Over the last half decade, anime, a cultural juggernaut within Japan for more than half a century, has exploded in popularity around the world. A beautiful, hand-drawn form of animation encompassing a rich and diverse history and tradition, anime has become an important source of Japanese cultural influence and economic exports.
The global breakout – streaming in the pandemic
Between 2020-2023, the global anime market grew by over 38% to exceed JPY3.3 trillion (c. USD23 billion), and this growth continues to accelerate. A key driving force behind this has been the international market, which now exceeds the Japanese domestic market. It is estimated there are over 800 million fans worldwide and the sector as a whole is projected to reach USD60.1 billion by 2030.
The success and broad userbase of streamers like Netflix and Amazon helped unlock this popularity as anime shows were discovered by Western audiences and became global hits during the COVID-19 pandemic. Netflix says 50% of its users globally now watch anime. According to the Japanese government, the export value of Japan's content industry (including gaming, publishing, film, TV and anime) is bigger than its steel, petrochemicals and semiconductor sectors. The Japanese government wants to expand the value of content exports from JPY5.8 trillion in 2023 to over JPY20 trillion by 2033, with a significant portion of that growth set to come from the global expansion of anime. European markets, in particular, are driving the next wave of anime adoption, with the top ten growth countries including the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, and Finland, all of whom experienced 20-35% growth rates in anime viewership in 2024.
Gaming and anime – a transmedia cheat code?
The global anime opportunity in the coming years is huge, particularly where anime intersects with the video games industry and Western audiences. Anime is especially popular among younger generations, including Gen Z and Gen Alpha (and even some younger millennials!), the former being increasingly valuable demographics across all forms of media, particularly video games. The games industry is already littered with successful anime and anime inspired collaborations – consider the breakthrough achievements of Genshin Impact and the Honkai series from MiHoYo, the Persona series and Metaphor: ReFantazio from SEGA and Atlus, and of course the ever popular, Pokémon series. Many staples of the anime pantheon have had official game adaptions breakthrough in the West, including Dragon Ball Z and One Piece.
The popularity of anime is also evident on UGC platforms like Roblox and Fortnite, where the userbases are dominated by the anime-enamoured Gen Z and Gen Alpha. Recent analysis of the top 50 games in the official Roblox chart found that 22% had an anime theme. As recently as July 2025, a teenage Roblox UGC developer is reported to have sold their title, Blue Rock: Rivals, a fan made unofficial game paying tribute to popular anime series, for USD3 million just months after release – anime fandom was a significant part of the game's success.
Transmedia is of course one of the core business models here. Transmedia draws consumers in from all directions and affords an ever-growing number of entry points to engage with our most beloved IPs. It allows us to deepen our connections with these universes across multiple touchpoints, media and sensory experiences, encompassing reading, watching, gaming, creating, cosplay, merchandise and (perhaps most importantly) belonging to a community. The value proposition is material as the model becomes self-sustaining. In the context of anime and gaming, for example, the thinking goes that anime drives interest in games (including from non-gamers), while games bring new audiences to anime and both drive engagement across merchandising, events and other media.
Capturing the value – challenges for content owners
Despite the runaway popularity of anime globally, and in sharp contrast to gaming (the other linchpin of the Japanese content industry) Japanese content creators and owners have not historically captured most of the value from anime. Whereas around 90% of video games sales are captured by Japanese companies, the equivalent in anime is often less than 10%, according to the Japanese government. Merchandisers, digital streamers and international distributors all take their cut.
Illegal downloads and piracy are also big problems for anime – underlined by the fact Crunchyroll, the leading anime distribution platform acquired by Sony for USD1.2 billion in 2021, started life as the most popular anime piracy website. Anime has also traditionally been eye wateringly expensive to create – by some estimates a single 30-minute episode will run a 100-person studio up to two months of production time at a price tag of USD140,000. Naruto, one of the biggest anime series, ran for 220 episodes. This is a sector that is primed for the disruption already endured and being endured by music, film, gaming and many other creative industries at the hands of digital distribution and AI. Getting the strategy right in response to both of these catalysts will be critical.
A core challenge will be capturing more of the value chain, including distribution, and ensuring more transmedia network benefits flow back to the content owners. For many of the biggest Japanese players, that means some degree of vertical integration through the acquisition of distributors while also engaging strategically with thirdparty streaming platforms in key markets. Sony has acquired Crunchyroll on the distribution side and has taken increased stakes in FromSoftware and Bandai Namco in a bid to secure access to anime, gaming and other IP-rich content. It is a similar story for the other leading anime major, Toho. The 2024 acquisition of GKIDS, the Oscar nominated US anime distributor, positions Toho well in negotiations with streaming majors like Netflix, Disney, Amazon and others. Those streamers still have a role to play, however, as demonstrated by Netflix carrying the back catalogue of Studio Ghibli – a genre-defining anime house whom Toho supports with global distribution.
Mindful of the network effects of transmedia, content owners are increasingly keen to secure distribution arrangements across multiple channels to maximise visibility and engagement with their IP. For example, Toho has signalled a move away from the traditional strategy of granting global master licences which offer limited continuing revenue and control over how much anime and merchandise is sold internationally, in favour of managing specific deals with local partners via its own dedicated international team. Their recent Oscar winning success with Godzilla Minus One, made and distributed by Toho directly, seems to validate this approach of greater control.
The immediate future – an M&A drive and what to do about AI?
With international markets a key driver of growth in coming years (especially Europe and North America) and the major players in Japan looking to exercise more control over their IP in this global expansion, deal activity in coming years seems likely. Many have already publicly announced budgets to fuel global expansion across content creation, distribution, and transmedia strategies (including developing video games and merchandise based on popular anime IP). Financial investors and private equity are also increasingly interested in the global anime phenomenon as underlined by USD1.7 billion acquisition of Infocom by US based fund, Blackstone, in 2024 – the largest PE deal in Japan that year.
The proliferation of AI also presents both opportunities and challenges for the future. The use of AI in content creation has obvious potential to create efficiencies and reduce production costs. However, in many key markets including the US, EU and UK, AI generated content is either not protected by copyright or serious doubts exist over copyright subsistence, creating issues for content owners when it comes to enforcing their rights against infringers. Creators and fans may also have principled objections to the use of AI to create a genre of content that has always been famed for its beauty and artistry. These issues can create disproportionate effects for industries like animation and games where automation tools have been used to assist content creation for a long time before generative AI became mainstream. Content owners are therefore grappling with putting in place AI policies, and controlling and tracking the use of AI by contractors.
At the same time, AI also provides greater potential for third parties to create infringing materials. This is reflected in the controversial "Ghiblification" trend earlier in 2025, where social media users deployed AI image generation tools to produce and post images in "Ghibli style". This gave rise to fierce backlash in Japan, where this activity was seen to undermine a valuable and distinctive art form. The imitation of styles gives rise to complicated questions as to whether art styles as such are protected by IP rights, and whether copyright exceptions (eg for parody) may apply. This is again an issue that disproportionately affects industries like animation and games where art styles are a key creative asset. The use of creative works for AI training also remains subject to extensive disputes and litigation, and new policymaking, around the world. Anime content owners will need to make strategic decisions in the coming years over how to enforce their rights and engage with policymakers in the face of these developments.
