Japan Aims to Increase Anime's Overseas Market By More Than Triple To 6 Trillion Yen (37 Billion USD) by 2033

What's the deal with mangaka? Do they get residuals/royalties? Who owns the IP? Is it like Marvel and DC where basically everything belongs to the publisher? If they make another Tomie movie, do the studio deal with Ito's agents or the publisher? One Piece is going on forever and sold millions. Is the writer/artist a multimillionaire like the Twilight writer? With creative control? Or is he still salaried, with bonuses?

There is a problem where the mangaka draws most of the manga by himself. Until recently it made me realize this is rapidly deterioration their health not just mentally but physically

They want a marketable IP to be the face of the company HBO MAX has Harry Potter and DC Paramount has Star Trek and Nickelodeon Disney+ has A LOT of stuff Aside from some questionable designs on the women, One Piece is a great family friendly brand

Well, One Piece prints money so I'm not surprised. What is surprising is that they didn't butcher the live action version like they did with other beloved IPs like the Witcher (or at least they didn't butcher it YET).

They don't have the *full* anime, tho, at least in the US. They have up to episode 822 and then it skips to Egghead with episode 1089.

Really came a long way from the 4kids dub.

Growing up with adult swim it wasn't really too shocking of a trajectory. We had people wearing Naruto headbands and Naruto running. Not to mention dbz, games and all. I mean we were watching OPM in dorm rooms in 2015. Now we just need terrible Chinese webnovels main stream.

I think COVID lockdowns helped.

What was the movie?

Japan went from the most horrificly-evil empires in human history to a global monolith of modern human art culture across all forms of media. If anything, we should drop another one so they course-correct from the current insane administration that defended WW2 invasions and war crimes as "self-defense." Maybe we will get even better art from it. We can't blame the nukes entirely due to lack of sample size, but the results do not go against the idea of dropping nukes.

I think your right both about cherrypicking the best and how there are more of what we would consider chaff series. A big chunk of anime has always besn aimed at a yonger audience, so staring younger characters makes sense for them. With more and more series being made it's a lot harder to filter out. I do wish we got more gritty series though (open to recommendations), since the last new anime I liked was probably Edgerunners. It seems the French have been making some good animation with Arcane and especially Mar Express.

Everything seems like YA lit because you're watching adaptations of YA (shonen/shoujo) comics. Watch seinen/josei anime if you want adult stories.

I think it's more complicated than you're saying. US animation has been dominated by children's programming for years, although there were important exceptions like *The Simpsons* (which at least at first was more raunchy and/or adult), MTV stuff like Beavis and Butthead, and the "one" known exception to the "cartoons are for kids" being *South Park.* While there were adventure cartoons like *Samurai Jack,* as far as most people were concerned cartoons were either for children or "adults". As for comicbooks, the US actually has a rich culture of adventure stories (*the Carl Barks Donald Duck books are still well regarded in Europe*), but a lot of the non-superhero stuff was destroyed by the Comics Code effectively banning crime and horror comics, holding back the market for decades as Europe and Asia moved ahead with their Bande dessinée and manga. While the US eventually rebooted as Spider-Man and co crushed the Comics Code, it took time for stuff like *Bone* to break into the mainstream- by which point Disney was essentially out of the comic mainstream and it is STILL mostly seen as a superhero thing. Superheros are still popular of course, but if you're not into stuff like *Invincible* or *Spider-Man* (*and you ignore the indie scene, which most people do*), it's slim pickings. I see videogames as being more a taste thing, with some US works like *Fortnite,* *Grand Theft Auto,* and many others still retaining a great deal of control on the world psyche while Japan's stranglehold on the industry being a distant memory (*and Europe is still quite big*). So while way manga outsells US superhero comics *even in the US*, I'd hardly call the US gone in all media. Though yeah, even with *Zootopia 2* and *K-Pop Demon Hunters* its animated/comic media has DEFINITELY fallen behind.

Dragon Ball is actually coming back airing again this year and next year so funny timing

Don't forget Xers, who grew up with those animes on the public TV broadcast (at least in Spain).

The funny thing is that a lot of the modern shonen like My Hero Academia (there’s an extra episode coming out in 3 weeks but both the manga and anime are over), Jujutsu Kaisen, Dr. Stone, and Fire Force are all either ending or will end soon

I'm a millennial too but it still does feel a little different from when we were in high school. You had a couple that were "ok" to watch like DBZ but if you were any more invested then you were the weird kid. I avoided anime like the plague when I was in high school because of it. Today theres a shitload of anime that are super mainstream and it all feels way more acceptable to watch than when I was younger. I stopped giving a shit what other people thought of anime once I hit my 20s because Attack on Titan looked cool but it does feel like the younger kids are a lot more accepting in general than we were.

I remember Toonami held a marathon of "Majin Buu" dedicated episodes during the early to mid-2000s period. As a kid, I used to root for Majin Buu (mainly in his fat form).

I think there's arguably room to grow in terms of appetite. Those groups watch the animes, but there's not regular releases in theaters/on the more mainstream streaming services. Also demographic expansion. As someone not into anime, I feel like it's still largely a secondary thought for the streamers outside of Crunchyroll. Have more consistent/regular releases through more distribution platforms so the already anime fans have more places to spend money on it, as well as expanding to demographics who may not be into it yet (and/or expand your reach within the demos already comfortable with anime). Something like K-Pop Demon Hunters, while not strictly 'anime' as I understand it, does show there is perhaps still an underserved market for eastern-inspired fiction that can be met with 'more anime'.

Yuri on Ice *is* yaoi on ice, much to the annoyance of yuri fans.

It’s unfortunate that Japanese work culture is that way, but in no way is it insurmountable.

> Edit: and the article kinda confirms it, it focuses on better anime with better distribution, **no mention of quantity** From the article: "Japan's goal for the anime industry is to roughly triple the overseas market in less than 10 years, with a 6 trillion yen (about US$37 billion) goal for 2033. The overseas market for anime in 2022 was 1.4592 trillion yen (about US$10.25 billion in December 2023), and had reached 1.7222 trillion yen (about US$10.94 billion in January 2025) in 2023, and reached 2.1702 trillion yen (about US$14.1 billion in October 2025) in 2024." "The government's basic strategy for the anime industry is to increase the production of "blockbuster" works and to raise the performance-based pay rate of workers. It aims to allocate its budget to support three elements: **the production of releases at a large scale**, the expansion of distribution platforms, and the buildup of development platforms.

This idea that westerners are going to ruin anime is hilarious. The recent explosive growth of the medium overseas is driven almost entirely by a small handful of series breaking into the mainstream, and those are almost all battle shonens anyway. For every JJK there's like 20 shows nobody cares about. Also it's not like Japan is immune to creative bankruptcy given the glut of copy and paste "I Was A Middle Aged Plumber But Now In A New Life I am The Teen Piss Wizard" isekai shows every season.

This is very true. I’m still kinda worried they’re going to compromise on their unique cultural perspectives for the Anglosphere. We do tend to absorb all cultures into ourselves and destroy them in the process.

As opposed to other media? Really insightful comment.

> There is this pervasive belief that more mainstream == good. Which is understandable for film and TV fans because Hollywood is the most mainstream thing on the planet. Sadly it's like the rest of the entertainment industry - slop sells because people want simple, predictable plots, they don't want to think critically and analyse. This is the majority of the human race in a nutshell and they are the ones that studios target to make their money. There are of course some really great anime out there, shows (and movies) that engage your brain, your senses, and make you think.

Right, because when they put in THEIR perspective, about how "the real world" is a cold and hostile place for some people, so we prefer to hide in a digital world... and how "anybody you know can become an agent of the system" and fight against you for breaking the rules... That was relatable to geeks. It was relatable to LGBT people. It was relatable to autistic people. It was relatable to racial minorities, and people in interracial relationships. It brought a lot of people together and it's a big reason why it's still relevant and we're still talking about it together today.

yeah I bet the majority of anime is diverse and inclusive but I am the weirdo watching the anime that is racist, misogynistic and honophobic. sorry