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Sumikko Gurashi Franchise Gets 3rd Anime Film in 2023

San-X announced on Friday that it is producing a third anime film for its Sumikko Gurashi franchise that will debut in 2023. Franchise artist and designer Yuri Yokomizo drew the below illustration to celebrate the announcement. As with the previous two films, anime studio Fanworks will produce the film.

Sumikko Gurashi debuted in 2012 as slightly negative characters who like to stay in the corner of a room. The characters include "Shirokuma," a polar bear who is sensitive to cold; "Penguin?" (with a question mark in its name), a penguin who is unsure if it is actually a penguin; "Tonkatsu," a piece of pork cutlet that was left uneaten; "Neko," a shy cat; and "Tokage," who hides his nature as one of the last dinosaurs.

The first anime film, titled Sumikkogurashi – Good to be in the corner, opened in Japan in November 2019. The film eventually sold a total of 1.22 million tickets, and it earned 1.4 billion yen (about US$12.8 million) at the box office in Japan as of February 2020. The film won the award for Best Animation of the Year at the 29th Annual Japan Movie Critics Awards in June 2020.

Eiga Sumikko Gurashi: Aoi Tsukiyo no Mahō no Ko (The Magical Child of the Blue Moonlit Night), the second film, opened in Japan in November 2021, and sold about 200,000 tickets to earn about 250 million yen (about US$2.22 million) in its first three days.

Sources: Sumikko Gurashi anime films' website, Comic Natalie