By Ben Fritz
After decades on the fringes of pop culture in the West, anime has become one of Hollywood's hottest businesses.
Crunchyroll, the largest streaming service dedicated to Japanese animation known as anime, boosted its subscriber base nearly 25% in the past year to 21 million, parent company Sony said Friday. Subscriber growth at bigger Hollywood streaming services has largely plateaued in the past year, and some have stopped disclosing numbers.
In the U.S., 22% of people watched anime series like "Jujutsu Kaisen" and "Hell's Paradise" last year compared with 10% in 2020, Japanese research firm GEM Partners found. Americans streamed 4.4 billion minutes of content on Crunchyroll in January, compared with 2.1 billion in the same month in 2024, according to Nielsen.
Major entertainment companies are racing to add anime to their streaming services in hopes it will attract young audiences seeking something very different from the traditional offerings of American studios.
"What we hear from our fans is these stories are unique, the characters are relatable, and they don't get these themes in other forms of entertainment," said Rahul Purini, Crunchyroll's president.
Total spending on anime entertainment and merchandise in North America is projected to grow to $5.19 billion this year from $4.38 billion in 2025, according to Precedence Research.
It's one of numerous once-niche segments of global entertainment that have become robust businesses in America, from F1 racing to videogames to K-Pop music. As big-name film franchises and broadcast TV networks fade in relevance, enthusiastic fan communities have become one of the most valuable currencies in Hollywood.
"What made anime niche before is what makes it successful now," said Yves Bergquist, chief executive of consumer research company Corto. "Audiences are pining for novelty, especially younger demographics."
Corto found online conversations about anime have surged 400% in the past six years and now equal those about horror. Nearly 31% of those conversations involve people who aren't hardcore fans, compared with 14% three years ago, a sign of the art form's broadening popularity.
"The core anime fan is very passionate and engaged, and they talk about their fandom, which brings concentric circles of other viewers into the ecosystem," said Purini.
Anime watchers who start young tend to stick with the art form into adulthood, unlike other media popular with teenagers. Americans between ages 25 and 34 watch at nearly the same rates as those between 13 and 17, according to GEM Partners.
Anime's visual attributes like large, expressive eyes, exaggerated hair and sharp lines look radically different from the typical Disney cartoon. Stories range from action to horror to romance and are often built on premises that would seem outlandish in Hollywood, such as a boy trying to retrieve his stolen testicles from a witch. Narratives run for hundreds or even thousands of episodes and can span TV, movies and comic books.
Crunchyroll began as a place for Westerners to get anime not available legally. It later went legit before being acquired by AT&T's WarnerMedia. Sony, which was already in the anime business, bought it in 2021 for $1.2 billion.
Sony CEO Hiroki Totoki highlighted anime as a growth driver for the Japanese media and technology conglomerate in a presentation to investors Friday. He cited last year's film version of the anime series "Demon Slayer," released theatrically by Crunchyroll and Sony Pictures. It grossed $741 million worldwide, more than 2025 Hollywood hits like "How to Train Your Dragon" and "Superman."
Much of Crunchyroll's recent growth has come in emerging markets like India and Brazil where the service costs as little as $1 monthly, compared with $10 to $18 in the U.S. Purini said Sony has supported his business, which employs a little over 1,000 people, to invest in growth while remaining profitable.
Unlike American studios that make most of their own content, Crunchyroll primarily licenses its shows from or cofinances them with Japanese production companies. As with Champagne from France, purists say anime can only come from Japan.
Episodes are often completed a day or two before they premiere on Japanese TV. Crunchyroll rushes to get them online in the approximately 200 markets where it operates, first with subtitles and then dubbed voices.
"If we are not meeting that demand, it's going to get pirated," Purini said.
Some 300 anime series are produced each year in Japan, and Crunchyroll acquires rights to 80% of them, Purini said. But it faces growing competition from deep-pocketed rivals.
Anime consumption on Netflix has tripled over the past three years and accounted for 4% of all viewing in the second half of 2025. The streaming giant is undertaking an audacious effort to capture fans of one of Crunchyroll's biggest hits, the pirate fantasy series "One Piece." It recently released the second season of a live-action adaptation and is re-creating some of the original 1,100-plus episode series in animated form beginning next February.
Write to Ben Fritz at ben.fritz@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 08, 2026 10:00 ET (14:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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