Every Spring, AnimeJapan brings all of the anime industry under one roof at Tokyo Big Sight but this year’s event was more eventful than normal.
The first big thing to mention is that it feels that the Western market has really opened up to the anime industry, at least in terms of the non-Japanese companies that had a presence at the event.
Netflix is a good example, as it has a massive and very active booth showing off all its upcoming anime content.
This is a big deal and while streaming is taking a while to build up a similar userbase in Japan compared to the U.S. and Europe, it’s clear that Netflix is now part of the anime framework in Japan.
Following that is a momentous announcement in the form of Funimation partnering up with Chinese streaming company Bilibili to acquire Japanese anime for global distribution.
After Japan, China and the U.S. are easily the biggest anime markets in the world.
Overall, it was a pretty eventful AnimeJapan but it’s clear that the industry and the medium as a whole
