The latest anime from director Hayao Miyazaki aced at the box office without any marketing. All credit to his unique vision and passionate fans

In the razzmatazz that has greeted the big releases of the last fortnight, Mission: Impossible and Barbie, a far more interesting event has passed almost unnoticed in the west. A film with virtually no advance publicity had fans in Japan queueing around the block, taking $17.5m (£13.5m) in its first weekend.

How Do You Live? is a new anime by the revered director Hayao Miyazaki, who reversed an earlier decision to retire for what he has intimated will be his final full-length film. Until the eve of its opening, when a free-to-use illustration was released, the film’s only publicity was a single poster, published last year. It showed a crayon sketch of what – given the film’s stated debt to a 1937 novel by the Japanese children’s author Genzaburo Yoshino – was surmised to be a blue and white heron.