New Anime Report Compares U.S. Ratings to Japan’s Top Series
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The anime industry is ramping up in popularity in both North America and Japan. The medium has seen a major uptick thanks in part to the coronavirus pandemic and the easy accessibility of anime episodes and movies that arrive regularly on streaming services. While the medium has seen major leaps in the West, North American anime fans still have a long way to go before they hit the same levels as Japanese fans. In a new report, a consulting firm has broken down some of the biggest aspects of anime’s popularity and which series see the most popularity in Japan and North America.
The study was performed by White Box Entertainment, a consulting company that works with anime distributor REMOW. In breaking down the estimates of the popularity of the anime industry in North America and Japan, the company notes that they do not have access to streaming numbers from the likes of Crunchyroll and Netflix. Instead, the company monitors “bootleg” and “pirate” websites that do have metrics readily available. In monitoring the viewing numbers, White Box was able to determine that Demon Slayer is so popular, that the Ufotable anime adaptation is able to skew the numbers on its own.
The consulting firm did release a worthwhile chart that breaks down which anime series are more popular in North America versus Japan, which you can see below. For example, Wind Breaker and Kaiju No. 8 have been far more accepted in North America than Japan, while on the flip side, series such as Konosuba, The Irregular Magic High School, Laid-Back Camp, and more are preferred in Japan versus the West. In studying these figures, it appears that North America tends to focus on the “bigger”, “higher stakes” anime franchises while Japan will lean far more into “slice of life” and smaller stakes series.
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