This Week in Anime

Industry Insight

Lucas
Chris, last Friday intrepid reporter and one of the best goddamn anime data journalists in the game, Kalai Chik, published a deep dive into the most popular anime titles of last year, and what they reveal about the global anime industry and the anime stream landscape. While everyone who cares about this artistic medium and the industry around it should read this piece, the big takeaway is that Crunchyroll reigns supreme for now, despite some big names getting into the Anime biz in the past couple of years.

Kalai attributes much of Crunchyroll's success in retaining its crown to the resources it's put into marketing/advertising/promoting it's catalog, and as two boys who get the word out for our day jobs, I'd love to dig into this article and this segment of the anime industry with you!

Frieren is actually a GREAT title to start this conversation off with because, for as big as the first season was and for as many people outside of the anime bubble who are watching the second season, the anime has actually had a more muted impact than what many (myself included) were expecting!

Don't get me wrong, it's still probably the second or third most popular anime of the season, but for how much the first season popped off with audiences not normally into anime, I thought this would be the release to beat this season! While a lot of factors could be at play here, like Frieren season two releasing later in January than most other titles and this season having a shorter episode count, in my opinion, it seems like the biggest factor in this season being more of a sleeper hit is Crunchyroll putting its promotional resources in other baskets.

I think you're right on the money with the impact of that Netflix bump! While Kalai's article makes a very strong case for a Netflix release doesn't guarantee a title will be a hit; in my own experience as an anime PR person, having a title on the biggest streaming platform around will REALLY help secure non-endemic coverage.

Beyond Netflix's larger subscriber count immediately making an anime title more visible to a potential audience, a lot of general entertainment press covers Netflix premieres and acquisition announcements as a matter of industry reporting. That same affordance isn't extended to much smaller and less Hollywood-connected Crunchyroll, meaning a Netflix release has a lot of baked-in advantages from a PR perspective.

And to your point about mega hits, the biggest thing working against Frieren is that Jujutsu Kaisen is releasing at the same time this season. Even a company with Sony's backing doesn't have infinite resources, and with JJK being a cash cow with no signs of slowing down, it makes sense that the current King of Shonen would be prioritized in CR's promotional efforts.

It's not a perfect comparison, but from my vantage point as an industry pundit, Netflix is basically "new cable." People having access to Netflix is a safe assumption in 2026; new releases on that platform are regularly covered by entertainment trade outlets, and releases there have a bigger likelihood of being a longtail success, as it's rare for new audiences to subscribe to a platform like Crunchyroll to watch older series. That doesn't guarantee that a title releasing on Netflix will escape anime containment and become a "watercooler hit," but it seems like it ups the odds if a title is likely to be popular anyway!

Oh! And speaking of social media, I cannot begin to stress how much anime publicity is grounded in social, and more broadly digital, media efforts. I've been working in anime PR full-time for two years this coming May, and I've contributed to maybe two or three physical or irl promotional efforts outside of convention panels/activations in that time. I know this tracks for people deep in the anime space, but folks who work in different PR disciplines are usually surprised when I express this split!

God, I want to be able to put a series that I'm promoting on a billboard SO BAD! If for no other reason than to be able to take a picture of it and have a useful (and cool) shorthand to explain to friends and family exactly what I do for a living.

Haha, right now my go-to explainer for my 9-5 is "You know Mad Men? I do that, but for nerd stuff!"

And, even if any criticism you can levy against Apple is likely valid, it was impressive to see how effectively the company organized all of Apple TV's releases and promotional activities around the surge that Severance season two generated last year. No disrespect to Seth Rogen, but like half the people who watched The Studio likely only did so because it immediately followed Severance season two's conclusion and folks still had a few weeks' left on their Apple TV subscription.

And that also speaks to the friction generated by Crunchyroll putting all of their promotional resources into one or two baskets each season. They're not necessarily wrong to do that from a quarterly business perspective, but it does mean that a lot of critically acclaimed releases are left under-promoted on their platform each season, and smaller to mid-sized productions feel like they get routinely bumped for whatever mega title Crunchyroll thinks is likely to be more popular or that they have a more direct financial stake in.

Oh god, that's incredible, and I am SO curious to find out how your bartender ended up that deep in the anime mines! That being said, you've laid out the exact reason why so many anime titles do and should release on an anime-focused streaming service like Crunchyroll. From a PR perspective, the absolute ceiling for a rinse-and-repeat isekai title like Chilin' In My 30s is disseminating in endemic anime spaces, and Crunchyroll's is the best platform for that post Funimation merge, and with HIDIVE still being so niche.

While I don't have a ton of public facing data to support this, the conventional wisdom right now is that going with Crunchyroll as a sole distributor won't necessarily raise the ceiling for the average release, but there's a good chance it'll raise the floor and Kalia's article expresses as much via the perspective of Vincent Imaoka, Netflix's former Producer of Original Anime.

Yeah, people who have been doing this kind of trendspotting for longer than I have will tell you that there are no surefire rules to any of this. Amazon, a hyper-capitalistic company, trying to make Prime the new home for "prestige" anime titles like the new Ghost in the Shell or SANDA instead of sniping mega-hits that have audiences that will follow them makes about as much sense as the critically underwhelming Solo Leveling somehow becoming one of the faces of anime in the US.

Yeaaaaaaah~ I don't wanna go full "tinfoil hat" with my speculation, but I've gotta believe Crunchyroll doing a borderline astroturfing campaign for Solo Leveling (which is made by the Sony-owned A-1 Pictures and produced by the also Sony-owned Aniplex) while Frieren (which was animated by Madhouse which Sony only owns 5% of) was treated like a windfall by Crunchyroll has something to do with those noted financial dimensions.

Oh, weird! How did that classic board game logo get mixed into my images for this column? Oh well~

Oh god, I forgot BET existed until this very moment! Did Netflix only make that show because they wanted their own take on Euphoria? It feels like Netflix only made that show because they wanted their own take on Euphoria!

If there's one thing I can say for certain about entertainment trends, it's that everybody's chasing whatever the last big hit was until the next big hit comes out of left field. Are streamers going to start investing in animation and anime-adjacent media again now that Kpop Demon Hunters was an outright cultural moment in 2025? Is the entire animation industry about to come up with Zootopia 2 being the highest-grossing animated movie of all time? It's impossible to say for sure, and I'd be wary of anyone preaching definitive answers, but I can't help but feel like all of this information is one big puzzle that's a lot of fun to piece together!

If nothing else, Frieren's success denotes that anime audiences contain just as many multitudes as the anime medium! While I wish works that were more personally affecting to me hit escape velocity more often, I'll gladly leverage Frieren's success to get more folks deeper into this artform and community.

And, as professional anime-opinion-havers, we're happy to pick up the slack and get the word out on the titles that are the actual high water marks of the medium! Remember, folks, popularity doesn't always equate to achievement or influence, and the stuff that will hit you the hardest is usually the stuff that takes some digging to find. Though taking the time to try something new and outside of the mainstream will always be rewarding in one way or another.