>>281525886
KnY was already at the level of a social phenomenon even before COVID.
By the end of 2019, its volumes had completely vanished from bookstores, while volumes of Samurai 8—the series Shueisha was desperately trying to push instead—were left piled up unsold. (It seemed that, deep down, Shueisha had wanted Samurai 8 to succeed more than KnY.)
If we consider spring 2020 as the point when COVID began impacting Japanese society, by that time KnY’s manga sales had already surpassed 50 million copies. Elementary school boys were swinging umbrellas around, imitating Tanjirō and Zenitsu—a trend that even made the news because parents were worried about how dangerous it was.
COVID may have helped push Mugen Train’s box office from what would have been around 30 billion yen to 40 billion yen, but that means it would have sold about that much even without the pandemic. The groundwork for anime movies drawing that kind of audience had already been laid, since Your Name had already reached 25 billion yen at the box office.
