Undoubtedly, the anime industry is currently experiencing its best moment. It has captivated many generations and this time also the so-called “generation z“. It is worth remembering that one of the strongest and most attractive points of this entertainment medium is its ability to transmit emotions, as well as to make us reflect through its vast and varied works. At the same time, being a medium that rivals in economic terms with others already established such as cinema and music.
This time a post on Twitter/X lets us see how the impact of anime in the new generation, especially in the “z generation” is reaching an impressive level of popularity that until not long ago was difficult and perhaps even impossible to imagine for those fans with more time in the medium.
Anime’s popularity among the “z generation” is on the rise
Through his personal “Twitter/X” account, Miles Thomas Atherthon(@Real_Kilometers) member of Crunchyroll’s Marketing team, has shared a very interesting graphic made by his company “White Box Entertainment” where he shows us the impact of anime on “generation z” in the United States. As a small parenthesis, we should mention for those who do not know that this generation is comprised of the population born in the early and mid-2000s. In this graph we can see the results of a survey of 4 thousand members of this demographic group in the United States.
Through contrasting surveys for the years 2021 and 2023 on other entertainment media, we can see that in 2021, 25 percent of this group claimed to follow the NFL (YPulse) and 37 percent claimed to listen to podcasts on a weekly basis (Us Media Consumer Report). While in anime 2023, 27 percent of respondents claimed to watch TV daily (Morning Consult). In the same year, Polygon, through a survey conducted by “The Vox Media Insights and Research” revealed that 42 percent of those surveyed said they watched anime on a weekly basis.
These results, according to Miles Thomas Atherthon, only reflected the beginning of “global domination by anime. An industry that in recent years has been greatly boosted in the United States and around the world thanks to series such as Jujutsu Kaisen, Demon Slayer (Kimetsu no Yaiba) and Attack On Titan (Shingeki no Kyojin) that have positioned themselves in the last year as the favorites of fans in the United States and around the world. Obviously, and as expected from such a news, this post raised a lot of reactions from fans on the platform.
Some of the more “veteran” users recalled with nostalgia those days when accessing their favorite anime series was much more complicated than it is today. In this sense, a sector affirmed that thanks to the technological advancement of our days, the popularity of this industry had been one of the most benefited, since nowadays absolutely all the streaming platforms in the market have at least some anime to watch. This makes it possible for this medium to reach more people.
However, there were also other fans who said they felt a bit envious of “generation z“, as they remembered their childhood and adolescence where not long ago watching anime was considered a “strange people” pastime and these same fans used to suffer some mistreatment and ridicule from their schoolmates. This once again demonstrates and makes clear the potential that anime has as a training medium, so we do not doubt for a moment that this figure of 42 percent will increase, as the number of stories capable of captivating the public that this industry has are many.
