Within the past few years, anime has continued to gain global popularity but has seen large numbers of popularity in the United States. Anime has had for many years a small following in the USA but in the past few years has gained a large cult following with the English dubbed release of popular animes like Demon Slayer, Attack on Titian, and many more popular shows. As anime is becoming more popular and profitable it has been proven a helpful tool in spreading diversity, forms of entertainment from other nations or cultures often have had a positive effect on our culture and are a good form of entertainment, and allow our society to get rid of borders and spread cultural and tolerance. In the last 2 decades, imports of anime have grown as they developed a huge following from the English- language version of popular shows and films, an example is Hayao Miyazaki’s film Spirited Away which won an academy award for best feature film in 2003, this film was disturbed by the American company Disney that was an early company that saw animes potential for the US market.

Following the rise of anime popularity a way of measuring its growth has been the attendance of anime or comic conventions across the nation, in 2002 anime Boston had an expected 500 attendees but 2,000 showed up, recent data shows that around 20,000 or more attended Anime Boston. One of the largest events is the Anime Expo in the Los Angeles convention center where over 100,000 attendees show. Though conventions have been popping up in many cities like Lexington where fans of things like anime can buy merchandise and celebrate all things from their favorite shows. Nationwide around 140 large conventions have poped-up, the main purpose of these is to meet and see fans of similar interests to you and even meet new friends. But conventions are just one of the effects of anime’s growing popularity in the USA.

Anime has also had major global effects on the economy, benefiting the US and many other nations. In 2020 the global anime market reached 22.6 billion dollars and is predicted to grow to at least $48.3 million by 2030, according to Precedence Research. A large portion of this growth is expected to happen here in North America as merchandising and streaming of anime are becoming more popular and mainstream in American pop culture. A critical reason for this growth has been the advancement in technology, rise in OTT platforms, Virtual reality(VR), huge polarity with youth and children, rise in numbers of anime creators, partnerships between developers and online streaming, and growth in global merchandising and advertising. In 2020, Sony Pictures entertainment Inc. bought the US anime streaming company Crunchyroll which has an estimated 5 million users. With recent anime movie hits like Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba-Muggen Train (2020) which had an estimated  19.5 million us receipts, which made it the second-highest-earning anime film ever in the US box office.

Lastly, because of anime’s heightened popularity, it has begun to play a bigger role in luring tourists to Japan, anime has caused many people globally to be attracted to japans ambiance which has led to major tourism brought in by Anime. Japan’s economy is the third largest in the world just after America and China, Japan’s tourism contributes 359 billion USD to japans GDP. As Anime has grown and become bigger its attraction for travelers has even led to people even in our school choosing to travel to Japan in the summer of 2024 with Ef tours.