Anime’s Global Surge: ‘Demon Slayer’ Leads a New Wave of Japanese Entertainment
The international appeal of Japanese anime is reaching unprecedented heights, fueled by blockbuster cinematic releases like Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – Infinity Castle. The film has shattered box office records, grossing over $730 million worldwide and becoming the highest-grossing Japanese film in history, according to reports from Comscore. More than $555 million of that total came from markets distributed by Sony and Crunchyroll.
While the previous installment, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba the Movie: Mugen Train, still holds the record for highest domestic gross revenue in Japan, Infinity Castle’s stronger international performance has propelled its overall earnings to new levels. The film, directed by Haruo Sotozaki and adapted from Koyoharu Gotouge’s popular manga series, tells the story of a young warrior battling demons in a fantastical realm set during Japan’s Taisho period (1912-1926). It represents the first part of a planned trilogy, drawing from the final eight volumes of Gotouge’s 23-volume manga, originally published between 2016 and 2020. The source material has also been successfully adapted into a Japanese TV series.
Tokyo-based animation studio ufotable, founded in 2000 by Hikaru Kondō, produced Infinity Castle, with Kondō also serving as the screenwriter. Sony Pictures-owned Crunchyroll is responsible for the film’s international distribution, and its president, Rahul Purini, has described anime as “one of the fastest growing entertainment sectors in the world.”
The rise of anime isn’t solely dependent on existing manga properties, however. According to Helen McCarthy, a British author and expert on anime and manga, the medium’s origins are diverse. “We don’t always start with manga for anime. Quite often we start with games. Sometimes, we start with just wild, crazy ideas,” McCarthy explained during a recent event in London.
McCarthy highlighted the crucial role of the TV anime adaptation in boosting the manga’s popularity. “The manga ran for four years, so it was doing pretty well. But it wasn’t until the TV anime came along that the manga really took off,” she noted. Following the 2019 airing of the first TV anime adaptation and its subsequent availability on streaming platforms, manga sales experienced a significant surge. By the time the third TV series aired in 2024, the Demon Slayer manga had over 230 million copies in circulation, securing its place as the seventh best-selling manga series of all time.
The global anime market has now surpassed the Japanese domestic market in size, according to the Association of Japanese Animations, a shift that has occurred within the last two years. McCarthy attributes this growth to increased accessibility and affordability. “There is availability for free, and there is technical access,” she said. “Up until about 2015, when we started to hit serious broadband penetration and serious smartphone availability, it could be expensive and difficult to access. Now, if you’ve got a smartphone and you can get near a signal, you can stream anime straight to your phone.” This accessibility has led to a massive surge in viewership across regions like Saudi Arabia, Africa, Asia, and South America.
McCarthy drew a parallel to post-World War II Japan, where limited economic resources made entertainment a luxury. “Some people were starving. There wasn’t much money around. But if you could scrape a few pennies together, maybe sharing with mates, you could go down to a local rental manga library, and you could read yourself silly on visions of a better future,” she recalled. “Today, anime is going out to a huge young, hungry audience that can suddenly access it and afford it. It’s the ultimate in video democracy.”
A key demographic driving this growth is the youth population. In many countries across Africa, India, South America, and the Middle East and North Africa, approximately 20% of the population is under the age of 16. This demographic shift is attracting investment, with Sony investing in animation studios in India and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund backing an anime talent academy to cultivate a new generation of Arab anime creators. Plans for a Dragon Ball Z theme park in Saudi Arabia further demonstrate this growing interest.
However, McCarthy cautioned against the cultural appropriation of Japanese manga by filmmakers. “By all means, add your own elements to what it is, but let it be primarily anime-inspired, whether your film is live action or drawn anime,” she advised. “Don’t just buy the title and say ‘we’re going to do it the way we want to do it.’ You have to understand and respect the IP, otherwise, it will fail.”
