Look to your left, look to your right. Odds are, one of you has watched anime this week—and probably on Netflix. The genre is now watched by more than half of Netflix users worldwide, the company announced over the weekend.
According to Netflix:
- More than 50% of its global user base (150+ million households) watches anime on the platform, up 3x from five years ago.
- 33 anime titles made the platform’s rotating Global Top 10 (Non-English) list last year, up more than 2x from 2021.
The company unveiled the numbers at Anime Expo in Los Angeles, which drew 400,000 people, including rapper Rico Nasty in cosplay as a character from Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, a popular Netflix anime show. That series and Sakamoto Days, another hit that recently charted in 54 countries, have helped propel the entertainment giant to anime dominance.
How dominant is it? About one in three people watch anime weekly in the US and worldwide, and those fans subscribe to Netflix more than any other platform, according to a new study from the Japanese ad company Dentsu. In the US, Netflix is followed by Disney+, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video, while Crunchyroll—the original anime platform—ranks last in anime viewership.
Something fresh: “Fatigue with Hollywood sequels and remakes” is at least one reason why 29% of US anime fans watch the genre, per Dentsu.—ML