Discussion How is anime so popular all of a sudden?

All of my friends randomly started watching anime within the last few months.

One guy even finished Naruto entire series (including Shippuden) within 2 weeks or so.

These guys never knew anything about anime and the only thing they knew about that was the fact that I watched anime.

 

Probably because of quarantine lol. Some of my friends and even my brother did that. Binge watching Naruto and One Piece alike.

 

Are you seriously complaining? Personally, I would love to talk to my friends (if I had any friends) about anime. But hey maybe that’s just me

 

Agreed about the quarantine reason - lots of people are indoors and have free time to spare since they either lost their jobs or have reduced hours, so they're checking out more series on Netflix and other things and coming across series. It helps that there have been more and more anime getting dubs and well-known releases like Your Name and stuff close to western culture like the superheroes in My Hero Academia (clearly inspired by American superheroes). All of it helps the anime community grow a lot.

 

Because your friends communicated between them. If one watches anime he will recommand it to his friends, if they like it they will recommand to their own friends circle and so on. Of course ads, trends and such are also a factor.

 

Animes pretty mainstream nowadays and becoming more so. I mean everyone my age from where I'm from have watched an anime or two at minimum. Plus quarantine would have had major effect too

 

hey, no you are getting me all wrong. I am not in any way feeling offended, I was just curious to know what is making people's interest towards anime in general.

I would love to see the whole world watching and talking about anime, but I would also like to know what made them do this.

 

yup.. i was so surprised when i saw my friends on social media posting about anime and stuff when in the past they would just tease me for watching it

 

Yea quarantine must be one of the many reasons.

And I agree with you, anime consists so many genres that almost anybody with any interest can satisfy their emotions and fill the void of watching something visually great.

Yea this could also be added to the reasons why more people are watching anime, but I mean like, that was happening earlier also.

Like, anime watchers were posting on social media and were also recommending their friends, including me, I also did this.

But, at that point of time no one seem to be interested in watching anime and they were all giving back recommendation to watch netflix, amazon prime web series.

And now, the same people are starting to watch anime.

That's a nice point of turn in time.

Yea, and I wonder what will happen to them when they'll explore the manga universe.

 

Man its strange to see anime become main stream i still remember the times when talking about comics could get you beat up let alone anime and manga how the times have changed.

 

yea absolutely

 

Hmm I think even back then anime was already pretty popular and it's not like watching animations is a super new concept to most people since as kids we pretty much watched cartoons. I think the whole 02 hype also got a few people in the mix since she got really popular in tiktok and other social media sites or apps. In general what's honestly not to like about anime, decent story lines or story telling, waifus/husbandos, cute drawings and memes. It calls and talks to plenty of introverted and extroverted souls so yea why wouldn't it get popular lol. Sure situations can be unrealistic but isn't that almost every single piece of entertainment available.

 

Anime is good for everyone to watch but the increase in toxic fans is a bit disturbing.. I think another reason for the increase is the effect of cosplay and editing. There are some seriously tempting video edits.

 

My story simplified.

-Didn't really know what anime was
-Didn't care for it.
-Made fun of it sometimes.
-Watched Naruto for kicks.
-Actually liked it...
-Watched Ouran
-Watched other shows
-Covid happens
-Stuck in the spiralling addiction of anime
-Finds out about manga
.
.
.
- Life = no more.

 

yea, edits might have contributed more than we think...

oh that's a nice transformation

 

That's what it feels to you but it's been about a decade at least since people became more open to anime as not something to be made fun of. Even Netflix has anime now.
I watched Death Note with one of my exes and she loved it, never watched anime before if you don't count Sailor Moon and Pokemon which all kids watched in 90's.
Another one, a normie as well wanted to be a part of anime talk outside while boozing so she went around hey I watched Attack on Titan! On the other hand she mentioned one of her friends is such a geek, she wouldn't date him. Good thing I forgot to mention how geeky I was coz that sex was sumthin else.
One of my friends in a really long relationship started watching anime when he was in hospital bed, he told me he was too busy before due to his job and gf who didn't want to watch anime(I guess that's what you get when you start dating in high school and don't break up XD).
There was also a guy, biker sailor otaku??? He gave no fucks, just started otaku speak with a group of normies and nobody minded group watching some anime.
In one of my interviews dude asked me if I listened to Babymetal...

 

Its because they read Past Life Returner and were so impressed
I kid you not

Big hug from me

 

Amazon Prime and Netflix have been investing in advertising anime to English speaking audiences for almost a decade. They financed lots of animes like Fate, Beastars or B The Beginning. You have famous YouTubers like MrBeast, PewDiePie, Logan Paul...etc who also watch anime too, furthermore, they actively encourage easily influenced teenagers to watch them.

Even Elon Fucking Musk, one of the richest billionaires on Earth, rank 3# on Forbes, had an FMA profile pic for some time.



The anime industry has been explosively growing since the late 90s. You just never noticed.

 

Let me rephrase your thread, "How come I only realized now that anime is so popular nowadays".
*shrugs* IMO, anime had long been popular till now. It's just that many people kept on coming to preserve its popularity.