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21st Detective Conan Film Producers Win Fujimoto Award
posted on by Rafael Antonio Pineda
Japan's Eiga Engeki Bunka Kyōkai (Film Theater Culture Association) announced the winners of its 37th annual Fujimoto Awards on April 25. The staff of the Detective Conan: The Crimson Love Letter anime film, including original manga creator Gōshō Aoyama, and producers Shūhō Kondō, Isato Yonekura, and Keiichi Ishiyama, received this year's general award. In addition, producer Shinzo Matsuhashi won the special award for the live-action Gintama film, and producers Kei Haruna and Hisashi Usui won an honorable mention for the live-action Kimi no Suizō o Tabetai film.
The Fujimoto Awards, named after Shachō and Wakadaishō series producer Sanezumi Fujimoto, recognize the achievements of film producers who have worked on popular and entertaining films. This year's awards recognized films that opened between April 2017 and March 2018.
Ishiyama, along with producers Michihiko Suwa and Mitomu Asai, previously won the special award for the Detective Conan series as a whole for the 32nd Fujimoto Awards in 2012.
Detective Conan: The Crimson Love Letter opened in April 2017. The film became the highest-grossing domestic film in Japan in 2017 by earning a total of 6.89 billion yen (about US$61.1 million), and it earned the highest opening weekend record for the franchise at the time, only recently surpassed by this year's Detective Conan: Zero the Enforcer film.
The first live-action Gintama film opened in July 2017, and it earned 980 million yen (US$8.9 million) in its first four days. The film had its Canadian premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival in July 2017, and Azoland Pictures screened the film in the United States and Canada starting on January 19. The film is receiving a sequel that opens in Japan on August 17.
Kimi no Suizō o Tabetai (Let Me Eat Your Pancreas) adapts Yoru Sumino's novel, and it opened in Japan in July 2017. The novel is inspiring an anime film the will premiere on September 1, and it already inspired a manga adaptation by Idumi Kirihara. Seven Seas Entertainment has licensed both the original novel and the manga adaptation.
Staff of the your name., Shin Godzilla, and In This Corner of the World films won awards at the Fujimoto Awards last year.
Sources: Eiga Engeki Bunka Kyōkai website, Animation Business Journal (Tadashi Sudo)
