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Anime has become an undeniable cultural force and it has become one of the most popular forms of media around. And streaming services have stepped up to meet the demand. Whereas 20 years ago, the only way to get your anime fix was through piracy, now there is a wealth of legal anime streaming options available to us. And that shows as now the vast majority of anime is watched through legal sources, with anime piracy becoming surprisingly scarce.

This comes after a survey commissioned by Crunchyroll gave us a deep dive into the viewing habits of anime fans. It revealed that Gen Z is more likely to identify as an anime fan than an NFL fan, which is itself a huge shift in behavior from years past. However, one of the biggest changes in how anime is watched around the world comes as there are more streaming services offering more anime for fans to watch.

Now, only 13% of fans prefer unlicensed sources (piracy) as their main source of anime. Meanwhile, 78% of all anime viewing is now done via legal streaming or physical sources. Of all those surveyed, it was Gen Z that was most likely to pirate their anime. However, even that was only 24% of their anime viewing time, meaning that more than three-quarters of their viewing was on legal sources. We don’t have figures to compare that to, say, the pre-streaming era, but anecdotal evidence seems to support the idea that anime piracy is on the decline thanks to more anime being licensed in more countries and better internet speeds allowing people to stream the shows they want.

It is unlikely that anime piracy will ever completely go away – it is a tough habit to break, after all – but the more that we get our anime from legal sources, the more anime we’re likely to get. It is a cycle that has seen anime become the cultural powerhouse that it is.

Each week, Popverse's resident anime expert Trent Cannon runs down the latest and, dare we say "greatest," in anime and manga in Popverse Jump. Some recent columns have included... 

• Why the finales of My Hero Academia, Jujutsu Kaisen, and One Piece feel like the end of an era in manga
• Why is One Piece more popular now that the anime is 25 years old? We asked around and found out
• Dan Da Dan is weird, profoundly inappropriate, and the perfect anime this season
• Why One Piece's Monkey D. Luffy is the perfect anime hero for the dark times ahead
• 40 years after its debut, Dragon Ball is a pop culture force like few others
• Dan Da Dan's most emotionally devastating sequence proves that sometimes words aren't necessary
• Gnosia, the "Among Us meets Everything Everywhere All at Once" visual novel is getting an anime adaptation that needs to be as weird as possible
• Assassination Classroom is a Shonen anime well worth revisiting, ten years on
• Sony is making big moves to own the anime industry by buying Kadokawa, publisher of Oshi no Ko, Sword Art Online, and Konosuba
• 2025 is the year One Punch Man season 3 finally adapts the cosmically weird Monster Association Arc and I can't wait