Last summer saw the release of what would become the highest grossing Japanese animation film to date, Makoto Shinkai's "Your Name.," which was also the country's top box-office draw of 2016. The surprise hit's main characters are a pair of body-swapping teenagers. A survey conducted by the Fields Research Institute earlier this month revealed, unsurprisingly, that its commercial success was driven by the nation's teenagers — over 30 percent of whom said they bought tickets, compared to 4 percent of those 65 and older.

But another anime feature released just a few months later attracted a majority of elder viewers, who helped it become the year's second sleeper animation hit. The crowd-funded "In This Corner of the World" ("Kono Sekai no Katasumi ni"), set in a village near Hiroshima during World War II, won the Japanese Academy Award for Best Animation and earned nearly $20 million in domestic cinemas, despite very little promotion and no gender jokes.

"In This Corner of the World" premiered globally two weeks ago at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France and in the United States last week at the Los Angeles Film Festival. Screenings are scheduled in July and August at the two largest North American anime conventions, Anime Expo in Los Angeles and Otakon in Washington, and the film will be widely released in North America by Shout! Factory and Funimation Films on Aug. 11.