Report: Manga market to grow to $63 billion by 2033

The international manga market is expected to grow to $63.08 billion by 2033, up from $14.97 billion in 2024, at least according to a report from ResearchAndMarkets.com.

Reports such as these are a small business in themselves – to read the whole thing will set you back $2,490 – but it’s a nice number to quote at the next cookout.

The report, “Manga Market by Type, Genre, Audience, Gender, Distribution Channel, Countries and Companies Analysis 2025-2033”, says that manga is growing due to

increasing international demand, widening digital platforms, and heightened anime adaptations driving global readership. Manga’s cross-cultural attractiveness remains to draw different age groups, boosting its market potential worldwide.

While the number seems a bit optimistic – will we even be able to READ in 10 years? – there’s no question but that manga and anime have taken the world by storm. 

1. “30% of global consumers watch anime at least weekly, making anime now mainstream. However, it’s 50% of Millennials and Gen Z!
2. Anime titles are increasingly available on global streaming platforms like Netflix, Disney+, and PrimeVideo.
3. Fans are willing to splurge on merchandise featuring it
4. We are now seeing anime IP being leveraged in apparel (Uniqlo, Old Navy, among others), quick service restaurants (McDonald’s), and luxury (Loewe).
5. The Dentsu research shows that 3 in 10 anime viewers globally have spent more than $200 USD last year on IP-inspired merchandise, a share that grows to 40% in the case of U.S. respondents.”

But you don’t have to read fancy reports to see why this is The Year of Anime. 

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle has been the top grossing movie in the US for two weeks running. That’s unheard of. Its the biggest grossing anime ever in the US, surpassing the previous top anime, Pokemon The First Movie in 1999.  With a worldwide box office of $555 million worldwide, it’s the highest-grossing anime and Japanese film ever globally.As many have pointed out, that’s more the Fantastic Four made globally. Move over, Thing. 

While Sony may have messed up by passing Kpop Demon Hunters to Netflix, they guessed right with Infinity Train, The Hollywood Reporter reports:

For longtime followers of anime’s rise, the scale of Demon Slayer’s latest success with Infinity Castle is the culmination of trends that have been slowly building for decades. What was once niche otaku culture has become a mainstream global force, embraced by Gen Z and Gen Alpha but increasingly multigenerational, multiracial and borderless in its appeal. Sony, perhaps not surprisingly, recognized this potential sooner than most. Since acquiring anime specialty service Crunchyroll from AT&T in 2020 for $1.18 billion — and merging it with its earlier anime platform buy, Funimation — the Japanese conglomerate has steadily transformed anime from a promising vertical into a core strategic pillar. Today, Crunchyroll spans far more than a subscription platform: It’s also North America’s leading distributor of anime films, a global licensing and merchandising operation, an anime fandom events business, and an emerging hub for music and games. At CES earlier this year, Sony executives described anime as one of the group’s central growth bets, with the sector forecast to become a $60 billion global industry by 2030.

There’s lots more from Crunchyroll head Rahul Purini in the above, including why anime is such a huge part of youth culture:

In terms of your first question, it’s absolutely true. Gen Z and Gen Alpha are a huge part of this fandom. But that doesn’t mean they’re the only age groups. We saw a lot of parents coming to see Infinity Castle with their kids, and there were many fans in their 30s, 40s and 50s. Anime fandom does overindex among the young, though.

We’ve been cultivating these relationships with young adults for a long time. So, it’s all of the things you would imagine — TikTok, Reddit AMAs and Discord; hosting real-world events for young fans and influencers to attend; and engaging the celebrity anime fans that young people follow and listen to. It’s also about being very present on YouTube, Roblox and Fortnite, and in the various other places where this young audience spends time and participates.

It cuts across various genres and subjects of interest to children, young people, and both male and female adults. This flexibility enables it to serve both educational, entertainment, and emotional requirements. Women’s (shojo/josei), children’s (kodomo), and men’s (shonen/seinen) manga have generated enormous sub-markets with devoted readers, which have helped the market expand stoutly. Publishers and creators are aggressively looking for collaborations with anime companies and gaming firms to produce cross-media content that maximizes the exposure of manga. Cross-platform is facilitating revenue across various entertainment streams, reaffirming the interconnectedness of the manga business.

I had my own take on this, but Popverse pulled out another factoid from the Dentsu report: why young readers find manga fresh and accessible:

The data is packed with interesting facts about the growth of anime outside of Japan, but one statistic that might be worth noting for Hollywood is that 11% of those surveyed who watch anime did so because they were “tired of sequels and remakes in Hollywood (like Star Wars, Marvel, DC) and want something new, a number that grows to 29% in the US. 

It turns out Volume 1 is always a good jumping on point. 

While that $63 billion figure is highly speculative, the core point stands: manga is a huge business globally.