It became one of the highest-grossing films of its year and the top-grossing anime film ever. A genuine cinematic event, or a fandom and a pandemic doing the heavy lifting?
Join the debate to comment
Reading is free. Members pay to post — that's why it stays clean.
Add your commentIt topped the box office because cinemas were empty during the pandemic and it was the only thing playing. Right place, right time, not 'best film ever'.
Mugen Train succeeding because of the show is like saying Endgame succeeded because of the MCU. Yes. That's how franchises work.
The animation in the final battle is some of the best Ufotable has EVER produced and that's saying something.
Rengoku's final stand is one of the most emotionally devastating sequences in anime cinema. The records are EARNED. Cope.
It's literally one extended arc of a TV show on a big screen. Incredible, but calling it the 'greatest anime film' is recency and hype.
Spirited Away held the Japanese box office record for 19 years and Mugen Train dethroned it. That's not nothing, that's history.
Take away the TV series build-up and Mugen Train is a 90-minute fight scene. Spectacle, not storytelling.
I'm a grown man and I cried in a theatre full of strangers when Rengoku said 'set your heart ablaze.' No hype can manufacture that.
Deserved the love, oversold as 'cinema'. It's the best episode of a great show, projected huge. And that's okay.
It's a great movie for fans and a confusing one for everyone else. The box office is fans, not film merit.
Rengoku had like 40 minutes of screen time across everything and became one of the most beloved characters ever. THAT is writing power.
Is it wrong to choose not to have children just because you don't want to?
110 comments
Netflix's 'Adolescence' shows a teenage boy becoming a killer — did the show actually get modern boyhood right, or did it miss the point entirely?
109 comments
Would you still eat meat if you had to kill the animal yourself?
109 comments
Is judging someone by their height as shallow as judging by their weight?
108 comments