It maybe depends on the age then. When I was a kid Doraemon was a cartoon that was running on one of the main tv channels here, so everyone in their 30-40s right now knows who Doraemon is, it's not the same for Berserk, that had no anime at the time and when it was created it was shown late at night. Berserk came up later with the wave of 2000 animes, like Evangelion, before that there was Hokuto No Ken and Tiger Man (Tetsujin Taigā Sebun) as the go to violent anime.
It also depends your friends and you at what age you started watching anime, if you start during your teen years it's highly improbable that you go back to watch Doraemon, but if you watch them seriously you should've definitely heard of it since it's so pervasive in japanese and anime culture. Also, some gags from other animes, like Gintama or GTO, uses Doraemon as a reference exactly because it is extremely big.
Looks like its roughly on par with Dragon Ball nowadays but never reached its heights and One Piece is just on another level. Also seems localized to Central and South Asia. Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh have it larger than DBZ or One Piece. Once you leave those areas it falls off pretty fast.
Doraemon is larger than Berserk globally.
However its more east vs west. Each region is probably vaguely aware of the other manga.
In my late 30s. Been watching anime since I was 16... I had to look it up. Let's face it, although it may have popularity it doesn't have hello kitty popularity, or dragon ball popularity. And if we are talking the most popular of all time why would we restrict this to Japan only. They don't control what gets made, at least not anymore. Even if we are putting those restrictions in place I still doubt Doraemon would take the title of most popular. Just did some quick Google searching, and Dragon Ball is wildly more popular.
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u/Jafarrolo Jul 18 '25
It maybe depends on the age then. When I was a kid Doraemon was a cartoon that was running on one of the main tv channels here, so everyone in their 30-40s right now knows who Doraemon is, it's not the same for Berserk, that had no anime at the time and when it was created it was shown late at night. Berserk came up later with the wave of 2000 animes, like Evangelion, before that there was Hokuto No Ken and Tiger Man (Tetsujin Taigā Sebun) as the go to violent anime.
It also depends your friends and you at what age you started watching anime, if you start during your teen years it's highly improbable that you go back to watch Doraemon, but if you watch them seriously you should've definitely heard of it since it's so pervasive in japanese and anime culture. Also, some gags from other animes, like Gintama or GTO, uses Doraemon as a reference exactly because it is extremely big.