JAPAN, FANTASTIQUE TERRITORY (2020-2026)
The Japanese film industry successfully weathered the COVID-19 pandemic through a strategy of internal resilience that resulted in a self-sufficient industrial approach, focused on the performance of productions within its own domestic market. International distribution was thereby relegated to a complementary role which, nevertheless, has yielded notable successes for certain anime productions and, especially, with the impact in the United States of Godzilla Minus One (Takashi Yamazaki, 2023), which was the confirmation of the international resurgence of kaiju eiga, driven both by the popularity that American productions and streaming series brought to this genre and by the renewed determination of the Japanese industry to assert its cultural heritage and lay claim to the ownership of its charismatic characters.
In the post-pandemic landscape, Japanese fantastic films have dominated the domestic box office, particularly through the language of anime, with massive hits such as Jujutsu Kaisen 0 (Gekijô-ban Jujutsu Kaisen Zero, Sunghoo Park, 2021), Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba - The Movie: Mugen Train (Gekijô-ban Kimetsu no Yaiba Mugen Ressha-hen, Haruo Sotozaki, 2020), which grossed over 360 million dollars nationwide, or Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba - The Infinity Train (Gekijô-ban Kimetsu no Yaiba Mugen Jô-hen, Hikaru Kondo & Haruo Sotozaki, 2025), which has added more than 136 million dollars at international box offices to its over 250 million dollars in Japan, reaching a total of 739 million dollars, a record for a Japanese production driven by the international distribution model centralized by Crunchyroll through Sony Pictures International. Live-action fantastic films and horror movies, on the other hand, have made a more timid appearance at Japanese box offices, though with some outstanding examples such as the aforementioned Godzilla Minus One, the live-action Tokyo Revengers (Tsutomu Hanabusa, 2021), the mystery film A Strange House (Junichi Ishikawa, 2024), the tokusatsu reboot Shin Ultraman (Shinji Higuchi & Ikki Todoroki, 2022), or the video game adaptation Exit 8 (Genki Kawamura, 2025), perhaps the Japanese horror film that has performed best in the domestic market this decade.
Anime: The Driving Force Behind the Fantastique Genre in Japan
To regard recent anime blockbusters as products that are typical of the fantastic film circuit is, to say the least, reductionist. The success of these films can be attributed above all to a transnational fan phenomenon with a consumer logic that goes far beyond traditional genre classifications. Besides the aforementioned Jujutsu Kaisen 0 and the Demon Slayer saga, as well as the phenomenon Chainsaw Man - The Movie: Reze Arc (Gekijô-ban Chensô Man Reze-hen, Tatsuya Yoshihara, 2025), an eloquent example is the One Piece series, with its endless catalog of references of all kinds, and which has also been a hit on the big screen this decade with One Piece Film: Red (Wan Pîsu Firumu Reddo, Goro Taniguchi, 2022). The same can be said of classic series such as Detective Conan, Mobile Suit Gundam, or Doraemon, which continue to enjoy success in theaters with diverse themes and are open to widely varied genre developments.
However, alongside these anime franchises, there is a more auteur-driven approach where the fantastique perspective is indeed a deliberate choice. The most obvious case is that of Studio Ghibli and, more specifically, Hayao Miyazaki, whose latest work, The Boy and the Heron (Kimi-tachi wa dô ikiru ka, 2023) proved to be not only an extraordinary, animated film but also a masterpiece of the fantastique genre. It was the first original anime production to reach number one at the North American box office and grossed over 167 million dollars worldwide, crowned with the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature in 2024, the second for Miyazaki following Spirited Away (2001).
Mamoru Hosoda’s calling for genre has been evidenced by his most recent films, such as the highly successful Belle (2021) , a virtual-reality take on Beauty and the Beast, or the more controversial Scarlet (Hateshinaki Sukâretto, 2025), while in the case of Masaaki Yuasa, that same fantastic impulse reached its zenith with the exceptional Inu-Oh (2021), one of the best anime films of the decade so far, which unfortunately did not have the impact it deserved. Undoubtedly, the anime creator who has best combined a fan-oriented, auteur-driven approach with a fantastique vision has been Makoto Shinkai, who, following the phenomenon Your Name (2016), added another hit to his repertoire this decade with Suzume (2022), with a worldwide box office total of nearly 320 million dollars, making it the fourth highest-grossing Japanese film in international history, and cementing a blockbuster animation model capable of generating a devotion that transcends the usual anime circuits to connect with a broad international audience. This model has also been joined by female filmmakers, a rarity in Japanese animation, with the coming-of-age fantasy The Colors Within (Kimi no iro, 2024), with which Naoko Yamada adds to the imaginary of her intimate journey that began with A Silent Voice: The Movie (Koe no katachi, 2016).
Live-Action films, J-Horror, Kaiju Eiga and Other Usual Suspects
The phenomenon of live-action films —real-life cinematic adaptations of major anime or manga hits— seems to have waned somewhat in contemporary Japanese filmmaking, although several examples related to the fantastic genre, and especially science fiction, have held their own at the Japanese box office and have even achieved a high level of international sales or commercialization on streaming platforms. For example, Tokyo Revengers and Ruroni Kenshin: Final Chapter (Rurôni Kenshin: Sai shûshô – The Final, Keishi Otomo, 2021), both split into two feature films, have achieved great success with their domestic releases, though they have not been able to avoid controversy and even criticism from fans regarding aspects such as the cast or the portrayal of their universes in live-action. A special mention must be made of the boldness of Cells at Work! (Hideki Takeuchi, 2024), a sort of delirious journey through the interior of the human body based on the manga by Akane Shimizu, previously adapted into an anime series that began in 2018.
The so-called J-Horror —the movement that, in the wake of the global impact of The Ring (Ringu, Hideo Nakata, 1998), established a style of psychological, atmospheric, and supernatural horror recognizable worldwide— refuses to fade away as a productive label. Although it may be less relevant at domestic box offices now, this subgenre still carries considerable weight in international sales and shows a tendency to explore new themes while defending the stylistic elements that brought it so much success in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Its classic masters —Hideo Nakata, Takashi Shimizu, and Kiyoshi Kurosawa—continue to contribute ideas through television and even film, with the aim of renewing this genre through a blend of old themes and contemporary approaches, as is the case with The Forbidden Play (Kinjirareta asobi, Hideo Nakata, 2023), Homunculus (Homunkurusu, Takashi Shimizu, 2021), Immersion (Takashi Shimizu, 2023), and Sana: Let Me Hear (Ano ko wa daare?, Takashi Shimizu, 2024). Of the three, Shimizu has proven to be the most faithful to the codes of classic J-Horror, as evidenced by some of his latest films: Suicide Forest Village (Jukai Mura, 2021), Ox-Head Village (Ushikubi Village, 2022) and, above all, Sana (Minna no uta, 2023), his work that has had the greatest impact outside Japan so far this decade and which is on its way to becoming a cult classic.
Meanwhile, Kiyoshi Kurosawa has recently returned to the horror genre with two works that rightfully rank among the very best in the pantheon of contemporary Japanese fantastique: the short film Chime (2024), a perfect complement to his masterpiece Pulse (Kairo, 2001) about an unexpected apocalypse that emerges from everyday life, and Cloud (Kuraudo, 2024), which explores new forms of anxiety and horror arising from contemporary social behaviors —in this case, internet consumption— with a curious apocalyptic slant. This Japanese maestro continues to forge a unique path, imbuing almost all his works with that strange trademark that unexpectedly connects with the characteristics that are unique to the fantastic genre —as can also be seen in Serpent's Path (2024), a remake of his own 1998 film— while maintaining, at the same time, an international prestige that is backed by his constant presence at the major film festivals that make up the global circuit.
The recent cult following of early J-Horror itself, as well as V-Cinema —horror, action, violent and erotic films produced between the 1980s and the early 2000s for direct release on home video— has given rise to a “micro-fantastique” genre with strong appeal for the genre circuit. A standout in this category is Kenichi Ugana, the director behind the surprising The Curse (2025), as well as extremely personal and weird productions such as The Gesuidouz (2024), We Are Aliens (2024), I Fell in Love with a Z-Grade Director in Brooklyn (2025), and Incomplete Chairs (2025). Along similar lines are films such as the Baby Assassins trilogy (Beibî warukyûre, Yugo Sakamoto, 2021–24) or the adrenaline-fueled revenge movie Ghost Killer (Kensuke Sonomura, 2024), with clear echoes of V-Cinema. It is also worth noting the emergence of an unexpected female filmmaker in this territory, namely the influencer Yuriyan Retriever with her surprising Mag Mag (2025), which paves the way for the presence of female directors in Japanese genre filmmaking, following the precedents set by Shimako Sato and Kei Fujiwara in the 1990s or, more recently, Mari Asato and Lisa Takeba.
Within this minimalist, low-budget format of filmmaking, the mark left by One Cut of the Dead (Kamera o tomeru na!, Shin'ichirô Ueda, 2017) is particularly significant. Its formula —a shoestring budget, an ingenious premise pushed to the limit, and a tone that swings back and forth between humor and genre— has spawned a line of offspring that, paradoxically, has veered more towards science fiction than horror. This is demonstrated by the stimulating Beyond the Two Infinite Minutes (Dorosute no hate de bokura, Junta Yamaguchi, 2020), Mondays: See you this Week (Mondays: Kono taimu rûpu, jôshi ni kizukasenai to owaranai, Ryo Takebayashi, 2022), and A Samurai in Time (Jun'ichi Yasuda, 2024), all of which have gained significant international recognition.
Beyond nostalgia or a defense of certain formats, the Japanese horror genre has found its most innovative offerings at the intersection of three spheres: video games, social media, and contemporary horror manga, inherited from a legendary auteur such as Junji Ito. Yûta Shimotsu surprised audiences with the unsettling Best Wishes to All (Mina ni ko are, 2023) and, above all, with New Group (2025), possibly one of the best genre films of the last five years in Japan: a horror film in keeping with the TikTok era, featuring images derived from Junji Ito's universe and tributes to Invasion of the Body Snatchers, in a feast of geometric horror and bloodless body horror. In a similar vein but on a bigger budget, Exit 8 (Genki Kawamura, 2025) brilliantly adapts a video game by Kotake Create in a repetitive, yellow-hued sonic nightmare —with Ravel’s Boléro playing in the background— that has achieved considerable success in Japan and notable international distribution thanks to its screening at the Cannes Film Festival. With this, the Toho company demonstrated its dual commitment: on the one hand, this avant-garde horror movie by Kawamura; on the other, a more classic Gothic horror with the remarkable Dollhouse (Shinobu Yaguchi, 2025), which was also well-received at specialized international film festivals.
Another of Japanese cinema’s historic subgenres, kaiju eiga, continues to enjoy a remarkable vitality in the current decade. Already bolstered by the artistic and commercial success of Shin Godzilla (Hideaki Anno & Shinji Iguchi, 2016), this subgenre was further reinforced following the 70th anniversary of the legendary Godzilla (Gojira), celebrated with the release of a restored version of the 1954 original directed by Ishirô Honda, and culminated in the premiere of Godzilla Minus One, the biggest international hit in Toho's saga, with worldwide box office takings of over 113 million dollars —57 million of which came from the U.S. market— and winning the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects in 2024. The magnitude of this phenomenon has led to the new instalment, once again directed by Yamazaki under the title Godzilla Minus Zero, becoming the most eagerly awaited Japanese film of 2026. In the wake of this international resurgence of kaiju eiga, related subgenres such as tokusatsu and yokai horror have also regained ground, with notable films such as Shin Ultraman (Shinji Higuchi & Ikki Todoroki, 2022) and The Great Yokai War: Guardians (Takashi Miike, 2021).
Horror in contemporary Japanese cinema tends to blend naturally with the mystery thriller genre, as is the case with the big hit film A Strange House (Junichi Ishikawa, 2024), which draws on the supernatural investigations that are so popular in Japan today, Don't Call it Mystery: the Movie (Misuteri to Iu Nakare, Hiroaki Matsuyama, 2023) or Masquerade Night (Masukarêdo naito , Masayuki Suzuki, 2021). Also belonging to this hybrid territory is the revenge thriller Lumberjack the Monster (Kaibutsu no kikori, 2023) by the iconic Takashi Miike, where the director of Audition allowed himself a break from his frenetic television activity in recent years to return to a more recognizable generic style.
The landscape of contemporary Japanese fantastic filmmaking is rounded out by active efforts at restoration and preservation of film heritage by studios including Toho, Kadokawa, Nikkatsu, and Shochiku, which have revived films from genres such as kwaidan eiga, kaiju eiga, Toho’s science fiction, Nikkatsu Noir, and Roman Porno. Anime has also benefited from this policy, with continuous revivals of Studio Ghibli’s filmography and classic works such as Akira (Katsuhiro Otomo, 1988), Ghost in the Shell (Mamoru Oshii, 1995), or, more recently, Angel's Egg (Mamoru Oshii, 1985) and Ninja Scroll (Yoshiaki Kawajiri, 1993). A task that confirms that the Japanese industry, while producing new fantastique genre works, actively preserves and champions the memory of those it has already created.
Ángel Sala & Jordi Sánchez-Navarro