekijōban: Kimetsu no yaiba mugen ressha-hen ( Demon Slayer: Infinity Train, Sotozaki Haruo Citation2020), is exceptional, but it is also indicative of the economic, cultural and industrial significance of these overlooked films. Perhaps most notably, during the global Covid-19 pandemic it was a gekijōban anime film from the popular manga and anime franchise Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no yaiba (Gotōge Koyoharu, manga 2016–2020) that took the top spot in Japan’s box office in 2020–2021, making over $400million globally (Debruge Citation2021). This remains the case despite the rise of gekijōban to blockbuster status in recent years. ![]() ![]() Gekijōban are attached to all sorts of popular Japanese media franchises, and yet, they are little discussed in academic writing in either Japanese or English. These are ‘theatrical versions’ of existing franchise properties, and they have been a constant presence in Japanese cinemas for decades. Among the varied worlds of film production in Japan, one kind of cinema stands out for both its ubiquity and obscurity: the gekijōban.
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