Rising Popularity Of Anime In The Western World

By Author: frank scout
Total Articles: 3764
Comment this article

Anime appeals to everyone ranging from children to adults and deals with diverse themes in science fiction, sports, horror and romance. Unlike animation, anime has a certain element of realism, like suffering, emotions and death which increases both the content and its pedagogical value.

Popularity of anime is increasing steadily both in terms of audience and range. The craze of American children for the recent Pokémon series, including Pokémon cards and other Pokémon products, like video games attests to its wide appeal. One old controversy in anime fandom was over the watching of anime movies being subtitled, or redubbed in English. Now with the popularity of DVD, this also is less likely, since most DVD discs include both a redub and subtitled track. The growing popularity of anime has resulted in a large number of clubs in colleges, high schools and public libraries devoted to this topic. Conventions are taking place in America and other western countries. Anime is winning great sales and fans than ever witnessed before!

Walt Disney's, release of Japanese blockbuster "Spirited Away" which even beat ...
... "Titanic" in Japan, was a huge success in the west. Director Hayao Miyazaki is being praised by the movie reviewers, for giving attention to the minutest details relating to arts and crafts in the film. Anime movies and programs in the west, like the famous Walt Disney and Fox TV network, add to a whopping $2 billion in annual profits to the animation film industry.

Few years ago, there were just few anime TV shows, but today every child channel is saturated with Japanese cartoons and are rising in popularity amongst youngsters. Bandai entertainment, a Japanese toy and anime company said it released 75 anime TV shows and movies in the U.S last year, which shows a huge rise in demand for anime movies as compared to releases made during the previous years.

Anime is the fastest growing segment, in video and DVD marketing. A D Vision was the first anime company in US in 1992, now there are 20 similar companies. Anime movies are relatively low cost budget movies. If you consider the cost of making film in today's high risk industry, anime is cheap, for instance Titanic cost $100 Million. Animes success in the west is gradual. The first turning point was the advent of Internet during the mid 80's.The next wave of anime frenzy lashed in 1998-89 with Pokémon. With blockbuster releases like "Spirited Away" anime is the buzz word amongst youngster nowadays.