Toward the World's ANIME — The Future of Anime

Last time, we saw the golden age brought by the streaming revolution. While people around the world shared the same story simultaneously and ‘Your Name.’ and ‘Demon Slayer’ rewrote the records, the shadow of the treatment on the floor that creates those works remained, too, as something that could not be overlooked.

In this final chapter, we survey what comes next. Now that anime has gained the power to reach the world, what does it carry, and where is it trying to go? The expansion of the market, changes in technology, and the question of how to cultivate and protect those who carry the work — laying out a number of signs, at the close of a hundred-year story, I would like, deliberately without rushing to a conclusion, to imagine what lies beyond, together with you.

The World Becomes the Main Stage — An Expanding Market

First, there is a great change that the numbers tell. Anime is no longer something for Japan’s domestic audience alone.

According to estimates by the Association of Japanese Animations, the market scale of the anime industry has continued to expand in recent years and is reported to be renewing its all-time high. What draws particular attention among these is the growth of the overseas market. Sales generated overseas through streaming, merchandise, events, and the like are said to have come, from a certain point, to exceed the domestic market, and it is now even reported that overseas accounts for half of the anime industry.

This signifies a quiet shift in the center of gravity — from anime that is ‘made for Japan and happens to be watched overseas as well’ to anime that is ‘made with the world in view from the very start.’ The presence of overseas fans moves planning and investment, works are translated into the world’s languages, and resonate with local cultures. The fact that the word anime came at some point to be understood in the English-speaking world just as it is, as ‘ANIME’, may perhaps be a symbol of this.

The world becoming the main stage is a great opportunity, and at the same time it brings new questions along with it. As the presence of overseas platforms and capital grows, how do creators face it? While preserving the individuality of expression nurtured in Japan, how do they join hands with the world? Beyond the expansion, many choices with no settled answer wait ahead.

The Way of Making Changes — AI and Production Technology

The ‘way of making’ anime, too, is now about to change greatly. Following the spread of digital drawing and 3DCG, what has stirred particular debate in recent years is the arrival of generative AI.

Generative AI, which produces text and images in a short time, draws attention as a technology that could make some processes of anime production more efficient, while at the same time strong voices of concern rise from the floor. In a survey of attitudes targeting the anime industry, it was reported that voices calling for regulation of generative AI made up the majority, and in particular, anxiety over using data obtained without permission for training, and problems surrounding copyright, have become major points of contention.

Technology is in itself neither good nor evil. When Osamu Tezuka made television anime viable within a limited budget, his methods had both merits and demerits. In the same way, new technology, too, will surely arrive at a very different destination depending on who uses it, for what, and how.

How to Protect Those Who Carry the Work — Cultivating Talent and Working Conditions

And, in bringing a hundred-year story to a close, what cannot be skirted is the question of how to cultivate and how to support the people who create anime.

As we saw in the previous chapter, the low wages and unstable ways of working of animators have long been pointed to as an issue. In recent years, while there have been moves toward improving treatment and reports that surveys show average annual income has risen from before, there continue to be indications that issues remain in the income and ways of working of the younger generation. Behind works that thrill the world, how do we build an environment in which the people who draw those pictures one by one can work in security, hone their skills, and pass them on to the next generation — that is a question that determines the sustainability of this culture.

An expanding market, ever-changing technology, and the question of how to protect those who carry the work. These, scattered as they seem, connect into a single question. How can we pass on the culture of anime, richly and in a sustainable form, into the future? — to that question, we do not yet hold a certain answer.

From a Moving Picture to a World Culture

This series began with a single moving picture. A little over a hundred years ago, a short film into which Kenzo Masaoka and his peers breathed life by hand. That gave rise to Toei Doga’s challenge of feature-length films, to Osamu Tezuka’s television anime, to the fervor of Gundam and Yamato, to Ghibli’s worldwide achievement, to the shock of Evangelion, and to the golden age of simultaneous worldwide streaming, producing them one after another.

That journey was by no means colored by brilliance alone. The merits and demerits brought by the establishment of the commercial model, a production floor reported to be harsh, the battle against piracy, and the issues now being asked over technology and those who carry the work — light and shadow were always the front and back of the same endeavor. Excellent anime showed unknown worlds, encouraged people, and connected hearts across borders. The same industry also imposed a heavy burden on its creators. To look upon both sides at once is, we believe, what leads to truly knowing the culture of anime.

Where anime will head from here, we do not yet hold a certain answer. Whether the world’s market will spread further, how new technology will change the floor, whether the dignity of creators that was nearly lost will be regained — all of these lie beyond an accumulation of choices that countless people will make from now on. One thing can be said: as long as there are people who make it and people who love it, anime will go on continuing, changing its form.

From the dawn of moving pictures, toward the world’s ANIME. To the readers who have followed this long story this far, we offer our heartfelt thanks. If looking upon a hundred years of light and shadow at once becomes a clue for savoring more deeply each and every anime we will encounter from here, there could be no greater joy than that. Without rushing to an answer, let us go on watching over what comes next, together.

【A History of Anime: 100 Years of Japanese Animation — End】