MAPPA's Anime Share Nearly Triples on Jujutsu Kaisen — SkimNews
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- Media Partners Asia released "The Anime Economy" report showing the genre drew a larger monthly audience than any other on Asian streaming platforms from July 2025 to August 2026, with between 31% and 47% of premium-VOD users watching anime in any given month versus 26–34% for the average of the seven other genres tracked.
- "Jujutsu Kaisen" ranked as the top anime title in seven of eight Asian markets tracked in the first half of 2026, driving studio MAPPA's share of regional anime hours from 6.1% in H2 2025 to 17.3% in H1 2026, narrowly ahead of TMS Entertainment at 16.6%.
- Netflix carried roughly half of the region's anime viewing across the tracking period — 51% of anime hours in H2 2025 and 50% in H1 2026 — while anime viewing on the service grew nine times faster than Netflix's overall viewing, according to MPA's classification of the platform's "What We Watched" disclosures.
- Japan's anime market has become a two-way contest between the two largest global platforms: Prime Video held a 43% share of anime hours there in H2 2025 before Netflix pulled even at 42% each in H1 2026.
- YouTube counts 70 million people watching anime-related content monthly in Japan alone — totaling 2.8 billion hours — with official channels like Aniplex (5.1 million monthly viewers) and Toho animation (4.8 million) now functioning as media businesses, and YouTube-native outfits like Plott producing franchises at a fraction of traditional TV costs.
- Sony took part in seven of the 21 anime transactions and alliances MPA counted since 2021 — 11 of them struck in 2025 and 2026 — building what MPA calls the industry's only end-to-end anime operation across Crunchyroll (21 million paying subscribers), Sony Pictures, Sony Music and Aniplex, with equity stakes in both Kadokawa and Bandai Namco.
- MPA projects worldwide anime spending will rise roughly 10% annually through 2030, driven mainly by Asia outside Japan and North America, with CEO Vivek Couto framing the industry's next constraint as "capacity, not demand or capital."
Why it matters: The report frames anime's next phase as a land grab over who owns the IP, not who licenses it. Sony now sits across production, distribution (Crunchyroll), music, and holds equity in Kadokawa and Bandai Namco, while platforms like Netflix are moving from library buys — still 80% of its anime viewing — to financing productions directly, as with its January 2026 MAPPA partnership. Gains are projected to concentrate among a limited group of franchise-owning companies and studios.
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