The official Twitter account for the popular franchise Jujutsu Kaisen posted an apology on March 22, 2022, on Chinese Twitter Weibo after getting bombarded with heavy criticisms from fans for calling Taiwan a country.

The tweet translates to:

As an official account of the Jujutsu Kaisen anime in China, we were concerned about the content posted on the official Japanese Twitter and immediately communicated with the Japanese side, so the content of the official Japanese Twitter of the Jujutsu Kaisen anime has already been reviewed. We deeply apologize for any harm caused to the general public, especially Jujutsu Kaisen fans.

Earlier on March 22, the official Jujutsu Kaisen Twitter account posted a tweet reporting that the film Jujutsu Kaisen 0 had exceeded 13 billion yen in revenue in Japan and “was very popular in South Korea, France, Taiwan, and other countries.”

Following the caption where it mentions Taiwan as a country, Chinese netizens rushed to protest against it in the comment section, making it viral and starting a temporary trend “Jujutsu Kaisen” on Weibo.

As a result, the staff was forced to take down the post and posted an apology on the Chinese Twitter platform later that day.

However, many netizens were not satisfied with the apology and stated that the apology should have been posted on Twitter and not on Weibo. Some users also criticized the anime stating that they deleted the tweet only because they seek to make money.

A few comments from the netizens were:

“Issues related to national sovereignty are absolutely unacceptable, no matter how interesting the animation is.”

“They have deleted the post because, after all, they want to earn money.”

“They have corrected it, but it is still abhorrent. It is so transparent that they want to make money.”

On the other hand, users who defended the anime stated that in some parts of the world, such as the United States and Japan, Taiwan is not recognized as part of China, and that this error is the fault of the producers, not the anime or the author.

“It is a problem of the animation producers, not the author (of the original manga).”

“Both Japan and the United States do not recognize Taiwan as part of China.”

“We have to accept reality. In many countries, it is known that Taiwan does not belong to China. This is especially true in the West. So we have to unify quickly.”

Furthermore, on the same night, Jujutsu Kaisen posted a new Tweet correcting their previous caption from “other countries” to “etc”.

The new post translates to:

As of yesterday, the gross of the movie “Jujyutsu Kaisen 0” exceeded 13 billion yen. Thank you very much for your support. The film has also been released overseas and ranked #1 in South Korea, Taiwan, France, etc. In North America it became a box office hit with over $18 million in its first three days of release, and now it’s taking the world by storm! The photo shows Times Square in New York.

The Jujutsu Kaisen 0 film has sold a total of 9.28 million tickets to earn more than 13 billion yen (about US$108 million) since it opened in Japan on Dec 24, 2021, and is currently the 20th highest-grossing film in Japan of all time.

It surpassed Evangelion: 3.0+1.0: Thrice Upon A Time to become the highest grossing film at the Japanese-box office that released in 2021.

The movie grossed US$14.8 million in its first weekend in the North American box office, racking up an average of US$6,482 per screen at 2,286 locations. It had earned US$8.68 million in 2,340 theaters on its opening day Friday, March 18, 2022, in the United States.

It had crossed the 10 billion yen mark in Japanese box office in 43 days, earning about 10,456,322,400 yen (about US$90.6 million) from 7,603,732 tickets on its 45th day.

Jujutsu Kaisen 0 is based on Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical School, the prequel manga to the main series, Jujutsu Kaisen. It is written and illustrated by Gege Akutami. The manga was serialized in Shueisha’s magazine Jump GIGA from April to July 2017.

Source: Record China