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I was wondering if anime are more popular than Western cartoons - **in terms
of viewership and revenue** \- as I couldn't find any information on this.

I don't think there has been any significantly large survey on this. What
about manga vs comics?


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2013-08-24T19:49:26.580
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anime-history
Are anime more popular in terms of viewership and revenue than Western cartoons?


No. Up until now Japanese anime have never been in the popular spotlight
compared to works for Western animation. Anime can be described as a ["pulpy"
format](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulp_magazine), often cheaply made,
heavily-formulated, low critical respect and scrutiny. Though what makes anime
unique is it's meta-genre. There are a lot of ideas in it's story templates
the that are not typically seen or are non-existent in Western media culture.

## Animation in the West

A lot of Western animation companies, like Disney for an example, don't just
treat their works as a product, but as a brand. The better their brand looks
to consumers, the better marketability the company will have with related
works and products (they spend a lot on PR, marketing, lawyers, focus groups,
etc, to ensure this). There's a lot of oversight involved is western
animation, in order to ensure a better quality product, which typically drives
up the cost of production. Of course, this all to ensure that their product is
a successful as possible, in order to make obscene amounts of cash.

## Animation in the East

While there is a ever growing community of anime fans out there, who like
anime for one reason or another (e.g., characters vs. story), but few people
typically care about the specifics of anime. In anime, the stakeholders are
more concerned about the overall final product than any given piece of it, the
product hits the main selling points of the formula (e.g., fighting, boobs,
robot, X-dere character, harem cast, etc.), it's good to go. With anime
there's a general lack of oversight, which typically leads to low expectations
of the audience and from them as well. However the pulpy aspect of Anime
allows authors a much higher level of freedom as they are free to explored new
ideas, as long as they meet the initial criteria of the stakeholders.

## On Popular Culture

This pulpiness is the same as what webcomics (modern comic book heroes starred
in this pulpy format) and indie games are to us in these modern times. There
are tons of these all around, most of it is forgettable, but occasionally
there's that polished gem that can really good interesting, funny, charming
and/or inventive stuff (e.g. _Azumanga Daioh, Serial Experiments Lain,
Baccano!_ ). There's a lot of opportunities to fail, learn, and innovate, but
at the same time the barriers for entry are lower and turnover is usually
higher compared to similar works of western animation.

Viewership and revenue are often a by-product of the popularity of a given
brand. Just like really popular mainstream movies or games will always make a
profit, no matter how good or bad it might be (e.g., the _Call of Duty_
series, the new _Transformers_ movies). Western animation has built a brand
image and following through it's popularity, and in order to sustain it's
overwhelming popularity, there's a lot of scrutiny from both the audience and
stakeholder to maintain a certain image and status within popular culture. We
don't typically see this with anime, so it gives us an idea that anime
specifically is not really up there in the mainstream.

Nowadays we see a lot of people on TV and the Internet proclaiming themselves
to be "geeks" openly (whether they are or not is another thing), so there's
not a whole lot to be said about anime and the otaku subculture. One can say
they are a gamer ("I'm a huge gamer") or a TV show/movie ("I'm a big
Disney/Pixar/Spongebob/Avatar fan"), but there are very few people come out
about anime. This leads us to believe that anime hasn't reach the tipping
point where it can be considered acceptable, like the other forms of western
animation.


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Disney's _Wreck-It Ralph_ \- $471,222,889 (worldwide revenue)

Ghibli's last two movies ( _The Secret World of Arrietty_ , _Ponyo on the
Cliff by the Sea_ ) - $202,614,288 + $145,570,827 = $348,185,115 (worldwide
revenue)

So, based on a very small sample (not statistically valid), I'd say western
animated movies make a whole lot more money than Japanese anime.

However, as Logan and Krazer pointed out, it's probably an apples and oranges
comparison. Disney spends a whole lot more money on their movies than Ghibli
does.

I'm not even going to attempt to do a comparison on Cartoon Network vs ATX or
anything like that.


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2013-08-28T19:42:56.297
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I don't think no one will understand the hypocrisy in this, we talk about
animes being comparatively less popular to American cartoons.

There is a very deep reason for that state of liking, this is because most of
the viewers are from the western part of the world (except the anime producing
country; Japan). In Asia, it doesn't go alike for both adults and kids. So,
comparatively the viewership is high enough in most of the western countries.

This makes the judgment not fair and obviously, it goes in the favour of
American cartoons even though there is a huge fanship for animes globally. An
anime is a must-watch piece of art, people should go for it, but an American
cartoon is given to you when you were kids. It's like some hit channels in
most of the countries are highly likely to show American cartoons than many of
the animes.


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