Japan’s anime industry hit a record high in 2024, with a total market value of 3.84 trillion yen ($25.25 billion), according to data released by the Japan Animation Association (AJA) at TIFFCOM, the market section of the Tokyo International Film Festival.
The session also included presentations on the international strategy of Godzilla studio Toho Global, the Gundam series, and the Annecy Award-winning feature film ChaO, which was screened at the Tokyo Festival, highlighting how anime continues to drive Japan’s expanding global content economy.
Overseas revenue increased 26% year-on-year to 2.17 trillion yen ($14.27 billion), while domestic revenue increased 2.8% to 1.67 trillion yen ($10.98 billion). This was the second highest annual growth rate on record after 2019’s 15.3% increase.
AJA Chairman Kazuko Ishikawa, who is also president of Nippon Animation, said anime is at the core of Japan’s cultural and economic exports. The association added that it aims to further improve the state of the industry so that creators and studios can continue to produce high-quality work that resonates with audiences around the world.
The upcoming Anime Industry Report 2025, scheduled to be published in December, divides the market into two main sectors. One is the broader “Anime Industry Market,” which estimates consumer spending across anime-related goods and licenses, and the other is the narrower “Anime Production Market,” which tracks studio revenues.
The production-side market also set a record in 2024, increasing by 9.1% from the previous year to 466.2 billion yen ($3.06 billion). The contribution of overseas business was 118.8 billion yen ($781 million), which is still a small percentage of the total, but it is steadily growing year by year.
“Overseas markets now far exceed domestic revenues, and the gap is only widening,” said Masahiko Hasegawa, editor-in-chief of AJA Report. “Today’s growth includes not only content distribution but also bundled deals across theatrical, streaming, merchandising and event rights.”
AJA data shows that in 2023, international anime revenues exceeded domestic revenues for the first time since the pandemic, and the gap widened dramatically in 2024. The International Otaku Event Association currently lists 136 anime-related events in 51 countries and regions, reinforcing the genre’s global momentum.
The Japanese government continues to position anime and related media, including movies, games, manga, and music, as strategic core industries. The national goal under the revised Cool Japan Initiative is to triple overseas content sales from approximately 5.8 trillion yen ($38 billion) in 2024 to 20 trillion yen ($131.4 billion) by 2033.
AJA predicts that future growth will come from exports across Japan’s anime ecosystem, including not only distribution and theatrical revenues, but also product partnerships, retail campaigns, and cross-media collaborations.
“Anime is no longer just storytelling,” Hasegawa says. “This is a complete cultural economy, and that economy is rapidly globalizing.”
