The success that anime has achieved in the West in recent years is overwhelming. Since the boom of the '90s, the Japanese animation industry has reached the whole world with extraordinary results, also thanks to the proliferation of streaming services. But how popular are anime in Japan?
Few entertainment industries can boast the surge in demand for anime seen over the past few years, and consequently, so can it exponential sales growth. From 2012 to 2021, the industry experienced a positive revenue explosion from 0.24 trillion yen to up to 1.6 billion euros 1.31 trillion yen, about 9.25 billion euros. However, a large part of these results can be attributed to the medium's extraordinary reception in countries outside of Japan.
According to the latest data shared by Unseen Japan, drawn from research conducted by companies such as Famitsu Intelligent Strategic Marketing, it seems that less than 35% of the Japanese population is interested in watching anime. For Kadokawa Game Linkage, the situation has calmed down relatively in 2020 with a 37% of Japanese citizens watch animated series produced in their country.
In addition, in October 2019, Nippon Research Center organized a survey to understand how many people read manga and watch anime, identifying 33% of consumers of these products, most of whom fell in the 5-19 age group. Such numbers help to have one fuller account of the popularity the medium has achieved in Japancertainly high, but lower than what is commonly perceived in the West.
What do you think of this data? Tell us in the comments. Before we say goodbye, let's remember that anime style meat is available in Japan and we leave you the 20 most watched animes in Japan in 2022.
