Is China Taking Over the Anime Industry? Definitions and Data

Anime’s Relationship to National Cultural Power

Historically, cultural policy was predominantly a domestic matter. In the context of international politics, governments have typically used cultural policy as a tool for public diplomacy, and occasionally colonization. New communication technologies like the internet have significantly expanded the reach of national cultural industries, transforming them into economically powerful industries in their own right. Using Japanese anime as a case study, this research paper argues that the reduction of barriers to the globalization of these once-national cultural industries — and their corresponding increase in potential economic value — has altered the nature of cultural industries and their relationship to national cultural power, also described as national “soft power” by international relations theorists.[1]

In recent years, increased Chinese investment in Japanese anime and related creative industries has raised questions about the permanence of branding and the ways in which financial flows may shift audience perceptions of the national associations of globalized cultural products. However, much of the discourse over the internationalization of the Japanese animation industry relies on incomplete or imperfect data. This analysis explores the available quantitative data and attempts to draw some preliminary conclusions about the state of the overseas Japanese anime market, while also identifying areas in which quantitative data is lacking.

China’s Growing Role in Anime Consumption and Production

Anime industry observers had mixed reactions when producer and longtime industry veteran Masao Maruyama predicted in a recent interview that “Japan will be overtaken in no time” by China in the anime industry given the latter’s vast capital resources.[2] The most comprehensive analyses of the Chinese animation industry estimate that it earned 24.5 billion yuan (CNY), equivalent to $3.84 billion U.S. dollars (USD), domestically in 2021 (iResearch 2021, 10), comparable to the Japanese animation industry’s 371.3 billion yen (JPY), or $3.22 billion USD, in domestic revenue for the same year. But since Maruyama was referring to the soft power value of anime abroad, exports are essential to this calculation. While exports comprise a limited portion of the Chinese animation industry’s revenues, the overseas market formed nearly half of the wider Japanese animation industry’s total revenue in 2021.

On the other hand, by stepping out of the narrow definition of animation and into anime-adjacent media, such as mobile gaming, China’s growing international presence becomes much more obvious. For example, the Chinese-made mobile game Genshin Impact broke the record for highest revenue in a game’s first year of release.[3] Released in 2020, over a third of Genshin’s lifetime revenues have come from China, demonstrating both the Chinese domestic market’s influence and the overseas reach of the latest releases from Chinese developers like miHoYo and Yostar. In contrast, the second highest-grossing Japanese mobile game for the first half of 2023, Uma Musume Pretty Derby, is still not available in the West despite being released over two years ago. It is China’s recent success in anime mobile gaming, not anything regarding animation specifically, that prompted Maruyama’s comment.

But for all of Maruyama’s talk, China’s success in promoting anime mobile games overseas has not translated to its animation so far. The highest grossing Chinese animated movie in history, “Ne Zha” (2019), earned over $737 million of its $742 million USD total box office revenues, or over 99%, domestically. In contrast, the highest grossing Japanese film in history (animated or live-action), the 2021 anime movie “Demon Slayer: Mugen Train,” earned $507 million USD, with around $121 million (24%) coming from overseas. This is lower than most other recent Japanese anime box office hits but only because the movie was banned from theatrical release in China. On the other hand, “Suzume” (2022), which did release in China, earned more money there than it did in Japan, becoming the fourth-highest grossing Japanese film in history. “Ne Zha” managed to earn more than all these Japanese anime movies, proving that Chinese audiences can outspend the rest of the world’s anime fans when they come together. The reason this does not happen more often is that many of them are too busy watching Japanese imports.

Consequently, we are left with the question: Is China taking over the anime industry? In this paper, we will attempt to answer this question, though doing so is difficult due to a lack of data. It is critical to remember that Maruyama is a veteran of the animation industry. Even if he is talking about mobile games, his focus is ultimately still animation. As a producer, Maruyama understands intimately the role that large media conglomerates like publishers, record labels, and game developers, play in the production of anime. These companies fund most of the anime, and previous literature has already documented how their relationship with animation studios has played a critical role in developing the modern anime industry (Mihara 2009; Dujarric and Hagiu 2009; Steinberg 2012, 2015; Kikka 2017; Kaczorowski 2018; Lamarre 2018; Daliot-Bul and Otmazgin 2019). However, this does not translate into quantifiable, comparable data.

An increasing amount of qualitative evidence suggests that China’s recent success in mobile gaming will have major implications for the broader anime media industry in the future, but without better data, it is hard to infer much beyond that. Anime is just one of many “transnational cultural fandoms” that are emerging as a result of new digital technologies and increasing globalization (Lee 2014). Unlike other digital industries such as e-commerce or cryptocurrency, the economic value of digital content industries is subjective as well as intangible. The value of a franchise’s intellectual property (IP) varies based on popularity as well as monetizability. 

Japanese anime is an ideal case study for the globalization of digital content. For historical reasons, which we will explore further in an upcoming paper, the globalization of the Japanese animation industry occurred early relative to many other cultural industries. We argue that the challenges faced by the modern transnational anime industry based in Japan offer a glimpse into the future of other globalized fandoms like K-pop and Bollywood. 

As a result of outdated data collection methods ill-equipped for the digital economy, especially digital creative industries, many questions about the size and reach of digital content industries such as Japanese anime remain unanswered. This uncertainty poses serious challenges for politicians wanting to leverage their country’s cultural soft power for public diplomacy. How do a country’s cultural industries become global in the digital age, and how can officials leverage the popularity of their nation’s digital cultural output? 

Defining and Measuring Anime: A Transmedia Industry

As a labor-intensive industry, the costs of producing animation are high. Furthermore, as a creative industry, animation is a fundamentally risky business; only around 1 out of every 10 anime films or television shows is profitable (Dujarric and Hagiu 2009; Kikka 2017). For this reason, most anime works are now produced through the “production committee system,” in which a number of companies contribute to the cost of production. Because a well-received anime film or show can promote other adaptations in the franchise and also stimulate demand for future adaptations, multiple stakeholders have an incentive for an adaptation’s success. These companies include advertising agencies, the broadcaster, publishers, game developers, toy manufacturers, and movie distributors, as well as the production studio itself (Dujarric and Hagiu 2009).

In other words, because much of an anime adaptation’s economic value goes to other industries, companies in these industries spread the costs (and the profits) indirectly through the production committee system. It is for this reason that Chinese mobile games like Genshin Impact or Honkai Star Rail, which do not have anime adaptations (yet), must be included in the discussion. While Genshin does not currently have an anime adaptation, one is in the works.[4] The adaptation will be produced by the Japanese studio Ufotable, known for works like “Demon Slayer” and “Fate/Zero,” but HoYoverse, the original Chinese publisher, is the impetus behind the project and the primary source of funding.

When combining the three largest content-related sources of revenue — animation, comics, and gaming — with indirect sources of revenue — primarily profits from merchandising but also music sales and revenue from live events — the estimated value of the domestic Japanese anime industries in 2021 was 3,180.2 billion JPY or $27.55 billion USD (Table 1). The domestic revenue of Chinese anime industries in the same year was 98.2 billion CNY or $15.40 billion USD (Table 2). 

 

Table 1 — Domestic Revenue of Japanese Anime and Related Industries, 2021

 

Table 2 — Domestic Revenue of Chinese Anime and Related Industries, 2021

 

The international market for both domestic industries is considerably harder to estimate, and it is the main focus of the rest of this research paper. Publicly available data is scarce, with virtually all of it coming from private actors. Much of it is collected for corporate use, meaning it is locked behind paywalls for market research or found via data collection tools that cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars to use. 

From what is publicly available, we can broadly infer the following: While Japanese animation is increasingly expanding its international consumer base, with nearly half of its revenue originating overseas in 2021, Japanese mobile games still struggle to attract foreign players and revenue. In contrast, Chinese mobile games have experienced great success in expanding internationally in recent years, while its domestic animation industry is still largely domestic. Finally, although both the Japanese and Chinese comics industries have experienced some success expanding abroad, both are far outpaced by the Korean webcomic industry.

1. Gaming Industry

Estimates of the total value of the mobile gaming industry vary somewhat between sources. The Famitsu Mobile Game White Paper estimated that mobile gaming earned 8.91 trillion JPY, or $68.1 billion USD, in 2022 (Table 3), while SensorTower estimates mobile gaming’s global revenues for the year at $78.7 billion USD, or a decline of around 9.4% from 2021. Because SensorTower’s annual reports are published in English and use USD, their figures appear to be used as references in most English-language market research reports. However, Famitsu has more specific breakdowns of mobile gaming revenues by country.[5]

 

Table 3 — Total Size of Mobile Game Market by Country, 2022

 

When it comes to measuring the size of anime games markets, data is considerably less reliable. Only one major source of estimates on the size of the global anime mobile game market is available: Data.ai’s “State of Anime Gaming” report released in 2022. According to these figures, the global anime market in 2021 was valued at $16.97 billion (Table 4). Furthermore, Data.ai’s report includes a number of national markets, although it is less exhaustive than Famitsu’s report.

 

Table 4 — Total Size of Anime Mobile Game Market by Country, 2022

 

The same report estimated that anime mobile games comprised roughly 20%, or one-fifth, of total mobile game revenues. From the report’s national market breakdowns, it is clear that this does not apply evenly across national markets. However, previous literature has made note of anime’s popularity in East and Southeast Asia. Apart from the absence of any Southeast Asian countries on this chart, there is also the fact that the United States and United Kingdom are the only Western countries in the list. Our upcoming research suggests that this is likely an anomaly in the European market because of the U.K.’s shared language with the United States.

When we examine Data.ai’s chart of estimated downloads of anime mobile games, a number of other interesting results appear in the data (Table 5).

 

Table 5 — Number of Anime Mobile Game Downloads by Country, 2022

 

While the markets beyond the seven highlighted in Data.ai’s report accounted for less than 10% of total global revenue, they were responsible for nearly half of the total downloads. This suggests a large number of countries where anime is popular but not profitable, likely due to the global income disparities between developed and developing nations.

Once the rate of growth in downloads between 2018 and 2021 is tracked, recent trends in anime mobile gaming become clearer (Table 6).

 

Table 6 — Annual Anime Mobile Game Downloads, 2018 to 2021

 

Although the increase in popularity of anime mobile games outside East Asia is largely correlated with the COVID-19 pandemic — during which there was also a surge in other forms of anime media, such as animation itself and manga — the upward trend was already evident prior to the pandemic.

In order to assess the popularity of anime mobile games beyond the limited markets covered in Data.ai’s report, we decided to use data from the mobile app tracking website AppMagic, which allowed us to measure the userbase of a select number of the most popular anime mobile games. This approach was necessary to accurately gauge a given mobile game’s popularity, particularly in terms of total downloads. Third-party tracking services and market research companies try to exclude repeat downloads from the same user and other such data distortions. For example, sometimes users delete and reinstall a game without losing their account by using a recovery key, and in these instances, third-party tracking services would only count this as one download. In contrast, mobile game publishers are incentivized to inflate their figures for publicity reasons, and it appears they often do not take into account such data distortions. For instance, the claimed download figures given by publishers in press releases are often twice or even three times the figures provided by third parties like AppMagic.[6]

Because AppMagic’s total dollar value and number of downloads are behind a paywall, only mobile games popular enough to receive coverage in digital news outlets — and thus have these figures revealed in publicly available news reports — could be chosen. The majority of these total figures are sourced through SensorTower, one of the most prominent digital media market analysis firms, especially for mobile gaming. In several cases, SensorTower sourced its figures from AppMagic (behind the paywall), indicating the cross-usability of the data.

First, we will consider four popular games: Fate/Grand Order (Table 7), Dragon Ball Z: Dokkan Battle (Table 8), Fire Emblem Heroes (Table 9), and Blue Archive (Table 10). These games are all major franchises with a global fanbase, providing a glimpse into the breadth and depth of international fanbases. Japan is the largest market for all of the anime mobile games in our sample that were not from China. Notably, this includes Blue Archive, which is a Korean game.

 

Table 7 — Lifetime Revenue and Downloads, Fate/Grand Order (Japan, 2015)

 

Table 8 — Lifetime Revenue and Downloads, Dragon Ball Z: Dokkan Battle (Japan, 2015)

 

Table 9 — Lifetime Revenue and Downloads, Fire Emblem Heroes (Japan, 2017)

 

Table 10 — Lifetime Revenue and Downloads, Blue Archive (South Korea, 2021)

 

The selected games show a significant and persistent divergence between the top 10 countries for revenue and downloads. A number of countries that regularly appear in the top downloads chart do not appear among the top-ranking nations for revenue, including Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines. Another surprising observation was that for two of the Japanese games in this sample — Dragon Ball Z: Dokkan Battle and Fire Emblem Heroes — the country with the most downloads was the United States.

On a number of games, Japan continues to dominate. This can be in part attributed to the intentional prioritizing of the Japanese market by developers, in some cases even by non-Japanese developers. Blue Archive is one of the most extreme examples. Despite being developed by Nexon, a Korean company, the game was first released in Japan in February 2021 before being released elsewhere — including Korea, where it was released nine months later in November.

Next, we consider four Chinese games: Honkai Impact 3rd (Table 11), Azur Lane (Table 12), Genshin Impact (Table 13), and Honkai Star Rail (Table 14). Earlier Chinese games, such as miHoYo’s Honkai Impact 3rd (2016) and Yostar’s Azur Lane (2017), tended to follow Japanese practice in releasing nationally 
or regionally before globally. More recent releases, such as miHoYo’s Genshin Impact (2020) and Honkai Star Rail (2023), have opted for worldwide releases instead. The breakdown by revenue and downloads for each of these four Chinese games is provided in Tables 11 to 14.

 

Table 11 — Lifetime Revenue and Downloads, Honkai Impact 3rd (China, 2016)

 

Table 12 — Lifetime Revenue and Downloads, Azur Lane (China, 2017)

 

Table 13 — Lifetime Revenue and Downloads, Genshin Impact (China, 2020)

 

Table 14 — Lifetime Revenue and Downloads, Honkai Star Rail (China, 2023)

 

As with the sample of non-Chinese games, there is a major divergence between the countries with the most downloads and the ones that provide the most revenue. The range of countries that appear in the top downloads list appears to be more diverse, as both Russia and Poland — which do not appear in the sample of Japanese and Korean games — do appear here. 

Furthermore, we see a shift in the sources of revenue for Chinese games over time. The earliest game on the list, Honkai Impact 3rd, has by far the highest proportion of revenue from China, resembling the unipolar Japanese dominance in many Japanese games. By the release of Azur Lane in 2017, the domestic dominance has transformed into a duopoly; together, China and Japan make up over 90% of its profits. Azur Lane, being one of the few Chinese games to have received a Japanese anime adaptation, may contribute to this. The duopoly’s dominance lessens considerably with the two latest releases, with China and Japan together making up approximately 59% of Genshin Impact’s and 64% of Honkai Star Rail’s revenues. This is a stark contrast to games like Blue Archive and Fate/Grand Order, where Japan alone contributes 75% and 80% of total revenue, respectively.

Overall, the data from our selection of games suggests a rapid increase in share of other countries downloading them between 2018 and 2021. Total revenues are increasingly derived from a diverse mix of countries in the newer anime gaming markets of Latin America, Europe, and Southeast Asia. The increased internationalization of the anime mobile game market is a new and powerful trend. However, the selection of games is biased toward those that have actively pursued internationalization. Currently, many of the most popular anime mobile games, such as Uma Musume Pretty Derby, are not available outside of Japan as of October 2023. The few foreign players of these games, who use workarounds to download them, are counted as Japanese on the official charts.

2. Animation Industry

The Association of Japanese Animations (AJA), the official industry group for the Japanese animation industry, provides the most detailed breakdown of its members’ revenue sources (Table 15).

 

Table 15 — 2021 Revenue of Japanese Animation Industry by Source

 

Domestic revenues are divided into eight separate categories, while overseas revenues form a catch-all ninth category. In 2021, overseas revenues made up 47.90% of the Japanese animation industry’s total revenues, a drastically higher proportion compared to 2012, when overseas revenues amounted to only 240.8 billion yen or $2.75 billion USD and 17.97% of the industry’s total revenues, the lowest figure on record in both yen and percentagewise.[7] Despite this dramatic rise, the industry has few means of collecting data on the source of these overseas revenues. The licensing and distribution of anime overseas is largely done by local distributors and is not information that the AJA has access to. Certain statements on the overseas market, both in the AJA’s reports as well as in external reports on the industry, suggest that the breakdown of overseas revenues is highly divergent from the breakdown for domestic revenue, at least in the categories directly related to animation (domestic broadcast, domestic theatrical, videogram, and online distribution).

The most comprehensive data on exports of Japanese animation to the United States come from the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO), a quasi-governmental organization that researches foreign markets for Japanese industries. Their most recent report on the U.S. “content export market” for anime from 2017 provided the data for Table 16 on animation in the United States.

 

Table 16 — Japanese Animation Exports to the United States by Medium, 2005 to 2016 (Millions of USD)

 

The AJA’s records for 2016 show that the Japanese animation industry made an estimated 767.7 billion yen, or about $6,509 million USD using 2016 exchange rates, from overseas markets that year. Merchandising likely makes up a large portion of the overseas market for the Japanese animation industry, as it does domestically. Since this is not counted in the JETRO table, the true market for animation in the United States is likely much larger.

Data after 2016 is difficult to find. This may be partly because larger streaming services with wider global reach, like Netflix and Amazon Prime, began entering the anime distribution business during this period. Their broad content offerings, which extend beyond anime, may make it more difficult to segment overseas streaming revenues by country and genre.

One exception to this lack of data is theatrical releases. International box office data is relatively easy to track, and the figures since 2016 show a clear trend toward growth in the U.S. box office for Japanese anime film releases (Table 17).

 

Table 17 — Revenue From Japanese Anime Films in US Box Office by Year (Millions of USD)

 

The limited data from the JETRO figures suggests that theatrical movie releases may lag a few years behind overall trends. In other words, a growing market for anime may result in more theatrical releases and thus greater revenues. This suggests that box office releases may serve as a rough proxy for the popularity of Japanese animation.

When comparing international markets for selected films, it is clear that China is an influential market for theatrical anime releases (Table 18). The same regional bias seen in the gaming analysis appears here, with East Asian markets serving as the most reliable markets after Japan. Western markets formed the lowest proportion of global revenues for “Your Name,” the earliest film in this selection. This may be an indication of the increasing global popularity of anime in the West in more recent years, although this is admittedly somewhat speculative.

 

Table 18 — Box Office Profits for Selected Films by Country (Millions of USD)

 

Perhaps most notable are the two movies for which China provided zero box office receipts. These two movies, “Demon Slayer: Mugen Train” and “Jujutsu Kaisen 0,” were both blocked from theatrical releases in China. Despite this, the former went on to break box office records to become the highest grossing Japanese film in box office history. The first hints of this trend came in the AJA’s 2020 annual report, when it noted a strong increase in overseas revenues in 2019 despite the commencement of new censorship regulations that year in China that stalled Japanese anime’s growth there (Masuda et al. 2020). The reason for this sustained growth was the expansion of American streaming platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime into the anime distribution business, enabling the growth of anime in Western markets as China stalled.

Although these regulations were put in place in the name of censorship, they could arguably also be interpreted as a form of cultural protectionism. The phenomenon is well-attested in Chinese cultural policy. For example, while Chinese film authorities continue to limit the number of foreign movies allowed into Chinese theaters under the guise of censorship, it is widely believed that these measures are also meant to limit the amount of competition with domestically produced movies (Kokas 2017). Not coincidentally, according to iResearch, cumulative watch-hours for Chinese-made animation exceeded watch-hours for Japanese-made animation on Chinese anime streaming platforms for the first time in 2020.

3. Manga Publishing and Webcomic Industries

The last pillar of the anime media mix is the manga industry. Like video games, Japanese manga do not appear in the AJA’s statistics because the Japanese publishing industry is separate from the Japanese animation industry. Therefore, the AJA figures, which are often cited by fan websites as quantitative evidence of the global industry’s size, miss this crucial part of the larger transmedia industry. According to the All Japan Magazine and Book Publisher’s and Editor’s Association’s (AJPEA) annual reports, in 2022, manga sales — of which roughly one-third were print book compilations or magazines and two-thirds were digital manga sales — totaled around 677 billion yen, or about $5.17 billion USD.

Comparing manga sales is relatively easy, at least between developed, Western countries. The same data collection and market analysis infrastructure put into these countries’ publishing industries to track bestsellers is often able to give information on sales by genre, including manga. Of the three forms of media covered in this brief, the manga industry has had perhaps the highest involvement of large, established corporate actors throughout its history. For instance, the growth of the modern Japanese manga industry in the 1950s was spurred by large corporate book publishers trying to expand into the more profitable magazine industry (Miyata, Kondo, and Sakamoto 2019). Similarly, as manga began to spread internationally, especially in the 1980s and 1990s, the trajectory of locally licensed manga often depended upon the decisions of the established actors in destination markets’ own comics industries (Bouissou et al. 2010). It should perhaps not be surprising that the infrastructure developed by the publishing industries to collect data for bestsellers’ lists is often used to track manga sales. For instance, NPD Bookscan, a tracking service first used in 2001 that provides much of the data for sales in the publishing industry in the English-speaking world, is also the source for most manga sales figures for the United States and United Kingdom.

 

Table 19 — Manga Sales by Country, 2022

 

Manga sales rose by around 0.2% in Japan year on year, but because of the depreciation of the yen against the dollar, converted revenues actually decreased from 2021 to 2022. In contrast, 2022 saw record sales in Western countries, including the U.S., U.K., France, and Germany. It is both somewhat surprising and expected to see the three European markets ranked in such stark contrast. On the one hand, this ranking matches exactly the assessment in Bouissou et al.’s comparative analysis of European manga markets from over a decade ago, which assessed France’s manga market as the strongest, Germany’s as comparatively weak, and the U.K.’s as heavily underperforming for its market’s size (2010). On the other hand, this gap was less apparent in the sample of mobile games we analyzed. Bouissou et al.’s original analysis hypothesized that the preexisting institutional actors in each country’s domestic comics industry affected the future growth of licensed manga in these markets (2010). This comparative analysis suggests that institutional actors continue to leave a long-term impact on the industry in local markets.

At a meta-analysis level, another interesting finding was the difficulty of locating data on the Korean market for Japanese imported comics. The search was largely complicated by the rise of a similar industry within Korea — webcomics. These are distinguished from “digital manga” in that while the latter are simply print manga scanned and prepared for digital release, webcomics are created with online distribution in mind. 

Though seemingly a minor difference, the different means of distribution make it harder to break down the popularity of Korean webcomics by national market in a similar manner to Japanese manga. However, circumstantial evidence, plus the similarity of art styles between most Korean and Japanese comics, suggests that the crossover between the fanbases for Japanese manga and Korean webcomics is high. For example, Korean webcomic giant Naver bought Neobazar, an Indonesian platform for translated webcomics, at an estimated market cap of $12.2 million USD in 2018.[8] According to Naver’s CEO, about 14 million users of the company’s Webtoon app, or 17%, are from the United States. 

In addition, while figures for sales of Japanese manga in China are hard to find, especially for more recent years, recent estimates for the market in domestically produced Chinese comics, or manhua, estimate the market at 5.6 billion Chinese yuan, or around $812 million USD, in 2022 (iResearch 2021, 10).

Soft Power Implications of an Increasingly Transnational Anime Economy 

While there is far from enough evidence to say conclusively whether China is taking over anime, it is clear that the Chinese market has grown in influence in recent years due to its financial purchasing power. Where circumstances allow for a direct comparison, we can see the influence of Chinese consumers. In some industries, like mobile gaming, we even see non-Japanese markets like China and Korea developing into producers of anime IP. Because of the capital flows and collaborative networks involved in producing anime, the growth of non-Japanese companies involved with anime IP is an indicator of future financial influence on the industry, whether or not these companies are directly involved with animation (yet). However, while anime franchises can be adapted into all sorts of media adaptations, metrics for calculating the popularity of transnational cultural fandoms like anime have largely not caught up. Maruyama’s comments were originally made in the context of Chinese mobile game developers experiencing greater success than Japanese developers, but we lack decent quantitative metrics for evaluating the potential impact of Chinese gaming revenues on the Japanese animation industry overall.

Given the domestic presence of articles with titles such as, “When Will Chinese Anime Media Finally Be Able to Counterattack Against Japan” the idea of China overtaking Japan in anime production seems to be popular in many Chinese online circles.[9] But because of the generally Japan-based focus of most analyses of the Japanese market, it would be difficult to detect quantitative signs of the influence of non-Japanese anime media in the data as it is presently categorized and displayed. National markets for digital creative industries can be influential both as producers and as consumers, but given the limited availability of geographically specific data, our assessments of either are educated guesses at best.

Referring to the connection between global networks and supply chains and the expansion of Japanese anime into overseas markets, Ryotaro Mihara argues that “the anime industry is no exception for business processes enmeshed in globalisation” (2017, 77). The shift in perception of national culture from public good to economic activity was largely enabled by the spread of new digital technologies like the internet. Given the intersection between the two, cultural policy in most governments since the 1990s has intersected closely with digital policy (Rhee 2014). In other words, the challenges we encountered attempting to measure the global anime industry are the same challenges involved in measuring many other globalized, digitized economic industries.

Just as globalization affects digital creative industries such as anime, so too can transnational fandoms for cultural products like anime impact the world through future generations’ consumption trends. In Western countries, anime still appears to be a fandom heavily self-selecting by age. For example, in a 2020 Morning Consult poll of U.S. adults, while over a quarter (26%) of adults over the age of 65 had “never heard of” Japanese anime, fewer than 4% of adults between the ages of 18 and 29 fell into this category. Older Americans were both less likely to have heard of Japanese anime and more likely to have either a somewhat or very unfavorable opinion of it if they had, while the two youngest age brackets had roughly similar splits in their opinion on anime (Morning Consult 2020, 77).[10]

Much of the impetus behind Japan’s current soft power push with programs such as Cool Japan is informed by its historical experience with Southeast Asia.[11] In Thailand, one of the first countries to experience Japanese soft power, the impact of this influence was delayed until the generation that had experienced Japanese pop culture in its youth grew up to become the main socio-economic drivers and cultural promotors in their society (Lopattananont 2021, 392).[12] The legacy of the early and sustained flow of Japanese cultural products into East and Southeast Asia can be seen in a 2015 global survey by Japanese advertising firm Hakuhodo in a number of major global cities on pop culture. This survey measured respondents’ relative preferences for Japanese comics and animation compared to competing styles, in this case Korean comics/animation, Western comics/animation, and domestic comics/animation from the respondent’s home country (Hakuhodo 2015, 13).[13] While comprehensive, Hakuhodo’s survey was conducted almost a decade ago and misses new developments in anime media, such as mobile gaming and the rise of China. Much of the quantitative data on the popularity of anime (and other similar fandoms such as K-pop or Bollywood) consists of one-off surveys like these that quickly become outdated.

One significant observation is the disconnect between the top 10 rankings of national userbases for mobile games in revenue compared to downloads. A number of developing countries — especially in regions perceived as having a high number of anime fans like Southeast Asia and Latin America — appeared regularly in the top 10 lists for downloads despite never appearing in the top 10 rankings for revenue. In assessments of potential markets focusing on revenue, these fans would have remained invisible. Because the internet has lowered the transaction costs of expanding into these countries, these fanbases have become growth markets. In contrast to the historically risk-averse nature of the anime industry, companies in the more thoroughly online branches of the anime ecosystem, such as vtubing, mobile gaming, or online streaming, increasingly view these regions as future growth markets. The gap between fanbase size and revenue in countries such as Brazil, Indonesia, and Mexico may have significant implications for the wider industry. It is a trend that will likely affect the most digitized industries including gaming and webcomics first, which happen to be the areas of the wider anime ecosystem where Japan is lagging the most.

Because of the fragmented and incomplete nature of the available data, it is hard to quantify the potential size of this transnational shift in the sources of creativity in anime.[14] Simultaneously, it also makes it harder to anticipate future disruptions. For example, China’s transition to a producer of anime media has been sudden and rapid. In terms of watch-hours, Chinese internet users watched more domestic Chinese-produced anime content than Japanese anime for the first time in 2020. Such a phenomenon would have been unforeseen a decade prior, especially to a Chinese government that banned Japanese anime from official state-owned networks in 2005 over fears of Japanese influence. Since then, while OECD countries still are not collecting much of the data that would assist in these measuring efforts, private consultancies in China such as iResearch (owned by Focus Media, a publicly listed advertising company with investors including state-owned enterprises such as CITIC and American private equity funds such as the Carlyle Group) are estimating the trajectory of the domestic anime industry and breaking it down into components in comprehensive research reports.

Many of the true implications are ultimately unquantifiable. While digital content industries like anime have an economic value that can be measured and quantified, they also have an influence beyond that. The increasing role of China suggests that the label of “anime” is more fluid than many previously perceived and is not confined to any single country. For instance, despite being made by American developer Blizzard, the online multiplayer first-person shooter game Overwatch has often been referred to as “anime” by fans. Overwatch fans often construct narratives around the characters based on an anime framework due to the high crossover between fanbases encouraged by the game’s art style (Ruotsalainen and Välisalo 2020).

The future study of national cultural and economic influence could experience a significant transformation if generational actors begin to play as crucial a role as they did in previous media transformations. Consider how past generational shifts impacted consumer advertising. Since the 1960s, the advertising industry has increasingly centered itself on youth culture (Frank 1997). What is popular among young people eventually spreads into the advertising and messaging, and our previous research suggests that this extends to public advertising by state actors as well. In Beijing, the child cartoon mascot Luo Baobei, star of her own animated series on Netflix, reminds people not to litter, while in Shanghai’s Changning District, the local government has used an image of Major Motoko Kusanagi from “Ghost in the Shell” on a display touting the district’s artificial intelligence startup industry. It is influence over these globally popular forms of digital content that form the true potential of economic and cultural soft power. While data alone will not allow us to fully understand this emerging phenomenon, better data can help us begin to make more tangible policy recommendations.

Declaration of Interest

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

References

All Japan Magazine and Book Publisher’s and Editor’s Association (AJPEA). 2023. Annual Report on the Digital Market. Industry Profile.

AppMagic. “Blue Archive.” https://appmagic.rocks/google-play/blue-archive/com.nexon.bluearchive.

AppMagic. “Dragon Ball Z: Dokkan Battle.” https://appmagic.rocks/google-play/dragon-ball-z-dokkan-battle/com.bandainamcogames.dbzdokkanww.

AppMagic. “Fate/Grand Order.” https://appmagic.rocks/google-play/fate-grand-order/com.aniplex.fategrandorder.en/info.

AppMagic. “Fire Emblem Heroes.” https://appmagic.rocks/google-play/fire-emblem-heroes/com.nintendo.zaba.

AppMagic. “Genshin Impact.” https://appmagic.rocks/google-play/genshin-impact/com.miHoYo.GenshinImpact.

AppMagic. “Honkai: Star Rail.” https://appmagic.rocks/google-play/honkai-star-rail/com.HoYoverse.hkrpgoversea.

AppMagic. “崩壊3rd.” https://appmagic.rocks/google-play/%E5%B4%A9%E5%A3%8A3rd/com.miHoYo.bh3rdJP.

AppMagic. “龙珠激斗.” https://appmagic.rocks/iphone/%E9%BE%99%E7%8F%A0%E6%BF%80%E6%96%97/1066697625.

AppMagic. “アズールレーン.” https://bit.ly/3VAc9xn.

Bouissou, Jean-Marie, Marco Pellitteri, and Bernd Dolle-Weinkauff, with Ariane Beldi. 2010. “Manga in Europe: A Short Study of Market and Fandom.” In Manga: An Anthology of Global and Cultural Perspectives, edited by Toni Johnson-Woods, 253–66. New York: Continuum. https://bit.ly/45Bh1ag. 

Box Office Mojo. 2023. “Genre Keyword: Anime.” September 19, 2023. https://www.boxofficemojo.com/genre/sg4259246337/?sort=releaseDate.

Chapple, Craig. 2020. “Fate/Grand Order Surpasses $4 Billion After Becoming Japan’s Top Grossing Mobile Game of 2019.” SensorTower. January 2020. https://sensortower.com/blog/fate-grand-order-revenue-4-billion.

Cheekywarship. 2023. “AL Monthly Revenue Data (2017-2023).” Reddit post. July 30, 2023. https://www.reddit.com/r/AzureLane/comments/15dpjjn/al_monthly_revenue_data20172023/.

Choo, Kukhee. 2014. “Hyperbolic Nationalism: South Korea’s Shadow Animation Industry.” Mechademia 9: 144–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/mec.2014.0009. 

Comics Beat. 2023. “Tilting at Windmills #294: Looking at NPD BookScan 2022.” April 5, 2023. https://www.comicsbeat.com/npd-bookscan-2022-graphic-novel-sales/.

Daliot-Bul, Michal, and Nissim Otmazgin. 2019. The Anime Boom in the United States: Lessons for Global Creative Industries. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Data.ai. 2022. “State of Anime Gaming 2022.” https://www.data.ai/en/go/the-state-of-anime-gaming-2022/.

Dujarric, Robert, and Andrei Hagiu. 2009. “Capitalizing on Innovation: The Case of Japan.” Harvard Business School Working Paper No. 09-114, April 2009, revised October 2009. https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=35915.

Eichstaedt, Bjoern, and Nina Blagojevic. 2022. “Manga is Growing in Germany, and We Still See a Lot of Potential.” J-BIG. March 1, 2022. https://www.j-big.de/en/carlsen-verlag-manga-is-growing-in-germany-and-we-still-see-a-lot-of-potential/.

Famitsu. 2023. ファミ通ゲーム白書2023. Bunkyo, Tokyo, Japan: Kadokawa ASCII Research Lab, August 29, 2023. https://www.famitsu.com/news/202308/29314815.html.

Frank, Thomas. 1997. The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

GfK Market Intelligence. 2023. “85 Millions de BD & Mangas Vendus en 2022.” https://www.gfk.com/fr/press/85-millions-bd-manga-vendus-en-france-2022.

Hakuhodo. 2015. “Global Habit Report 2015.” April 1, 2015. https://www.hakuhodo-global.com/wp_admin/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/2015.pdf.

iResearch. 2021. 中国二次元产业研究报告. https://pdf.dfcfw.com/pdf/H3_AP202110191523735557_1.pdf.

Italian Publishers Association. 2023. “The Comics Market in Italy.” Presented at the Turin Book Fair, Torino, Italy, May 18, 2023.

JETRO. 2017. 米国コンテンツ市場調査: アニメ編. Minato, Tokyo, Japan: Japan External Trade Organization. https://bit.ly/3VVP21R.

Kaczorowski, Samuel. 2018. “Le Marché de l’Animation Télévisée au Japon: Une Omniprésence du Licensing et Quelques Exceptions Culturelles.” Entrelacs 14 (December 16, 2018). https://doi.org/10.4000/entrelacs.4300.

Kikka. 2017. 「諸悪の根源は製作委員会」ってホント？　アニメ制作における委員会の役割を制作会社と日本動画協会に聞いた.」Netlab. ITmedia, June 18, 2017. https://nlab.itmedia.co.jp/nl/articles/1706/18/news001.html.

Kokas, Aynne. 2017. Hollywood Made in China. Oakland: University of California Press.

Kurlantzick, Joshua. 2008. Charm Offensive: How China’s Soft Power is Transforming the World. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Lamarre, Thomas. 2018. The Anime Ecology: A Genealogy of Television, Animation, and Game Media. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Lee, Hye-Kyung. 2014. “Transnational Cultural Fandom.” In The Ashgate Research Companion to Fan Cultures, edited by Linda Duits, Koos Zwaan, and Stijn Reijnders, 195–207. Abingdon: Routledge.

Lopattananont, Thanayod. 2021. “The Role of Entertainment Media in Promoting Culture: The Case of Japanese Cartoons and Superhero TV Series in 80s–90s Thai Society.” Manusya: Journal of Humanities 24: 390–408. https://doi.org/10.1163/26659077-24030007.

Masuda, Hiromichi, Tadashi Sudo, Kazuo Rikukawa, Yuji Mori, Naofumi Ito, Yasuo Kameyama, and Megumi Onouchi. 2020. “Anime Industry Report 2019.” Industry Profile. The Association of Japanese Animations. https://aja.gr.jp/english/japan-anime-data/.

Masuda, Sudo, Toshiyuki Koudate, Atsushi Matsumoto, Tomotaka Ishida, Kaneyama, Mori, Hiroko Uehara, Onouchi and Masahiro Hasegawa. 2022. “Anime Industry Report 2021.” Industry Profile. The Association of Japanese Animations. https://aja.gr.jp/english/japan-anime-data/.

Masuda, Sudo, Koudate, Matsumoto, Ishida, Kaneyama, Mori, and Hasegawa. 2023. “Anime Industry Report 2022.” Industry Profile. The Association of Japanese Animations. https://aja.gr.jp/english/japan-anime-data/.

Mihara, Ryotaro. 2009. “Haruhi in USA: A Case Study of Anime in the United States.” MA thesis. Cornell University. https://hdl.handle.net/1813/13808.

Mihara. 2017. “Brokering Anime: How to Create a Japanese Animation Business Bridge Between Japan and India.” PhD diss., St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:8a6cc81c-7381-48bc-b1c9-2119bc2b3455.

Miyata, Kenichi, Hikaru Kondo, and Jun Sakamoto. 2019. “Demand Pulls Capabilities in Shogakukan: Growing a Domestic Publisher Into a Global Media Mixer via Manga Industry.” Paper presented at EBHA 23rd Annual Congress Rotterdam: The Business History of Creativity, Rotterdam, August 31, 2019. https://bit.ly/4cvPsBq.

Morning Consult. 2020. “National Tracking Poll #200158.” January 23–4, 2020. https://bit.ly/4cfsQoW.

Nye, Joseph. 2005. Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. New York: PublicAffairs.

Repnikova, Maria. 2022. Chinese Soft Power (Elements in Global China), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rhee, Wonkyung. 2014. “Inter-Ministerial Policy Coordination for Digital Content Technology Development: Korean and Japanese Cases.” STI Policy Review 5, no. 2 (October): 96–121. https://www.dbpia.co.kr/journal/articleDetail?nodeId=NODE06291053.

Ruotsalainen, Maria, and Tanja Välisalo. 2020. ‘‘‘Overwatch is Anime’: Exploring an Alternative Interpretational Framework for Competitive Gaming.” In DiGRA '20 : Proceedings of the 2020 DiGRA International Conference: Play Everywhere, Tampere, June 2020. Digital Games Research Association. https://bit.ly/3VFlPqq.

Sensor Tower. 2023. “The State of Mobile Gaming 2023.” https://go.sensortower.com/state-of-mobile-gaming-2023.

Steinberg, Marc. 2012. Anime’s Media Mix: Franchising Toys and Characters in Japan. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Steinberg. 2015. “The Second Kadokawa Media Mix Era: The Rise of the Game Master and the Platform Producer.” Academia.edu. https://bit.ly/45TX3YB.

The Numbers. 2024. “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba—The Movie: Mugen Train (劇場版「鬼滅の刃」 無限列車編) (2020).” September 27, 2023. https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Demon-Slayer-Kimetsu-no-Yaiba-The-Movie-Mugen-Train-(2020-Japan)#tab=international.

The Numbers. 2024. “Eiga Slam Dunk (2022).” September 27, 2023. https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Eiga-Slam-Dunk-(2022-Japan)#tab=international.

The Numbers. 2024. “Gekijouban Jujutsu Kaisen 0 (2021).” September 27, 2023. https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Gekijouban-Jujutsu-Kaisen-0-(2022-Japan)#tab=international.

The Numbers. 2024. “Kimi no na wa (2016).” September 27, 2023. https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Kimi-no-na-wa-(Japan)#tab=international.

The Numbers. 2024. “Suzume (すずめの戸締まり) (2022).” September 27, 2023. https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Suzume-(2022-Japan)#tab=international.

Tivnan, Tom. 2023. “Graphic Novels Race to Record Year in Adult & Children’s, Propelled by Oseman & Miura.” The Bookseller. January 13, 2023. https://www.thebookseller.com/news/graphic-novels-race-to-record-year-in-adult-and-childrens-propelled-by-oseman-and-miura

国产二次元手游观察. https://space.bilibili.com/179948458/video?tid=0&pn=1&keyword=&order=pubdate

Notes

---

[1] Soft power refers to economic and cultural influence in contrast to the “hard power” of military strength, as coined by Joseph Nye and popularized in his book Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. The study of China’s soft power is most thoroughly examined by Maria Repnikova in Chinese Soft Power. Joshua Kurlantzick’s Charm Offensive: How China’s Soft Power is Transforming the World, in 2007, largely began the more thorough study by foreign policy experts of China’s cultural economic influence around the world.

[2] “‘Japan Will be Overtaken in No Time’ by China, Says Anime Industry Insider,” South China Morning Post, April 26, 2023, https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/3218392/anime-expert-warns-japan-will-be-overtaken-no-time-china/.

[3] Brandon Zheng, “China and the Globalization of the Gaming Industry” (Houston: Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, June 21, 2022), https://www.bakerinstitute.org/research/china-and-globalization-gaming-industry/.

[4] For more information, see Kristine “Kurisu” Tuting, “Ufotable’s Genshin Impact Anime: Everything We Know So Far,” ONE Esports, April 18, 2024, https://www.oneesports.gg/genshin-impact/ufotable-genshin-impact-anime/.

[5] SensorTower only measures revenue from iOS versions of mobile games in China, as Google Play is not available there. While Android apps are used in China, SensorTower does not appear to include this data at all in its estimates for China. Because of this, SensorTower’s estimate of the Chinese mobile game market for the year 2022 is almost $5 billion USD lower than Famitsu’s, despite most of its other figures being higher than Famitsu’s.

[6] For example, in December 2022, the English server of the Japanese mobile anime game Fate/Grand Order started an in-game campaign to celebrate 19 million total downloads of the game (“19 Million Downloads Campaign,” Fate/Grand Order, December 4, 2022, https://webview.fate-go.us/iframe/2022/1204_1900dl_cp/).

However, according to AppMagic, there are almost twice as many downloads of the Japanese version of the game compared to the English version. The most generous estimates using AppMagic’s data still place the Japanese version at fewer than 13 million downloads, meaning that the English server has fewer than 7 million downloads, according to AppMagic.

[7] Using IMF exchange rate on January 4, 2013, of 87.65 JPY to 1 USD.

[8] Lee Sun-hee and Minu Kim, “KakaoPage Acquires Indonesian Top Webtoon Platform Neobazar,” Pulse, December 18, 2018, https://pulse.mk.co.kr/news/all/8602496.

[9] The article in question can be found here [in Chinese]: Liangnian,「中国ACG何时才能反攻日本？」, Huxiu, December 14, 2017, https://www.huxiu.com/article/225899.html/.

[10] Opinion breakdown between somewhat/very favorable, somewhat/very unfavorable, and no opinion/never heard of:
Age 65+: 17-33-50
Age 55–64: 21-43-36
Age 45–54: 25-41-35
Age 30–44: 41-39-20
Age 18–29: 44-45-11 (Morning Consult 2020, 77).

[11] The authors are currently researching the relationship between the globalization of the anime industry and changes in governmental soft power policies. In particular, we will include an examination of the Fukuda Doctrine, the shift in Japanese foreign policy toward greater diplomatic engagement with Southeast Asia in the 1970s.

[12] Different countries opened to Japanese cultural flows at different moments during the postwar period for various geopolitical reasons, which are the focus of our upcoming paper.

[13] Respondents were allowed to choose more than one option, although in only two cities (Hong Kong and Taipei) did all four possible responses add up to over 100%.

[14] While Japanese animation has participated in outsourcing since at least the 1960s, with works such as “Golden Bat” and “Phantom Human” involving the work of South Korean animators, this outsourcing has traditionally been in the “labor” aspects of animation rather than in the production of original story concepts. In contrast to this earlier “globally invisible” outsourcing (Choo 2014, 126), in which the creative work was still associated with Japan, the examples discussed in this paper are franchises that are associated both with the Japanese anime aesthetic but also with their home countries.

 

This material may be quoted or reproduced without prior permission, provided appropriate credit is given to the author and Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. The views expressed herein are those of the individual author(s), and do not necessarily represent the views of Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.