Best Anime All Time list 2023

How Japanese Anime Became the World’s Most Bankable Genre

It was once considered a niche genre just for hard-core fans, but streaming has helped turn it into a globally popular juggernaut. Now the Japanese animation industry is scrambling to meet an almost insatiable demand: "It’s increasingly becoming a borderless form of mass entertainment." The coronavirus pandemic has yielded many surprising insights for the global film and TV business. One of the most curious new facts to emerge is that Japanese anime might just be the world’s most COVID-resistant form of popular entertainment. During the height of pandemic lockdowns in 2020, when total U.S. box office sales fell 80 percent for the year and Japan’s theatrical market slipped 45 percent, Japan’s total anime industry contracted just 3.5 percent, with a market value of about $21.3 billion (more than 2.4 trillion yen). In that same fraught year, the anime business also produced its biggest theatrical hit of all time: Demon Slayer the Movie: Mugen Train , an action-packed...

How Popular Is Anime In Japan, Really?

Millions of people worldwide consume anime every day. But how prevalent is it in Japan itself? The answer: not as much as some international fans would like to believe. Anime: Japan’s geek gateway drug For millions around the world, anime is their first exposure to Japan, Japanese culture, and the Japanese language. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Anime acts as a powerful “gateway drug” to the Japanese language and culture. People learn Japanese, make Japanese friends, and even move to the country because they’re current or former anime fans. I’m no exception. I discovered anime in the 1980s when I happened upon Robotech . After I learned the show was a wild fusion of three original Japanese anime, I went down the rabbit hole to see what else was out there. Sadly, at that time, there was little available in translation. I made do with VHS tapes off of satellite of shows like Dirty Pair and Gatchaman that I bought off of people I found in th...

An Introduction to Anime

The word anime — pronounced " ah- knee-may" — is an abbreviation of the word animation . In Japan, the word is used to refer to all animation. However, outside of Japan, it has become the catch-all term for animation from Japan. For decades, anime was produced by and for Japan — a local product, with a distinct look-and-feel to not just the artwork but the storytelling, the themes, and the concepts. Over the last forty years, it has become an international phenomenon, attracting millions of fans and being translated into many languages. A whole generation of viewers in the West has grown up with it and are now passing it on to their own children. Because all things anime tend to be lumped together, it's tempting to think of anime as a genre. It isn't, at least no more than animation itself is a genre, but rather a description of how the material is produced. Anime shows, like books or movies, fall into any number of existing genres: comedy, d...

Best Anime All Time list 2023

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