A Japanese Cartoon About Small Cute Creatures Opened at Number One in Korea. Tom Cruise's New Film Is Seventh on the Booking Board, With Cruise in Seoul to Sell It

At 11:55 on the morning of Thursday 1 October, the advance-booking board run by the Korean Film Council read like this.

	Film	Opens	Share of advance sales	Seats sold
1	《극장판 치이카와: 인어 섬의 비밀》	30 Sept	39.1%	216,046
2	《암살자(들)》	23 Sept	14.0%	77,393
3	《오디세이》	5 Aug	10.3%	56,670
4	《타짜: 벨제붑의 노래》	23 Sept	9.5%	52,539
5	《부활남: 더 레드》	30 Sept	7.6%	41,863
6	《가능한 사랑》	23 Sept	3.7%	20,283
7	《디거》	3 Oct	2.6%	14,615

A ninety-nine-minute Japanese cartoon, rated for all ages, about a small white creature and its friends, was outselling Tom Cruise's new film nearly fifteen to one. That was two hours before the press conference, at the Conrad hotel in Yeouido, that opens his thirteenth visit to the country.

These are the two big films of the week in Korea. One of them is winning, and it is not the one with the movie star.

What Chiikawa is

Chiikawa — in full 『ちいかわ なんか小さくてかわいいやつ』, something small and cute — began in January 2020 as a manga posted on X by an illustrator who works as ナガノ, Nagano. It follows three small creatures — Chiikawa, Hachiware and the rabbit Usagi — and the small hardships of their days. Since April 2022 it has also been a television anime, shown on Fuji TV's morning programme 《めざましテレビ》. In Korea, where it is enormous, it is called 먼작귀 — 먼가 작고 귀여운 녀석 — and the Korean dub renames two of the three: Hachiware is 가르마, Usagi is 토끼.

The film, directed by 오이카와 케이 from Nagano's own screenplay and adapting the long "Siren" arc of the manga, opened in Japan on 24 July. In sixty-six days to 27 September it took about ¥16.85 billion from about 11.55 million admissions, ORICON and MANTANWEB both reported, which made it the fourteenth-highest-grossing film in Japanese history and pushed it past The First Slam Dunk. In Korea it is imported by 대원미디어 and distributed by CJ ENM.

Its opening, and what it was not

On Wednesday 30 September it was the most-watched film in Korea: 122,293 admissions, 34 per cent of the day's box office, on 1,078 screens and 3,595 showings. With 30,725 admissions from premiere screenings over the previous fortnight, it stood at 153,018 after one official day.

That is the biggest opening day of any animated film released in Korea this year — ahead of Toy Story 5 (94,694) and the latest Detective Conan (67,964). It is not, whatever you may read, a record for Japanese animation. On the council's own tables, at least five Japanese animated films have opened bigger:

Film	Opened in Korea	Opening day
《귀멸의 칼날: 무한성편》 (Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle)	Aug 2025	517,922
《그대들은 어떻게 살 것인가》 (The Boy and the Heron)	Oct 2023	255,230
《하이큐!! 쓰레기장의 결전》 (Haikyu!! The Dumpster Battle)	May 2024	172,858
《스즈메의 문단속》 (Suzume)	Mar 2023	143,507
《너의 이름은.》 (Your Name.)	Jan 2017	138,028
《극장판 치이카와》	Sept 2026	122,293
《체인소 맨: 레제편》 (Chainsaw Man: Reze Arc)	Sept 2025	108,722
《더 퍼스트 슬램덩크》 (The First Slam Dunk)	Jan 2023	62,090

What it has is not a record opening. It is a booking curve that no other film in the market can touch, and the reason for that is easier to see in the cinema chains' promotions than in the reviews.

Why it sells: the things you get

Each chain has its own gift for buying a ticket. On opening week: an A3 poster with an embossed logo at CGV, a holographic art card at Lotte Cinema, an original ticket and one of three random peel-off stickers at Megabox, a special ticket and sticker at CineQ. From 3 October, a random charm figure, one of eight, limited to four per person at CGV's 103 participating cinemas. CGV is also selling three character popcorn buckets at ₩29,000 each. There are stage greetings on five days between 3 and 10 October at cinemas across Seoul — conducted, every one of them, by people in Chiikawa, Hachiware and Usagi costumes. On the evening of 1 October the characters were booked onto Mnet's 《엠카운트다운》, the K-pop chart show.

This is a fandom market, and the numbers it produces need reading with that in mind. 여성신문 reported on 1 October, largely from posts on social media, that some sold-out showings had played to a handful of people, that some viewers left before the end, and that the free gifts were being resold for ₩10,000 to ₩50,000 apiece. That is anecdote, not data. But it is the anecdote you would expect if a share of the 216,046 advance seats were bought for the figure rather than the film — and it is why the opening weekend, not the booking board, will be the honest test.

The other big film

《디거》 — Digger — is Alejandro G. Iñárritu's first film with Tom Cruise. Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, a third-generation oil tycoon who shrugs off a small crack at his drilling site on a Greenland glacier; it becomes a worldwide catastrophe, and he tries to prove himself humanity's saviour before the disaster he started finishes everything. John Goodman plays the President of the United States; Sandra Hüller, Riz Ahmed, Jesse Plemons and Emma D'Arcy are in the cast. The council lists it as a comedy-drama. It runs two hours and nine minutes, is rated 15 in Korea and R in the United States, and plays in IMAX and Dolby Cinema.

It had its world premiere in London on 22 September as the Royal Film Performance. It opens in the United States and Britain on 2 October and in Korea on Saturday 3 October, the National Foundation Day holiday — a day after America, not before. And the reviews are split: on 1 October it stood at 52 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes from 139 reviews and 46 on Metacritic from 43. Some Korean reviews published this week give away a late turn in the plot. We won't.

Thirteen visits

Cruise's arrival is the 13th of his career, which, as the distributor Warner Bros Korea points out every time, is more than any other Hollywood actor. He first came in 1994, for Interview with the Vampire; he has been back for Mission: Impossible 2 and five of its sequels, two Jack Reacher films, Valkyrie, Vanilla Sky and Top Gun: Maverick; he was made an honorary citizen of Busan in 2013; his twelfth visit was in May 2025, for The Final Reckoning. Korean fans have called him 친절한 톰 아저씨 — kind Uncle Tom — since at least 2011, for signing sessions that run for hours. The photographs on this page are from the last visit.

This one is a press conference on 1 October at the Conrad Seoul, then, on 2 October, a red carpet in the atrium of 영등포 타임스퀘어 and a fan screening with a stage greeting at CGV 영등포. Iñárritu was due to share all of it. On the evening of 30 September, the day before the press conference, the distributor said he had withdrawn for "unforeseen circumstances"; he sent a letter blaming a travel delay he could not avoid. He has not been to Korea since 2009.

So the picture on 2 October will be one man in Yeongdeungpo, promoting a divisive black comedy about an oil baron to an audience that, two days out, had bought fifteen times as many tickets for a cartoon.

The rest of the market

The week's Korean opener, 《부활남: 더 레드》, is an action film from 백종열, who made The Beauty Inside, adapted from the webtoon by 채용택 and 김재한: a jobseeker, played by 구교환, discovers he comes back to life seventy-two hours after he dies, and is hunted for it. It opened fourth with 42,872. 《암살자(들)》, still the subject of a political fight, has 1,766,946 after eight days and is second on the board. 《타짜: 벨제붑의 노래》 passed a million on 30 September, its eighth day. And one detail ties three of the top four together: CJ ENM distributes both 《치이카와》 and 《타짜》, and its studio arm produced 《부활남》, which Lotte distributes. On opening day the distributor was competing with itself.

None of this means Korean cinema is losing to Japan. Korean films took about 65 per cent of all admissions over the four-day Chuseok holiday — 2,118,119 of 3,268,904, to 《암살자(들)》 and 《타짜》 — and the biggest film of 2026 is still Korean: 《왕과 사는 남자》, with 16,929,089. What the board shows is narrower and odder. A Hollywood star with thirteen visits behind him is no longer, on his own, a reason for Koreans to book. A soft white creature with a figure in the box is.

Next: 고레에다 히로카즈's live-action 《룩백》, from the manga by the author of Chainsaw Man, which played in competition at Venice, opens on 8 October, with the director and his two leads in Seoul from the 8th to the 10th. We will read the first weekend for all of these.

Images. The photographs are of Tom Cruise in Seoul on 8 May 2025, during his twelfth visit, for Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning*, by Lee Jeong Woo / Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, published by Korea.net under CC BY-SA 2.0, licence and camera data verified on the file pages. Korea.net asks that its photographs not be altered or combined with other images; they are used whole, which is why they sit inside their frames. The cover is ours, from the Korean Film Council's live booking board at 11:55 KST on 1 October. There is no licence-clean image of Chiikawa — the artwork belongs to its creator and distributors — and we have asked CJ ENM for stills.*

Sources. Opening-day and booking figures are from the Korean Film Council's KOBIS daily box-office table and real-time reservation board, read directly on 1 October; its film records give the runtimes, ratings, distributors and the 30,725 pre-release admissions. The comparison of animated openings is from KOBIS's opening-day tables for each film, and from 싱글리스트 (1 October) for this year's animated releases. Japan's figures are from ORICON and MANTANWEB (28 September). The chains' promotions are from 싱글리스트 (30 September), 금강일보 (30 September) and 여성신문 (1 October); the stage-greeting schedule from 톱스타뉴스 (29 September); 《엠카운트다운》 from 엑스포츠뉴스 (30 September); the resale and empty-seat reports from 여성신문 (1 October). 《디거》: KOBIS, Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic (1 October), Deadline on the London premiere, Wikipedia for release dates. The visit schedule from 오뉴스 (26 September), 스타뉴스 (17 September) and MHN (1 October); Iñárritu's withdrawal from 일간스포츠 (30 September) and 싱글리스트 and 뉴스엔 (1 October); Cruise's earlier visits from 일간스포츠 (2023), the Korea Times (2025), Korea.net (2025) and 한국일보 (2011). 《부활남》 from KOBIS and 세계일보 (1 October). The Chuseok share from 시사위크 (28 September).

Stated rather than smoothed. Several things being said about this week are wrong, and we have said so above: that 《치이카와》's opening was a record for Japanese animation in Korea (at least five opened bigger); that Korea saw 《디거》 first (America did, a day earlier); that Iñárritu would be in Seoul (he cancelled). The board numbers move by the minute; ours are from 11:55 on 1 October, and the 41 per cent you may have seen for 《치이카와》 was from two days earlier. "First in every region" is how its distributor has put it, and it is true of the sixteen regions the council reports — Korea has seventeen, and the council's board has no filter for 세종. We have not said that 30 September was a cut-price "culture day" at Korean cinemas, though it was the last Wednesday of the month, because we found no 2026 source confirming the discount ran. And the reports of empty seats and resold gifts come largely from social media, which is why we have called them anecdote.