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Is anime cool now? It's the age-old question plaguing the minds anyone who has shown interest in Japanese animation for years. We see celebs like Megan Thee Stallion, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Hunter Schafer, and even Ariana Grande proudly showing off their anime-inspired cosplays, tattoos, and manicures online, and athletes like Zion Williamson and Demarcus Lawrence waving the flag for shows like Naruto and Dragon Ball in the locker rooms and beyond. Even Michael B. Jordan dropped an anime-inspired capsule collection with Coach in 2019.
For a few years, we have been slowly but surely witnessing anime's crossover into the international mainstream, going from a niche interest that got some bullied in school to a pivotal part of the zeitgeist that inspires trends and racks up awards. There's also an onslaught of live-action adaptations, often executed by Netflix, reimagining classics like One Piece and Cowboy Bepop — to various degrees of success — and introducing anime's stories to a new generation.
But how exactly did anime expand this far? Earlier this month, Teen Vogue made its way to Tokyo and sat down with Megan Thee Stallion, Rashmika Mandanna, Sally Amaki, as well as Crunchyroll's COO Gita Rebbapragada and president Rahul Purini to try and unpack anime's rise outside of Japan and answer the question: where do we go from here?
GROWING UP WITH ANIME
Though Japanese animation originated in the early 1900s, anime, as we know it today, did not arrive until the 1960s, with the popularization of Osamu Tezuka's oeuvre, whose most famous works include Astro Boy. It spread in the following decades, developing a large domestic audience; it reached new heights and expanded its borders outside of Japan in the '70s and the '80s with titles like Gundam, Macross, Mazinger Z, and Akira, nowadays considered cult-classics. (In Japan, anime is an umbrella term for all animation, whereas overseas, it has become a way to identify Japanese animation.)
By the time the '90s and '00s rolled around, shows like Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball Z, Pokémon, and Yu-Gi-Oh! ensured anime had become a cornerstone of pop culture for the millennial generation, mainly thanks to titles being dubbed into multiple languages and broadcast across various networks worldwide.
"Pokémon, Dragon Ball Z, Naruto [were everywhere]," recalls Sally Amaki, a Japanese-American singer and voice actress. "I feel like people watched all the anime aired on American TV in the dubbed version, not [realizing] it was anime. They just watched it as cartoons. Those major titles were really popular. But I feel like when I was a child, the minor titles that people in Japan would only know, nobody really knew at my school."
Despite growing up with more access to anime, if one liked anime outside of the mainstream or were passionate about certain shows past a certain age, there was a stigma. Enjoyers of the medium were often dubbed "geeks" or "otakus," now reclaimed and rebranded as "weebs."
Even if you attended a school where liking anime wouldn't get you mocked, it was still a niche interest. "A lot of the times in my friend group or whatever school I went to, I think I was probably the only person, at least that I knew of, who liked anime," recalls Megan Thee Stallion, who got her intro with InuYasha and managed to escape the judgment. “Nobody really had anything negative to say about [my watching anime] because they didn't even know what it was. But when I got older, I'd see people on the internet making comments like, ‘I used to get made fun of for liking anime.’”
Of course, there are some outliers, like Studio Ghibli. Since its inception, the independent studio has been in a league of its own, almost creating its own genre above the anime curb thanks to rich storytelling, brutalist themes, and breathtaking hand-drawn images. For decades, Ghibli films have been enjoyed across generations, whether one took part in other anime-watching or not.
Hayao Miyazaki's The Boy and The Heron won the 2024 Oscar for Best Animated Feature, marking the studios' and Miyakazi's second win at the famed ceremony — and only the second time a non-English-language movie has won the award. In 2003, the director received his first golden statuette for Spirited Away, which later became the highest-grossing anime film of all time. However, newcomers are shaking up the anime scene and rendering Miyazaki's records obsolete. (More on that below.)
THE ANIME OF TODAY
As previously mentioned, anime's initial explosion was domestic. As an art form, it's been consistently popular in Japan for over a century, reaching new heights with the millennium. "For Japanese people, anime is just in their life so much, nobody really sees themself as an 'otaku,'" Amaki explains. "You'll go to 7-Eleven, any convenience store, and they always have a collaboration with some sort of anime character. It's just part of their culture. I don't think anybody has gone through a day without watching one single episode of an anime. But I feel like overseas, unless you search for anime, you can't really consume it."
But people overseas are indeed looking for anime. In a 2021 report, the Association of Japanese Animations (AJA) said the international anime market was expected to overtake the domestic market in 2018, citing "Japan's aging and shrinking population and the growth of U.S. streaming platforms and overseas games that are based [on] animated works" as the catalysts.
In the report, AJA outlined that overseas consumption has been one of the most profitable markets for the anime industry since 2015. However, international anime sales still did not overtake the combined domestic market as expected until the pandemic, when it was reported that, for the first time, anime titles had been more profitable internationally than domestically.
"As the number of people staying at home became an impetus for continued growth, [the overseas market] overtook the domestic market in 2020," reads AJA's most recent Anime Industry Report, published in March 2023. "However, in 2021, the domestic market reversed the situation by a small margin." Nowadays, AJA pinpoints streaming as the primary driver of anime's growth.
Crunchyroll's COO, Gita Rebbapragada, attributes much of this international success to an increased demand for quality, at-home entertainment during the COVID-19 pandemic. "Covid was a big accelerant for many things, but certainly for anime," she says. "There was a real acceleration and we had already been seeing that it was growing quickly year over year. What we haven't seen is any sort of pullback from that, right? It started accelerating during Covid, but then it just continued to grow."
Rebbapragada also highlights how the image of the anime consumer has shifted. "Anime is becoming more popular, so you just have more different types of fans," she explains. “The image of what an anime fan was like five years ago or more, that was rooted in otaku culture, has really widened since then. I know that there are some dark animes out there right now that have become very popular, but I also think there are a lot of interesting stories and a diversity of stories that are being told as well. There's a real emergence of lots of different types [of anime]. For example, isekai is very popular.”
The backbone of anime still stems from five main categories, mirroring the editorial categories of the mangas they are based on. These categories are shōnen (the more widespread, action-led stories mainly targeting teenage boys like Naruto and One Piece), shōjo manga (targeting teenage girls and young adult women like Sailor Moon and Fruits Basket), seinen (targeting young adult men like Attack on Titan and Berserk), josei (for adult women, like NANA and Paradise Kiss), and kodomomuke (for children, like Doraemon and Pokémon.)
Despite relying on these five pillars, new subgenres have also been on the up, especially in the past decades. Isekai, which Rebbapragada mentions, refers to stories in which the main character is suddenly transported into a new world. Examples include Re:Zero, InuYasha, and That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime. Another popular genre is Yaoi, the equivalent of BL, with series like Given and, somewhat arguably, Yuri on Ice. And there's also slice of life, which focuses on the mundane aspects of characters' daily lives and includes titles like Nichijou, March Comes in Like a Lion, Komi Can't Communicate, and more recently, Bocchi the Rock!.
A new wave of anime is also ushering in stories that do not originate in mangas. A great example is Solo Leveling, produced by A-1 Pictures and directed by Shunsuke Nakashige, which was originally adapted from a South Korean web novel and is currently climbing up in popularity, especially outside of Japan, thanks to its exclusive license on Crunchyroll.
"For anime to be authentically anime, it has to have its roots in Japan and Japanese culture, or conceived and created by creators here in Japan," Crunchyroll's CEO Rahul Purini says. "That doesn't mean for us that it can't be based on stories from elsewhere in the world. I do think we will have more shows that are based on themes and stories from around the world being told through Japanese creators and the Japanese way of storytelling. I think that is the way that anime will connect with more fans globally and bring more fans together."
Rebbapragada agrees. "[Anime] is rooted in the principles of Japanese storytelling and art, and I think that is core to what fans connect with and feel is special about it. But I think the stories themselves are coming from a lot of different places."
"[There's a] shift that is starting to happen just because the demand for it is so global," Rebbapragada continues. "A lot of different stories can be made into really compelling animes and I think that just means that the appetite for consuming it will just continue to grow." Rebbapragada believes "there is a growing demand for stories from all over the world," and animes are but a piece of the puzzle alongside K-Dramas and BLs.
Regardless of its origins, there are good stories in anime, but the stigma that it's a medium for children prevails in much of the West, where animation as a whole is still perceived as a lesser-than medium. "Please raise your hand if you let your kid fill out this part of the ballot," Jimmy Kimmel infamously joked at the 2024 Oscars when it came time to announce the winner for Best Animated Feature.
"The visual storytelling that can be done in animation has a different emotional and viewing experience," says Rebbapragada. "Suzume is such a great example of that. [Animation] can actually take you into different spaces and territories and worlds in such a different way than what can be [done] in live action, and both serve an important purpose."
Animation as a whole being undervalued is not news for anyone, but anime takes it a step further by also being a foreign production. As Parasite director Bong Joon-ho once famously said, "Once you overcome the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films." This rings true for anime. However, its storylines are starting to triumph.
"I feel like a lot of people thought anime was for children. But after watching, especially Attack on Titan and a lot of gore anime as well, people were like, 'Maybe, this is for adults as well,'" Amaki says.
Indian actress Rashmika Mandanna agrees: "There's one phase in life where everyone is like, 'Oh, anime is just cartoons,' and that's wrong. The world of anime is so different, vast, and amazing. At least 70% of my friends and my family who were so alien to this [medium] have come back and now are talking to me about new shows that are coming up."
"I definitely feel like [the general public's perception of anime] has shifted," Megan Thee Stallion adds. "I feel like people are appreciating it more. Because I feel like they probably didn't know what it was, or they weren't super knowledgeable about what was really going on in these shows, so they just weren't interested. They didn't like it. But I feel like now, as an adult with your own mind and so many other cool people are talking about it, you're like, 'Well, what is the hype with anime? Let me go check it out.' And then you wind up falling in love with it because it [has] such good storylines."
"For me, the storytelling in most of the anime that I've watched is freaking brilliant," Mandanna adds, echoing the sentiment. "It's got everything in it. There's drama, there's romance, there's action, there's everything in it."
A testament to anime's growing popularity is titles like Demon Slayer and Jujutsu Kaisen, two examples of the more "gore" titles Amaki references earlier, surpassing the likes of Wandavision and the hugely popular K-drama Squid Game as some of the most-discussed TV shows on Twitter back in 2021.
The key to anime's success resides in its engaged fandom, and that growth is now also translating into its own awards. The 2024 Crunchyroll Anime Awards, held on March 2 in Tokyo, Japan, recorded 34 million votes from global fans, up from 17 million of last year's Purini shares. According to data shared by the brand, some of the most engaged countries were (in no particular order) Argentina, Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Great Britain, India, Mexico, Spain, and the United States.
Aside from more votes, the ceremony also enlarged its scale, inviting presenters from all over the world to celebrate anime's biggest night. "It's really amazing watching people from all over the world come together, and just appreciate anime, and see the love for anime," says Amaki, who served as the ceremony's host for the second consecutive year. Presenters included Megan Thee Stallion, Bong Joon-ho, Iman Vellani, and J-pop legend LiSA, among many others. Thousands of people tuned in to watch via YouTube and Twitch. However, despite the ceremony's exponential growth, one could argue it's still a niche format, especially compared to its live-action counterpart, the Emmys. Still, what matters most to advancing the medium's presence is that the work is being done.
THE KEY OF ACCESSIBILITY
Anime's recent expansion has one common denominator: streaming. "Streaming has made accessing anime easier for fans globally," Purini says. "It definitely has helped and fueled the growth of anime [but] anime is more than streaming; it is the biggest touch point for our fans, but it is more than [that]."
Fans drive the numbers, so the key is to meet them where they are, and Crunchyroll knows this. The company, which was acquired by Sony in 2020 for $1.18 billion and merged with its main competitor, Funimation, has more than tripled its number of subscribers in the past couple of years, becoming one of Sony Pictures Entertainment's biggest money makers.
According to internal data from Crunchyroll, the platform went from 10K paying subscribers in February 2009 to 13 million in January 2024. Pre-Sony acquisition, in February 2021, the streamer announced they had hit 4M subscribers.
In 2024, Crucnhyroll is officially the most extensive online collection of licensed anime, with multiple-language subs and dubs available globally and in record time. Despite the quality of the content, concerns about its outdated interface are still a big topic of discussion among fans online, which Crunchyroll acknowledges. "We're constantly looking at how to improve our service. All the fan feedback that you're seeing, we're seeing it too," Rebbapragada says. "We're acutely aware of what's being said, and I think we are committed to being the best that we can be over time. I think we want people to know we're listening, and we take their feedback very seriously."
Though Crunchyroll is leading the way when it comes to anime streaming, other streamers are also starting to ride the anime wave. This expansion into other platforms is definitely making anime more accessible and, therefore, mainstream. In 2021 alone, Netflix announced it'd be launching 40 anime titles, and the streamer's anime catalog has continued to grow until 2024, including both library content with exclusive titles like Dorohedoro and original shows like Devilman Crybaby, Delicious in Dungeon, and Japanese-Polish production Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, based on the videogame of the same name, which claimed the top prize of Anime of the Year at the 2023 Crunchyroll Anime Awards.
Netflix has even turned non-manga content like Bryan Lee O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim graphic novels and given them the anime treatment in Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, animated by Japanese studio Science Saru. Its successful live-action adaptation of Eiichirō Oda's One Piece, which the mangaka was personally involved in, initially resulted in a boost of Crunchyroll subscribers, reps told Teen Vogue, where the anime has been simulcasting since 2013. The adaptation also turned people onto the original content streaming on the website weekly.
In 2022, Disney also inked a new extended deal with Japanese publishing house Kodansha — home to mangas like Vinland Saga, Battle Angel Alita, and Attack on Titan, among others — to produce more anime originals to stream on Disney+ and also license exclusive anime titles based on manga produced by Kodansha. The revamped partnership kicked off in early 2023 with the second season of Tokyo Revengers, known as the Christmas Showdown arc. They have since added the critically acclaimed Heavenly Delusion and various Bleach titles.
Prime Video is also claiming a piece of the pie, albeit sans originals, with titles like Sailor Moon and Made In Abyss added to its catalog and the option to link accounts to Crunchyroll, HIDIVE, and RetroCrush via Prime Video Channels for a more seamless streaming experience.
While on-demand show content is on the up, theatrical releases are also pushing anime to the forefront. 2020's Demon Slayer: Mugen Train has now dethroned Spirited Away as not only the highest-grossing anime film of all time but also Japan's highest-grossing film of all time. At the time of writing, both titles are joined in the top 5 by Titanic, Frozen, and another anime film, Makoto Shinkai's Your Name.
Demon Slayer is now onto its third theatrical release, Demon Slayer: Hashira Training, distributed by Crunchyroll globally, which also topped the domestic box office and debuted at no. 2 in the U.S. "We want to bring movies to more regions and more theaters and have more reach for those movies," Purini says of the company's theatrical push. "For us, it's not whether it is a movie or a couple of episodes from a series; it is the experience. It's the experience of watching the show on a big screen with their friends and family. I think that's what differentiates theatrical."
Whether it's a theater or at home, when it comes to anime, accessibility goes beyond platforms. Word of mouth is a big propeller for anime's popularity, which thrives in community building. “What I love the most is definitely how it brings people together," says Amaki. "The only friends I have in America are basically internet friends. I've made friends through Instagram, Tumblr, and Facebook, the anime groups. And I have friends from literally all over the world because of anime.”
However, while fandom spaces are becoming more varied as anime expands its wings beyond Japan, there is still work to be done to make them more accepting and safe for all. "I love to see when all the girls do the cosplays. I love to see girls dressed up as male characters. I love to see it when we dress up as female characters. I just love the makeup, the hair, and the outfits. I just like it when we get to put our own spin on our favorite characters," says Megan Thee Stallion about her favorite part of anime fandoms. "[But] my least favorite part of the fandom would be the guys who like to try to gatekeep anime, like it's just specific to your one little group of friends?"
Historically, anime fandom spaces, especially for the ever-so-popular shōnen titles, have been dominated by white cishet men, which can deter newcomers from tapping into anime past perhaps casual viewing. "When I first started making it known that I liked anime, guys didn't believe it because I guess girls are just bad b*tches who can't like anime, and that's really stupid," Megan Thee Stallion continues. “But, yeah, the guys didn't want to believe it. They were like, I guess she's just too hot to like something so hot. I was like, why wouldn't you believe that I like good content? What is it not to like? Why do you think this is only exclusive to you?”
THE FUTURE OF ANIME
Though there's still work to be done, with improved fandom spaces and increasing accessibility, anime has landed on the winning formula for success both in and outside its home country. "Anime is already mainstream. I don't think anime is niche," says Purini, who believes we are "past the stage of stigma." He continues: "There are still going to be people that don't know what anime is and don't understand anime but I think anime is mainstream. There is a huge audience for anime globally."
According to Rebbapragada, Crunchyroll's internal research shows that by the end of 2025, there will be 800 million people watching anime outside of Japan and China. "So, Japan and China are included, and it's obviously well over 800 million. More and more fans are being created every day," she says. Purini adds that the number is projected to grow to a billion soon.
However, the normal reaction is to fear a plateau after such expansion, primarily since AJA reports that "the global streaming market may have reached its peak." Still, Purini remains faithful to the fact that more content will continue to escalate anime's presence overseas. “I have confidence that the creators in Japan are going to be coming out with some amazing shows. So even though some shows [like Jujutsu Kaisen and Demon Slayer] might end, there will be new amazing shows coming that'll delight and continue to excite fans. I'm not worried about not having shows that fans are going to be excited about.”
