History was created last year when the anime business displayed an unusual turn in the numbers. In a broader sense, the anime industry includes the production, streaming, distributing, merchandise, and music businesses. Over the years, the Japanese anime industry has remained to be the highest-earning industry in the world. However, the year 2020 was unusual for both the Japanese industry and the anime market as a whole. Here is a report by The Association of Japanese Animations (AJA) that sheds light on the numbers.
Revenues Contracted 3.5% in 2020
The Association of Japanese Animations (AJA) released its annual Anime Industry Report this year. The report compares the total market value of the wider industry with that of the previous years. So, the evaluation of the 2020 market turn-over suggested that the industry saw a deemed contraction of 3.5% in 2020. The contraction evaluated to a total of 2.4261 trillion yen (US$21.32 billion).
Moreover, the report also reveals that the production of shows has also seen a wide slide. The production of new shows has also dipped by 9% in 2020. The current value of the production market is 274.4 billion yen (US$2.41 billion).
Overseas Market Overtakes Japan
The biggest revelations of the Anime Industry Report were the numbers of Japan’s industry as compared to that of the west. It was revealed in the report that the overseas anime business is still flourishing. The foreign sales and viewership saw a rise of 3.2% in 2020. In contrast, the Japanese industry slid down by nine percent in the same year. This was the first time in history that overseas business has surpassed in-home revenues.
Causes & Other Factors!
One of the striking commentaries about the report came from industry analyst Professor Tadashi Sudo. He released his personal analyses of the AJA report. In his project, he claims that most of the credit for the overall growth in the anime industry goes to the explosive popularity of Demon Slayer. Both the movie and the series have garnered a huge chunk of revenues for the entire industry. If the movie had not earned the profits that it did, the contraction might have been larger.
The elephant in the room was also addressed in the report. A monthly analysis of the effects of a pandemic on the industry was released. 2020’s growth was 1.8% less than 2019. Now that all the entertainment businesses are recuperating from the loss, there are chances that the curve will rise again in the next report. Industry inmates, production companies, and distributors are hoping for a spring of rebound in the upcoming months.