While the international anime market continues to grow rapidly, recent data suggests that the behavior of many fans has changed significantly.
Less interested in seasonal anime?
According to an analysis by the To support his claim, he evaluated data from MyAnimeList and IMDb, among others.
While earlier series such as “Freezing: Beyond Journey’s End”, “Oshi no Ko” or “Solo Leveling” on MyAnimeList still achieved user numbers of over a million, newer titles from 2025 are sometimes significantly lower.
For example, “Sakamoto Days” and “Gachiakuta” currently only have around 507,000 and 498,000 viewers respectively. Even sequels to successful series, such as the second season of “DAN DA DAN” (553,000), recorded noticeably lower values compared to the previous season (976,000).
A similar trend can also be seen on IMDb: While older anime hits from recent years often received tens of thousands of ratings, many newer titles now achieve this magnitude much less frequently.
Anime market continues to grow
The analyst therefore suspects that the previous enthusiasm of many hardcore fans for almost every new anime season could slowly wane and that more and more viewers are instead consuming content more passively.
However, this does not mean that anime as a whole is losing its importance. As reports from the Association of Japanese Animations (AJA) have made clear in recent years, the international anime market continues to grow steadily and reaches new record levels every year – most recently 2.17 trillion yen in 2024.
In addition, films such as “Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle” or “Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc” have enjoyed enormous success outside of Japan in recent months and in some cases have even surpassed major Hollywood productions.
It is also conceivable that only the profiles on platforms such as MyAnimeList or IMDb are now actively maintained by fewer people. But what do you think about it? Feel free to share your opinion in the comments!
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© Kanehito Yamada, Tsukasa Abe, Shogakukan / Freezing: Beyond Journey’s End Production Committee