New Report Reveals Anime Industry's Record-Breaking Income

If you feel like anime is on the rise these days, you are not alone. The medium has never been easier to follow thanks to streaming services like Netflix, and Japan is reaping the benefits through some serious bank.

Recently, Teikoku Databank published an in-depth report concerning the state of the anime industry. The piece breaks down how much the production industry made in the 2017 fiscal year, and the numbers are staggering.

As reported by Anime News Network, the production side of anime brought in a cool 203.721 billion yen in the last fiscal year. In USD, that number translates to a stellar $1.8 billion with the 2017 income rising nearly 40% from the previous year. And, when it comes to profit, that banked a nearly 55% increase from 2016.

According to Teikoku, the data its report collects come from 255 production companies who submitted their data in July 2018. The vast majority of those firms are located in Tokyo, and more than half were founded after 2000.

The report continues to detail other milestones for the production industry, and one is a big victory for studios. Teikoku's report shows that the average income per studio hit 800 million yen for the first time in seven years. The total is far from the 2007 peak of 1.175 billion yen, but this upward growth shows production is now getting more income back from its investments than in previous years. Still, some studios who participated in this report confirmed their incomes were less than 100 million yen due to their small size.

Of course, this isn't the only report available detailing the growth of anime in recent years. Earlier this spring, a report was released in Japan detailing the insane boom anime has experienced in international markets. In 2017, nearly every country in the world had licensed at least one anime title compared to the 40 total countries listed back in 2015. Services like Crunchyroll have helped bring legal anime streams to fans worldwide, and the medium's diversity has helped broaden its appeal beyond shojo and shonen lovers.

For fans, both of these reports show anime is moving in the right directly fiscally, but there is plenty of room for improvement. As anime deals with its notorious piracy concerns, animators in Japan are slammed by slashed pay and egregious work weeks. So, if you want to help out the artists responsible for making your favorite anime, it's time you started saving up to buy Blu-rays from your favorite vetted licensor.

Are you surprised by these big numbers? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @MeganPetersCB to talk all things comics and anime!