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Time Magazine Selects Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba's Koyoharu Gotouge on Time100 Next List
posted on by Alex Mateo
Time Magazine honored on Wednesday manga creator Koyoharu Gotouge (Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba) on its second annual Time100 Next list, a list that highlights 100 emerging, influential people who are shaping the future. This marks the first time the publication has selected a manga creator for this list.
Gotouge launched the Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba manga in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump magazine in February 2016. The manga ended in May 2020. Shueisha published the manga's 23rd and final compiled book volume in December 2020. Shueisha revealed in November 2019 that the Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba manga was the company's second highest-selling manga in 2019, second only to Eiichiro Oda's One Piece manga.
The manga has topped 150 million copies in circulation (including digital copies) as of this month. The series added 30 million copies in the last two months, and its circulation has increased about 43 times since its anime adaptation's April 2019 premiere, 22 months ago.
Gotouge's manga inspired a television anime that premiered in April 2019. Aniplex of America licensed the series and streamed the show on Hulu, Crunchyroll, and FunimationNow. Adult Swim's Toonami programming block premiered the television anime in October 2019. The series is getting a new television anime, Kimetsu no Yaiba: Yūkaku-hen (Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Entertainment District Arc), this year.
The first television anime was followed up by the Demon Slayer – Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Mugen Train anime film in October 2020. The film has surpassed Hayao Miyazaki's 2002 Spirited Away, its last rival for all-time highest earnings in Japanese box office history. (Spirited Away earned 30.8 billion yen in its original run, but has since earned a total of 31.68 billion yen after this summer's revival screenings.) The Demon Slayer film is now also at least the second highest-earning anime film of all time worldwide, topping your name.'s worldwide US$357,986,087 earnings. The Demon Slayer – Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Mugen Train anime film has sold a total of 27.27 million tickets and earned a cumulative 37.4 billion yen (US$355.7 million) in Japan as of Sunday.
Gotouge is thinking of penning a science fiction romantic comedy story as their next project.
Kodansha awarded Gotouge in its second Noma Publishing Culture Awards in November. The award honors those who have made excellent contributions to publishing, particularly to "reinventing publishing."
Sources: Time Magazine (Kat Moon), Viz Media's Twitter account
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