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Every indication from the anime industry seems to be pointed toward growth. As companies like Crunchyroll, Netflix, and Disney continue to expand their anime offerings, market research suggests that studios need to start looking outside Japan rather than in it if they want to stay competitive. The international streaming market for anime is expected to triple by 2030 until it dwarfs the Japanese market.

The data comes from Wall Street research firm Bernstein, which estimates that in five years, the anime streaming market outside Japan will reach a staggering $12.5 billion. That is more than triple what it was in 2023, but that isn’t the really interesting bit. The same study predicts that the global anime streaming market (which includes Japan) will be $16 billion by 2023.

A quick bit of math says that, if these figures hold, streaming outside of Japan will account for more than 78% of the market. This growth is likely to be filled by companies like Crunchyroll, which continues to have the largest anime library available, and Netflix, which has made a concerted effort in the wake of their popular One Piece live-action adaptation, to give a greater focus on anime. Together, the two companies make up over 80% of the anime streaming industry and that doesn’t look likely to change anytime soon.

That isn’t to say that Disney is completely out of the picture; they have new episodes of Bleach: Thousand Year Blood War each year on Disney+ and the entirety of the Sailor Moon and the legendary Macross series in their Hulu library. However, with the global anime streaming market set to become three times as valuable as the Japanese streaming market, expect companies to keep spending more to lure anime fans to their services going forward.

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... 

• Steel Ball Run is so Different from every other JoJo's Bizarre Adventure arc that I never thought it would get an anime
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• The Summer Anime season return of Kaiju No. 8, Sakamoto Days, & Dan Da Dan are forcing me to break my vow of watching less anime
• From Tomo-Chan to Oshi No Ko: How some of your favorite manga creators got their start in hentai
• Piracy is baked into anime's past, but, like Crunchyroll, we should move on from it
• Flying whales, mechs, and Miyazaki vibes: Inside Netflix's Leviathan anime with the people who made it
• How AI translations of manga continues the 'enshitification' of the medium, and why Japanese publishers are "less precious" about it
• I never wanted a Cyberpunk Edgerunners sequel, but God help me I'm going to watch it
• The Summer Hikaru Died delivers its cosmic horror at an agonizingly slow pace
• The one thing that Dan Da Dan does better than Demon Slayer ever did