Cannes Report Explains Why Anime Is Becoming One of Hollywood's Most Bankable Genres

The medium of anime has clearly had an effect not just on the country of its origin, Japan, but it has made some big steps forward in terms of finding its niche within North America. With the likes of Demon Slayer: Mugen Train and Jujutsu Kaisen 0 bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars of profit during their theatrical runs, to say nothing of the various series that are becoming exclusives for streaming services, it's not quite a surprise to see how big anime has become recently.

In this report from Parrot Analytics, it would seem that demand for anime has grown a staggering 118% over the past two years, with the pandemic seemingly helping to push the medium forward as viewers around the world searched for content during an age of restrictions and lockdowns. Of course, this can also be seen when it comes to the manga industry, which became so popular during the coronavirus pandemic years that there were numerous shortages when it came to particular volumes and the medium broke several records when it came to overall sales. With manga sales rivaling, if not surpassing, North American comic book sales, it seems a new age is approaching when it comes to all things anime

The Hollywood Reporter talked with Youtube's Joey The Anime Man to help further explain the growth in the industry in recent years:

"Over the past five to 10 years, in Japan and in the West, there's almost been this anime renaissance that has happened, where it went from being this thing you would get bullied for liking to being something all kinds of people want to talk about. It's going through this motion that gaming went through in the 1990s, where if you played games you were a nerd until suddenly everyone played games. That's why anime films are just becoming such a massive thing. It's not just a few nerds from your class who go see [the latest anime release] — now the entire class is going to go."

When it comes to the creation of new anime series and films, producer Genki Kawamura, who produced the likes of Your Name, Mirai, and Netflix's Bubble, extrapolated on how the medium's popularity is allowing for certain projects to get more budgets, helping the creative minds behind the scenes expand on what they're creating: 

"There are more and more opportunities and options for distribution, which has really increased production budgets. That means that there is more breadth to what we can express creatively – which is a really great thing."

Via The Hollywood Reporter

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