Dentsu: Anime is no longer a niche. It's a global phenomenon.

near

Gold Member
Dentsu is a global advertising and marketing agency and one of the largest marketing communications groups in the world. And through Dentsu's Consumer Navigator (a monthly consumer insight program designed to help marketers stay ahead of the ever evolving consumer landscape) they've shared findings via a global report on anime with data collected between Oct '24 and March '25 from 8,600 consumers across 10 countries.

They state that anime is a growing opportunity for brands, with 3 in 10 people watching it weekly. It's fully mainstream with engagement stronger among Millennials and Gen Z. The main draw seems to be deep emotional storytelling and character complexities. 28% of viewers spent over $200 on merch with 10% spending >$500. 33% of anime's global fanbase are also regular consumers of podcasts and livestreams, and heavily engage with online and physical communities. Viewers also feel that anime inspired promotions improve brand perception.

Netflix seems to be the primary destination to stream anime content for most viewers.

Link to study: https://www.dentsu.com/our-latest-thinking / PDF

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Jesus. Do people hate Crunchyroll or something? How is it so low?
I'm quite surprised seeing so low too. Disney at 32% globally is also a little shocking, I don't remember seeing much content on there at least here in the UK last time I checked.
 
Jesus. Do people hate Crunchyroll or something? How is it so low?
Crunchyroll is a shit service. The library outside US is laughable and missing entire seasons of shows. They use AI slop subtitles now. They didn't even accept my credit card, had to use paypal when I had it. They also raised their price recently. They have almost 0 competition, so they do what they want like disabling comments or going after superior arrr sites where most kids watch their anime nowadays.

Also, don't get me started on why the actual anime creators get pennies from your Crunchyroll sub.
 
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The main draw seems to be deep emotional storytelling and character complexities

Goodfellas GIF


I remember discovering high-school shonen manga when most of my comic book reads until my mid-teens had been Disney stuff and some Italian comics. That shit felt so deep.

You only need so much exposure to anime and manga before you realize how repetitive and exaggerated most of it is. Not to mention, serialized and dragged on to hell and beyond. Ultimately, it's not very different from Hollywood slop. It's still mostly power fantasies and children's dreams, with incredibly redundant dialogue, paper-thin "philosophy", and simplistic solutions to complex problems. There's the occasional work that escapes these tropes, but like it happens with entertainment from every part of the world, they're few and far between. All things considered, the average Uncle Scrooge / Donald Duck ten-pager by Carl Barks told more about real life and people than most anime you've watched. You certainly won't find dissertations about boobs being fake asses there.
 
As with most things in life Anime was better before it exploded in popularity.

There are still gems being made (like Freinen) so I won't complain much.
 
Goodfellas GIF


I remember discovering high-school shonen manga when most of my comic book reads until my mid-teens had been Disney stuff and some Italian comics. That shit felt so deep.

You only need so much exposure to anime and manga before you realize how repetitive and exaggerated most of it is. Not to mention, serialized and dragged on to hell and beyond. Ultimately, it's not very different from Hollywood slop. It's still mostly power fantasies and children's dreams, with incredibly redundant dialogue, paper-thin "philosophy", and simplistic solutions to complex problems. There's the occasional work that escapes these tropes, but like it happens with entertainment from every part of the world, they're few and far between. All things considered, the average Uncle Scrooge / Donald Duck ten-pager by Carl Barks told more about real life and people than most anime you've watched. You certainly won't find dissertations about boobs being fake asses there.
To be fair, I'm not sure why I wrote that because having looked at it again, the main draw for those surveyed are 'worlds and stories in anime that I don't find in other types of content', then it's variety of genres anime offers. I might've added my own personal reasoning into the OP without realising. 👀
 
Jesus. Do people hate Crunchyroll or something? How is it so low?
Netflix and Hulu have most of the popular stuff. You use sites like crunchy roll and hidive if you're interested in more niche stuff ( that or pirate it).
 
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I realise it might be more popular than ever, but it seems like a stretch to believe that only 36% of people worldwide don't watch anime.
 
To be fair, I'm not sure why I wrote that because having looked at it again, the main draw for those surveyed are 'worlds and stories in anime that I don't find in other types of content', then it's variety of genres anime offers. I might've added my own personal reasoning into the OP without realising. 👀
Oh, I thought that sentence was from the article. Nothing personal.

Don't get me wrong, the premise of a lot of manga and anime is often good and original. Too bad the need for serialization, the extreme repetitiveness of the Japanese language, and the need to stick to tropes to satisfy the audience tend to ruin even the best premise in the end. I remember all too well Tsukasa Hojo's Angel Heart starting with a bang, only to settle for the syrupy feel-good story of the week very quickly. Same for Detective Conan, it has more than 100 tankobon and save for the occasional string of episodes that carry "forward" the main plot, it's an endless collection of whodunit cases that invariably involve three suspects and that can only be solved if you have advanced knowledge of niche subjects and of the Japanese language.
 
I realise it might be more popular than ever, but it seems like a stretch to believe that only 36% of people worldwide don't watch anime.
That's 36% of the 8,600 individuals surveyed worldwide. So that's 3,096 participants that said they don't watch anime.
 
It's still mostly power fantasies and children's dreams, with incredibly redundant dialogue, paper-thin "philosophy", and simplistic solutions to complex problems.

Ugh, this is so true. Even widely-acclaimed series like Vinland Saga fall victim to this, it annoys me so much.
 
Attack on Titan and Fate/Zero aside, I can't think of any new anime series that have blown me away in the past 10-15 years.

(Thunderbolt Fantasy too which was god tier. :pie_raybans:)

Is there anything of exceptional quality I should check out?
 
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Jesus. Do people hate Crunchyroll or something? How is it so low?
I'm quite surprised seeing so low too. Disney at 32% globally is also a little shocking, I don't remember seeing much content on there at least here in the UK last time I checked.
Personally I could roll out a list of complaints about Crunchyroll as they still have yet to fix multiple things that Funimation did better, but I will admit that they are good for the industry as a whole, because before Crunchyroll, Funimation streaming, Hulu, and Netflix, things were more of an annoying wild west situation.
 
Personally I could roll out a list of complaints about Crunchyroll as they still have yet to fix multiple things that Funimation did better, but I will admit that they are good for the industry as a whole, because before Crunchyroll, Funimation streaming, Hulu, and Netflix, things were more of an annoying wild west situation.

I will say their PS5 app (where I watch) has improved, but man, when they announced it would be FUNimation who be going goodbye after both it and Crunchyroll were now owned by the same company, the FUNimation PS5 app was much better than the Crunchyroll PS5 app at the time. But yeah, I have found Crunchyroll improved it since, and especially I rarely get crashes/freezes like it used to do. Also, I'm sure there's a few series I'm unaware of, but pretty much all the FUNimation licenses I know of seem to be on Crunchyroll app now. Hell, there's a few I didn't realize FUNimation had streaming rights to as they were released on DVD in their pre-streaming days like their license rescues of Gankutsuou: Count of Monte Cristo and Welcome to the NHK.

Also, as someone who buys a lot of Blu-Rays, FUNimation was easily the biggest name in the US anime Blu-Ray market by that point. ADV, Bandai Entertainment and Geneon Entertainment had all gone under, and Sentai (essentially ADV 2.0) does get some good licenses but nothing on the level that FUNimation does. I even met some of their staff when they held a panel at Anime Central (in Chicago, the U.S.'s second largest anime convention at the time) in 2011, I forget what else but they announced getting Is This a Zombie?! there which I hadn't heard of when they announced it but ended up enjoying once I picked it up.

Crunchyroll did a decent enough job covering the Blu-Ray market as well as others like Viz, Sentai, and Discotek, but it still feels not what it used to be. Chainsaw Man took two and a half years to finally get its U.S. Blu-Ray, the Konosuba movie STILL has no announcement of one (and yet they released the more recent Megumin spin-off on Blu-Ray, come on), and quite a few Netflix shows have yet to be announced to get ones like Devilman Crybaby, Dorohedoro, and Komi Can't Communicate.
 
I will say their PS5 app (where I watch) has improved, but man, when they announced it would be FUNimation who be going goodbye after both it and Crunchyroll were now owned by the same company, the FUNimation PS5 app was much better than the Crunchyroll PS5 app at the time. But yeah, I have found Crunchyroll improved it since, and especially I rarely get crashes/freezes like it used to do. Also, I'm sure there's a few series I'm unaware of, but pretty much all the FUNimation licenses I know of seem to be on Crunchyroll app now. Hell, there's a few I didn't realize FUNimation had streaming rights to as they were released on DVD in their pre-streaming days like their license rescues of Gankutsuou: Count of Monte Cristo and Welcome to the NHK.

Also, as someone who buys a lot of Blu-Rays, FUNimation was easily the biggest name in the US anime Blu-Ray market by that point. ADV, Bandai Entertainment and Geneon Entertainment had all gone under, and Sentai (essentially ADV 2.0) does get some good licenses but nothing on the level that FUNimation does. I even met some of their staff when they held a panel at Anime Central (in Chicago, the U.S.'s second largest anime convention at the time) in 2011, I forget what else but they announced getting Is This a Zombie?! there which I hadn't heard of when they announced it but ended up enjoying once I picked it up.

Crunchyroll did a decent enough job covering the Blu-Ray market as well as others like Viz, Sentai, and Discotek, but it still feels not what it used to be. Chainsaw Man took two and a half years to finally get its U.S. Blu-Ray, the Konosuba movie STILL has no announcement of one (and yet they released the more recent Megumin spin-off on Blu-Ray, come on), and quite a few Netflix shows have yet to be announced to get ones like Devilman Crybaby, Dorohedoro, and Komi Can't Communicate.
I've stated before on this forum and I'll state it again here and now:

  • Funimation ran like an actual legitimate business. Scheduling solid, on time, nearly every time, products ready, good customer service.
  • Crunchyroll ran like a startup business by comparison. Odd scheduling with products and releases, subtitles and dubbing off-schedule or sometimes fully missing. Episodes missing with zero explanation. Customer service messier.
But they were the more popular app. They won the people, through hard work and tons of marketing. I saw them at nearly every convention I went to in the past and they would have ads on message boards/forums, and sometimes even on sites that illegally streamed anime. I knew they would eventually make it.

That lead us to recent times, where Sony cut the former and kept the latter. Life just isn't fair sometimes.
 
I like the older stuff (late 80s-early 00s) so i watch anime on Amazon Prime, Hulu, Tubi, Pluto TV, and Retrocrush. This new stuff like "I was transformed into *blank* and now i *blank* in a dungeon" is an incredibly stupid trend. Also not giving Sony my money. They bought out Funimation and forced everyone to use Crunchyroll, then increased the price.

What anime is on d+? Are they counting just animated stuff?
Alot of the hulu catalog is on Disney+ and there's quite a bit.

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I thought One Piece was anime's breakthrough moment

One Piece was and is still a massive hit, but it cannot be understated how HUGE Demon Slayer Season 1 was in terms of attracting new fans and it seemingly reached a relatively mainstream height One Piece had never reached.

It translated then to manga sales, which, yeah:




The following Mugen Train movie was also a massive success:


Only the original Pokémon anime movies hit those numbers in the U.S., and the Dragonball Super: Broly movie, a franchise that had decades to build a fanbase, only did a percentage of that.

The problem was the One Piece anime started pre-streaming, and once streaming started to really take off in the 2010's and bring in new anime fans, most of those new fans were looking to find exciting stuff that wasn't already hundreds of episodes long by that point and yet still unfinished.
 
Dentsu is a global advertising and marketing agency and one of the largest marketing communications groups in the world. And through Dentsu's Consumer Navigator (a monthly consumer insight program designed to help marketers stay ahead of the ever evolving consumer landscape) they've shared findings via a global report on anime with data collected between Oct '24 and March '25 from 8,600 consumers across 10 countries.

They state that anime is a growing opportunity for brands, with 3 in 10 people watching it weekly. It's fully mainstream with engagement stronger among Millennials and Gen Z. The main draw seems to be deep emotional storytelling and character complexities. 28% of viewers spent over $200 on merch with 10% spending >$500. 33% of anime's global fanbase are also regular consumers of podcasts and livestreams, and heavily engage with online and physical communities. Viewers also feel that anime inspired promotions improve brand perception.

Netflix seems to be the primary destination to stream anime content for most viewers.

Link to study: https://www.dentsu.com/our-latest-thinking / PDF

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If those statistics and math I see... It seems that the anime is going well. 👍🏻
 
This likely means that, just like gaming, anime is about to get ruined as a side effect of its popularity.
It depends on what you are talking about, because most of the complaints about gaming on this forum pertain to Western/US companies. Japanese gaming had a slight stumble moment in the dark and came back with good content.

And speaking of that, anime already had it's "Playstation 3" moment and that was during the rise of 3D animation, where the 3D animators in Japan took a while to get good.

Not saying all of them have gotten good yet, but for most of them we are miles ahead of where we were last decade if you see what has come out recently and what's on the horizon.
 
It depends on what you are talking about, because most of the complaints about gaming on this forum pertain to Western/US companies. Japanese gaming had a slight stumble moment in the dark and came back with good content.

And speaking of that, anime already had it's "Playstation 3" moment and that was during the rise of 3D animation, where the 3D animators in Japan took a while to get good.

Not saying all of them have gotten good yet, but for most of them we are miles ahead of where we were last decade if you see what has come out recently and what's on the horizon.
It's not just that stuff. Like a perfect example of what you wouldn't have seen 10 years ago - The MHA drama when the mangaka got a hate campaign on social media directed at him for not matching Deku with Bakugo according to their mentally ill headcanon at the end of the main story. Adi Shankar's DMC and Castlevania series being considered "anime" is an affront to actual anime. Extremely poorly done live action remakes to classic anime that nobody asked for (Cowboy Bebop).

All of this stuff is due to the rise of popularity of the format and it's only going to get worse from here.

Need I remind everyone of this travesty:
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Crunchyroll is a shit service. The library outside US is laughable and missing entire seasons of shows. They use AI slop subtitles now. They didn't even accept my credit card, had to use paypal when I had it. They also raised their price recently. They have almost 0 competition, so they do what they want like disabling comments or going after superior arrr sites where most kids watch their anime nowadays.

Also, don't get me started on why the actual anime creators get pennies from your Crunchyroll sub.
Crunchyroll is now owned by Sony. I used that service during COVID to catch up and watch all the missed episodes of One Piece. Saw it twice up to Wano.
I hear the service is shit, now, though. I used to watch anime for free, on it. I saw a bunch of Anime I hadn't seen before. Some shit, some good.
Good ole days.
 
Like a perfect example of what you wouldn't have seen 10 years ago

Are You Sure About That John Cena GIF by MOODMAN


The MHA drama when the mangaka got a hate campaign on social media directed at him for not matching Deku with Bakugo according to their mentally ill headcanon at the end of the main story.

Dude, Tite Kubo (of Bleach) got death threats long before MHA ever started. Haruhi Suzumiya's Japanese voice actress was cancelled by Japanese "fans" simply because she dated around a lot in her personal life. This is not even remotely new.

Adi Shankar's DMC and Castlevania series being considered "anime" is an affront to actual anime.

Okay, A) I find it exhausting when people make too big a deal about what qualifies as an anime or not. Like, relax, it's not that big of a deal. B) again, nothing new, people STILL debate if Avatar TLA, a two decade old show, is an anime or cartoon.

Extremely poorly done live action remakes to classic anime that nobody asked for (Cowboy Bebop).

2009:

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Also heard to blame them exclusively when Japan never stops doing their own ones and most of them are just as shitty.

The live-action Fullmetal Alchemist one Japan made in 2017:

Disgusted Johnny Depp GIF
 
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It's not just that stuff. Like a perfect example of what you wouldn't have seen 10 years ago - The MHA drama when the mangaka got a hate campaign on social media directed at him for not matching Deku with Bakugo according to their mentally ill headcanon at the end of the main story. Adi Shankar's DMC and Castlevania series being considered "anime" is an affront to actual anime. Extremely poorly done live action remakes to classic anime that nobody asked for (Cowboy Bebop).
Most of what you're bringing up, including adaptations, is a Western/US issue.
 
anime hasn't been niche since at least Pokémon.
I remember coming home from school in the late 90s and early 2000s watching RTL2.

Pokémon,
Ranma ½,
Shin Chan,
Detective Conan,
Digimon,
Yugioh,
Beyblade,
One Piece,
Sailor Moon,
Dragonball,
Mega Man NT warrior,
Inuyasha...

like... those were some of the most popular shows when I was a kid.
in germany, even toddlers already watched anime. most people my age still grew up watching Heidi and Biene Maja. Hayao Miyazaki was one of the animators for Heidi btw. 😅
when I was 5 or so I remember watching Kickers (Ganbare! Kickers) on Tele 5.

so I think Anime might have gotten more popular among adults in the west. but for kids and teens it was extremely popular since at least the late 90s

I still have this album lying around somewhere
61+4WEz2KwL._UF894,1000_QL80_.jpg
 
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Ok, I'll concede on the "10 years" thing, but this illustrates my point exactly in that as things get more popular, they get worse. DBZ was one of the most popular and highest grossing IPs for a long time, and then it's no coincidence that shit like this started popping out. Now we're seeing even more (previously niche) IPs getting what I consider "too much" attention from Hollywood and Netflix and the like.
Most of what you're bringing up, including adaptations, is a Western/US issue.
Yea this is also true, but the US is one of the strongest markets, based on the graphs in the OP. So naturally the popularity growing in the west is a reason why a lot of these shitty products are getting made. And who's making them? The current creatively bankrupt western entertainment industry. I wouldn't even mind these things being made if they were actually good and faithful to the source, but in modern day western productions, they almost never are. And in all cases that I've personally seen, the live action stuff is inferior to the anime originals.
 
Yea this is also true, but the US is one of the strongest markets, based on the graphs in the OP. So naturally the popularity growing in the west is a reason why a lot of these shitty products are getting made. And who's making them? The current creatively bankrupt western entertainment industry. I wouldn't even mind these things being made if they were actually good and faithful to the source, but in modern day western productions, they almost never are. And in all cases that I've personally seen, the live action stuff is inferior to the anime originals.
Sure, but just like gaming, Japan will always bring it's own brand of creativity in their own original works. That was your original worry, and that is what I'm addressing.

You answered your own question too, the ones who are making the products you don't like are western. Thus, every other worry of yours will continue to be a Western/US issue.
 
You answered your own question too, the ones who are making the products you don't like are western. Thus, every other worry of yours will continue to be a Western/US issue.

Though again, Japan makes tons of live-action remakes themselves and most of them tend to be shitty too. So in terms of that issue, it's not even a western issue exclusively.
 
Though again, Japan makes tons of live-action remakes themselves and most of them tend to be shitty too. So in terms of that issue, it's not even a western issue exclusively.
His initial worry is about the original anime properties decaying in quality due to popularity, like the western/US gaming industry. That's what I'm addressing.
 
...paper-thin "philosophy", and simplistic solutions to complex problems. There's the occasional work that escapes these tropes, but like it happens with entertainment from every part of the world, they're few and far between.

Are you in the mood to share a few recommends? What would you consider to be a series with more substance than that, when it comes to philosophy?
 
This seems to be the correct answer. 🤷‍♂️
Nah,, I'd argue that DBZ brought a lot of attention to anime and took it closer to mainstream, thanks to Toonami. (Also fuck Toonami for always fucking with us and going through certain Arcs, just to reset them to the very beginning. FUCK YOU TOONAMI!
Evangelion, Cowboy Beebop, DBZ AND Pokemon. Put in a lot of work in the early 2000s.
Also just for notalgia reasons, DBZ Movie: Bojack Unbound for those of you who have never experience such a fine DBZ movie.
 
Are you in the mood to share a few recommends? What would you consider to be a series with more substance than that, when it comes to philosophy?
Actually I'm not, because I was never a big anime consumer anyway, and it's been a long time since I delved deep into any manga series. Last thing I watched in its entirety was Rebirth of Evangelion, and I'm still fuming about giving it any attention at all. The last episode was offensively bad.
 
Actually I'm not, because I was never a big anime consumer anyway, and it's been a long time since I delved deep into any manga series. Last thing I watched in its entirety was Rebirth of Evangelion, and I'm still fuming about giving it any attention at all. The last episode was offensively bad.
Sound like u have a case of the grump :goog_upside_down_face:
 
anime hasn't been niche since at least Pokémon.
I remember coming home from school in the late 90s and early 2000s watching RTL2.

Pokémon,
Ranma ½,
Shin Chan,
Detective Conan,
Digimon,
Yugioh,
Beyblade,
One Piece,
Sailor Moon,
Dragonball,
Mega Man NT warrior,
Inuyasha...

like... those were some of the most popular shows when I was a kid.
in germany, even toddlers already watched anime. most people my age still grew up watching Heidi and Biene Maja. Hayao Miyazaki was one of the animators for Heidi btw. 😅
when I was 5 or so I remember watching Kickers (Ganbare! Kickers) on Tele 5.

so I think Anime might have gotten more popular among adults in the west. but for kids and teens it was extremely popular since at least the late 90s

I still have this album lying around somewhere
61+4WEz2KwL._UF894,1000_QL80_.jpg

I can only speak for the UK (well, and Japan, but that's moot), but until recently (Demon Slayer?) anime has been seen as the same as children's cartoons by most people. If you liked anime, it was often seen as childish. My mum used to tell me to 'Stop watching those Chinese cartoons!'

The anime fandom haven't helped. Too many are pure distilled cringe and really are adult children.

But I have had some good chats recently about anime with mostly Gen Zers.
 
I can only speak for the UK (well, and Japan, but that's moot), but until recently (Demon Slayer?) anime has been seen as the same as children's cartoons by most people. If you liked anime, it was often seen as childish. My mum used to tell me to 'Stop watching those Chinese cartoons!'

The anime fandom haven't helped. Too many are pure distilled cringe and really are adult children.

But I have had some good chats recently about anime with mostly Gen Zers.
I agree with this take. DBZ, Toonami, Pokemon, and Adult Swim paved the way to popularity, but the real big turning point was when Demon Slayer grossed above and beyond other movies the year it came out to be the highest grossing film of it's year.

That was also when I saw serious film critics, who would normally never review anime, suddenly check it out. It was too big to avoid.
 
Actually I'm not, because I was never a big anime consumer anyway, and it's been a long time since I delved deep into any manga series. Last thing I watched in its entirety was Rebirth of Evangelion, and I'm still fuming about giving it any attention at all. The last episode was offensively bad.

I Dont Care Deal With It GIF


Pejo Pejo

I'm not a fan of the sudden popularity of anime. It's been attracting lot of tourists I noticed. I'm happy that the anime industry is slowly going back to what made them popular in the first place, which is making stuff that their own people would watch. Due to how much I found the later 2010s anime kind of bland and boring, I've been reading more manga ever since. I'm really not a fan of Hollywood trying to capitalize on anime. Look at most of the anime made by Netflix, uninspired crap
 
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Without COVID-19 Jujutsu Kaisen and Demon Slayer would not be as big as they had been. Still massive hits for Jump but not 100 Milli+ sellers.

20 years ago I was buying anime DVDs for £20 for 5 episodes. Now you can get a whole show for that. These newcomers don't know the struggle.
 
Without COVID-19 Jujutsu Kaisen and Demon Slayer would not be as big as they had been. Still massive hits for Jump but not 100 Milli+ sellers.

20 years ago I was buying anime DVDs for £20 for 5 episodes. Now you can get a whole show for that. These newcomers don't know the struggle.

In Mexico you can get all the seasons and all the Ghibli movies for 3 dollars.

:goog_cool:
 
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