How anime took over the world

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Back in 2018, Shigeru Ishiba, then a backbencher but now prime minister of Japan, strode out for an event in his native Tottori wearing puffball pantaloons, a flowing purple cape and a hooded pink bodysuit.

This, in a world where influence is everything, is how to project global power. The question, as Japanese animation plants an ever greater footprint in the world’s entertainment mainstream, is how to protect it.

Pictures of Ishiba’s unabashed outfit choice from six years ago have resurfaced since his sudden ascent to prime minister last month. His historic sartorial decision was, inevitably, mocked by some, but delighted a great many more in Japan and beyond who immediately knew what he was dressed as. 

Ishiba is a serious politician, and his decision to cosplay as Majin Buu — arch villain of the extraordinarily successful Dragon Ball series — is only weird if you consider his fandom to be niche, which it wasn’t really in 2018 and absolutely is not now. There are currently an estimated 800mn fans of Japanese animation — known as anime — around the world, and key figures in the industry see those numbers rising towards a billion fairly soon. If achieved, that would be roughly equivalent to the global fan base of tennis.

As things stand, Japan’s anime industry looks on track for further global conquest. In its most recent report on market trends, the Association of Japanese Animations found that it had passed a critical inflection point. After years of growing ever more hungry for content, the overseas market for Japanese anime is now almost the same size as the domestic one and growing more rapidly. From now on, whether they like it or not, the output of Japanese anime studios will primarily be consumed outside Japan. 

A lot of the global anime evangelism, at this point, is being done by Crunchyroll, the streaming service that became a subsidiary of Sony in 2021 and distributes over 1,400 anime titles to more than 200 countries and regions. Sony expects Crunchyroll to be the primary driver of growth in its film and TV division over the next few years, but a great deal of Japanese anime is also reaching the outside world through Netflix and other streamers.

Unlike some other forms of entertainment, whose popularity expanded strongly during the pandemic but waned afterwards, anime consumption has continued growing past 2022. In 2023, the combined sales of Japan’s anime production companies surged almost 23 per cent from a year earlier to hit an all time record and, according to research group Teikoku Databank, are on course to break that again in 2024. Analysts at Jefferies cite industry projections that the global anime market will almost double from $31.2bn in 2023 to $60bn by 2030 because what was once a largely Japanese genre has comprehensively shifted into the mainstream culture of the US and Europe.

This week, another important moment is due. After a six-year hiatus, a new Dragon Ball TV series will air. Fans, including, we must assume, the Japanese prime minister, are ecstatic. Crucially, this title will hit the international distribution channels of Crunchyroll and Netflix within a day or so of being broadcast for the first time on Japanese terrestrial TV. This is the first time that there has, in effect, been a worldwide release for a show of this calibre. 

The significance is huge, says Pelham Smithers, an analyst who has long followed the industry. Only a few years ago, Japanese studios and distributors would wait for any given anime to notch a clear domestic success before pushing it out to the rest of the world. That no longer matters. The global fan base is now so large that most output can be considered worldwide content. 

Japan knows that this is big. In a report published in June the government gave figures on the value of exports by its content industry — a grouping that included anime, games, films and comics. In 2022, those exports were about $30bn. Pointedly, the report juxtaposed this with the $34bn exports of the steel industry and $38bn of its semiconductor sector.

The key to keeping this momentum going, suspect many in the anime industry, will be to carefully ignore the dynamic of worldwide success, and continue to produce as if only for the home fans. The appeal of anime, for the outside world, lies not just in the intriguing Japaneseness of the content but in the invitation to participate in something that seems thrillingly unswayed by its massive appeal. Anime draws its power from the fact that 800mn fans, including future prime ministers in purple capes, enjoy it as if part of a niche interest group.

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