Matt Schley
February 1, 2016 
About a month ago, we posted a list of the top ten anime films of 2015, according to Japanese fans.
As readers know, though, there’s often quite a big difference between “good” and “able to rake in a ton of cash.”
Today anime news site Anime Anime released a list of the 12 highest-grossing anime films of 2015. Let’s take a look and see how closely quality aligns with money.
10. The Last -Naruto the Movie-
9. Crayon Shin-chan: My Moving Story! Cactus Large Attack!
8. Pokemon: The Archdjinni of the Rings: Hoopa
6. Love Live! The School Idol Movie
5. Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection ‘F’
4. Doraemon: Nobita’s Space Heroes
3. Detective Conan: The Hellfire Sunflowers
1. Yo-Kai Watch: Tanjō no Himitsu da Nyan!
There’s a decent amount of overlap between the two lists: The Anthem of the Heart, Love Live!, Girls und Panzer, Detective Conan, The Boy and the Beast, and Boruto appeared on both.
Films that fans liked, but didn’t make enough money to quality for Anime Anime’s list (the cutoff was ¥100,000,000, about $825,000) included Arpeggio of Blue Steel -Ars Nova Cadenza-, Beyond the Boundary: I’ll Be Here: Future Arc, High Speed! -Free! Starting Days- and Psycho-Pass the Movie.
On the other hand, films that didn’t get a ton of praise from fans, but made fat stacks of yen regardless, included Crayon Shin-chan, Pokemon, Dragon Ball Z, and Doraemon. In short, franchises make money. Double that for films aimed at kids and families, which attract more ticket sales than films like Psycho-Pass, which are definitely not kids’ stuff (or even date stuff, to be honest).
Not exactly anime-related, but on the topic of franchises equaling buckets of cash, check out this list screenwriter John August just put on his website, which shows 86 of the top-grossing 100 films of all time were sequels, prequels or sidequels.
So you have it.
(Note: The Last -Naruto the Movie- and Yo-Kai Watch: Tanjō no Himitsu da Nyan! were released in December 2014, but still made many yens in 2015.)
Source: Anime Anime
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