Animator Makoto Shinkai's "Your Name" is taking the box office by storm in China. Charley Gallay | Getty Images

A coming-of-age Japanese animation movie is a smash hit in China, raking in over $41 million at the box office to become the top-grossing film over its opening weekend, after beating out Warner Bros' "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them". Directed by animator Makoto Shinkai, "Your Name" is a fantasy body-swapping romance between two teenagers and its success in the world's second-largest film market is stoking expectations for the film ahead of its wide U.S. release in early 2017. It received the award for Best Animation of the year from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association on Sunday and is on an Oscar-qualifying theatrical run in Los Angeles this week. Even before its release, "Your Name" was highly anticipated in China, with its film title trending for at least a week on Weibo, China's Twitter-like microblog, underscoring the popularity of Japanese animation in Asia. According to a report from industry body The Association of Japanese Animations, sales of Japanese animation overseas reached $28.84 million in 2015, some 80 percent higher than the $16.18 million in 2014 and up from $16.05 billion in 2013. The association attributed the sharp rise to growing demand in China, with growth in sales of streaming rights to the world's second largest economy up 78.7 percent in 2015 from a year ago.

That "Your Name" was made in Japan was not lost on Chinese netizens, some of whom questioned its popularity after years of ad hoc movements to boycott Japanese goods whenever disputes arise. A few reviewers gave poor ratings to the film, citing patriotism, but reviews were largely positive and critical of any negativity surrounding the movie simply due to its origin. A post making its rounds on social media Wednesday detailed the chat of a parent urging 90 counterparts in a chat group on messaging app WeChat not to allow their kids to watch the movie, as Japanese cultural imports would give rise to "the erosion of Chinese ideology, contribute to treason and affect the future of China." The only person in the group who responded said: "Movies are just a form of entertainment." National media in China and Japan, however, were fast to seek common ground on the back of the film's success. "Although people in the two countries may feel ill will toward one another, as the shared enthusiasm for 'Your Name' shows, they are also culturally bound to one another in many ways," state-owned China Daily newspaper's Tokyo bureau chief, Cai Hong, wrote in an opinion piece with the headline "Popular culture can be employed to help forge friendlyties." Kyodo news agency noted in its report of the success of "Your Name" in China that "Chinese President Xi Jinping and other top Chinese officials have said the two Asian countries should expand positive aspects in the bilateral relationship, while acknowledging that more needs to be done to manage differences over territorial and wartime issues."

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