San-X has announced that Sumikko Gurashi will get a fifth anime film in 2027. The announcement, made on Wednesday, did not include the film’s title, but it did come with a visual drawn by the franchise’s creator, Yuri Yokomizo, and a hint that the story will put the character Neko in the lead role for the first time.
Neko is the shy cat among the Sumikko gang, and giving that character the centre of a feature film is a notable change of focus for a series that has usually built its stories around Shirokuma, Penguin?, and the group as a whole.
What the fifth film is
Details are thin beyond the visual and the Neko teaser: no director, studio, cast, or release date inside 2027 has been announced. That is consistent with how San-X has handled the earlier films, which were revealed with a visual and a rough year before fuller staff and cast details followed later.
The previous four films all opened in Japan in the autumn — November in 2019, 2021, and 2023, then October for the fourth in 2025 — so a late-2027 window would fit the established pattern.
The franchise’s film history
The first anime film, Sumikkogurashi – Good to be in the corner, opened in Japan in November 2019. It sold 1.22 million tickets and earned 1.4 billion yen (about US$12.8 million) in Japan as of February 2020, and it won Best Animation of the Year at the 29th Annual Japan Movie Critics Awards in June 2020.
The second film, Eiga Sumikko Gurashi: Aoi Tsukiyo no Mahō no Ko (The Magical Child of the Blue Moonlit Night), opened in November 2021 and sold about 200,000 tickets for about 250 million yen (roughly US$2.22 million at the time) in its first three days.
Eiga Sumikko Gurashi: Tsugihagi Kōjō no Fushigi na Ko (The Mysterious Child of the Makeshift Factory), the third film, opened in November 2023 and sold 192,300 tickets for 242,553,320 yen — about US$1.63 million — in its first three days.
The fourth film, Eiga Sumikko Gurashi: Sora no Ōkoku to Futari no Ko (The Sky Kingdom and the Two Children), opened in October 2025. It ranked at No. 4 in its opening weekend, selling 150,000 tickets for 183,974,840 yen (about US$1.19 million) in its first three days. Counting the Culture Day holiday on November 3, it sold a total of 208,000 tickets for 253 million yen (about US$1.64 million) in its first four days.
Those numbers describe a series that has settled well below its 2019 peak but remains a reliable annual performer — the sequels are cheap to produce relative to their returns, and each one keeps the merchandising line in the news.
The wider Sumikko universe
Sumikko Gurashi debuted in 2012 as a set of “slightly negative” characters who prefer to stay in the corner of a room. The core cast includes Shirokuma, a polar bear who is sensitive to cold; Penguin?, a penguin who is unsure whether it is actually a penguin; Tonkatsu, a piece of pork cutlet that was left uneaten; Neko, the shy cat; and Tokage, who hides the fact that he is one of the last dinosaurs.
Beyond the films, the franchise has expanded gradually. It got its first television anime in October 2023, a puppet musical ran in Tokyo between August and September 2024, and a new series of anime shorts, Sumikko Gurashi: Koko ga Ochitsukun Desu (This Is Where I Relax), premiered on NTV’s ZIP! morning programme in its “ZIP! 1-Minute Anime” slot in April 2025.
Why it matters
Sumikko Gurashi is one of the clearest examples of Japan’s “healing” character economy, where low-stakes, gentle mascots sustain merchandise, film, and TV businesses over a decade or more. The films are not blockbusters in the way the Detective Conan or Demon Slayer features are, but they perform consistently, and a fifth entry keeps the cycle going.
The Neko focus is the most interesting part of the announcement. Handing a film to a supporting character is a standard move for a long-running franchise trying to keep each instalment distinct — and with no staff or studio attached yet, the creative side is still wide open. We’ll update this story as San-X confirms a release window and creative team.
Related coverage: our report on Chiikawa’s box office run in Japan looks at how another gentle mascot franchise performs theatrically, and our Iruma-kun film announcement piece covers a very different kind of anime film project.
Sources: Anime News Network, citing the Sumikko Gurashi film website and Comic Natalie
Featured image: New Sumikko Gurashi film visual by creator Yuri Yokomizo, via Anime News Network.
