Shopping Guide
A Certain Magical Index: Endymion no Kiseki (*A Certain Magical Index: The Miracle of Endymion*), a feature film adaptation of the popular light novel and anime series, showed a lot of box office magic, raking in 100.75 million yen ($1.09 million) in two days after it premiered on Feb. 23.
The film attracted 69,117 moviegoers at 30 cinemas nationwide. It ranked third in its opening weekend in box office receipts, and its per-screen average of about 3.35 million yen was the best on the weekend.
On opening weekend, the audience members received free copies of the original paperback novel. However, the supply of 103,000 books ran out at many theaters, and related items offered exclusively at cinemas sold out as well.
The magic spread beyond the film on opening weekend. Singer Sachika Misawa, who plays the role of Arisa in the movie, released her first mini-album "Polaris" containing all her songs featured in the film on Feb. 20. It ranked first on the iTunes Store anime chart.
To keep the magic going, voice actresses from the movie made stage appearances on March 3 at Tachikawa Cinema Two in Tachikawa. The western Tokyo city serves as the model of Academy City where the story takes place. Rina Sato, Satomi Arai, Aki Toyosaki and Kanae Ito took the stage at the event.
The original A Certain Magical Index light novel series has sold more than 14 million copies. The story depicts the conflicts between psychics and magicians.
A Certain Magical Index: Endymion no Kiseki Official Site: http://www.project-index.net/index.html (Japanese)
Translated by The Asahi Shimbun from the website Anime Anime.