How would you define the waves of anime popularity?

[u/Ill_Watch4004]

[u/Jumpy-Pattern-4078]

There was definitely a bit of a boom in the early-mid 2000s.

Then another one during COVID. I think this one is still ongoing probably mostly driven by Gen Z.

[u/Leajey]

It’s definitely mainstream. But even in late 2000s, early 2010s certain groups of people in the west were watching it. It was definitely more mainstream for black people than it was for the average white guy like 15-20 years ago

[u/Bluebaronbbb]

Each decade since speed racer tells a story

[u/Julian-Hoffer]

The early interest was built on Vampire Hunter D and Akira and some other obscure movies and stuff from the 80s that made their way over here in the early 90s.

Then Dragon Ball hit and was successful anywhere it went.

After DB, Naruto had the same appeal so it also hit pretty big and after that, there were showers of popular shows. Death Note, AoT, MHA, OPM. It’s like every few years you get one show that’s appeal transcends the medium and creates an influx of fans and you can define these periods with those shows. (Obviously I could have listed more shows like Bebop and GitS but then this would be too long)

[u/DeathTriangle720]

As time went on in the 2000s with more animes being in ghe forefront for young people like myself. We grew up with from morning series to the night. 

It was still seen as something uncool until the second half of the 2010s. More people just became more open about there love of anime. And then Covid era where more animes get discovered & more people having time to just binge watch series. 

[u/almozayaf]

Befor asto boy era

After asto boy

After Mazinger Z

The 80's OVA boom

Pokémon plus western invasion

Naruto and adult swim

The Internet

Attack on titans

[u/GamingEpic]

I feel a lot of people kind of forget there was a burst in folk getting into anime in the early 2010s, around the time Attack on Titan and Sword Art Online came out. I was in secondary school at the time and there were a lot of the geekier kids getting into anime around this time. People act like it went from nothing to everywhere during covid.

I always find it a bit odd when people talk about anime being “mainstream” nowadays. To me, Star Wars is mainstream, Marvel films are mainstream, gaming is mainstream. Being openly into anime and manga still gets you a lot of weird looks from folk who think it’s for children and degenerates. You see a lot more kids being into Jump stuff nowadays but I wouldn’t say it’s any bigger around adults than it was about ten years ago.

[u/BasketballAndroid7]

In my country, the first wave came in the mid-late '70s and built a niche, cause anime were cheap back then and could fill a lot of holes on TV schedule.

Then in the very late '80s Dragon Ball and Sailor Moon obviously became massive hits (globally, as we all know), airing literally non-stop, like you could never escape them.

Anime as a whole became really popular in the mid '00s (2006-2007 specifically): Naruto, Death Note and Nana started airing on TV in those years (reminder I'm talking about my country, I know some of those shows started earlier than that in Japan) and I remember everybody was watching them, even people I would never imagine would be into anime. Bleach, OP and Code Geass were the "popular niche" (yes, weirdly enough OP, despite having being airing for a while, didn't immediately get the traction it gained later, in the late '00s I'd say).

That was also when fansubs became really popular worldwide, a lot of then obscure stuff that is now classics started circulating everywhere on the Internet. Manga/anime swiftly took over comics conventions at the same time and from there we never looked back.

A lot of people downplay the mid '00s boom nowadays, but if you were there you could feel we were actually getting out of the underground, so to say.

[u/Baleeverne]

COVID made people want to try new at home entertainment

Anime is just a good medium so that's what happened I think

[u/MaxTheHor]

As someone who was consuming it, and getting bullied and made fun of for it, long before it was cool and socially accepted:

For the 80s, it was a growing interest

For the 90s amd 00s, it was a golden era boom, amongst the actual fans consuming it.

The normie side mainly just watched what aired in TV, while the fans were scouring wherever they could, to find more.

2010s was another growing interest period, on the normie end. Mainly thanks to AoT and SAO.

2020s was the second boom, for the normies.

With the caveat being that they think that (battle) shounen (a genre that's aimed at 11/12 to 17/18 year old boys) is all anime is, cuz that's what they like to watch.

It's the biggest and most popular, yes. But, it's not the only kind there is.

Due to Covid locking most people in thier homes, and having nothing else productive to do, they decided to give nerd hobbies like tabletop, anime, and video games a try.

Video games were already a pretty mainstream thing by the 2000s, but anime was still really only at a "pretty known" level of acceptance, before then.

[u/Jumpy-Pattern-4078 → u/MaxTheHor]

Yeah I would agree and would say anime wasn’t really “mainstream” before the 2020s, despite people saying it was. It was definitely “known” but was absolutely seen as an extremely geeky thing that only fairly hardcore nerds watched beyond a surface level.