Anime is getting bigger by the day.

What was once the sole property of the University Campus, anime is now so widespread it's making regular appearances on cable and free to air TV. Many of us grew up with anime, loving the shows like Astroy Boy and Kimba. This generation is now grown up and demanding more and more "adult" anime series like Tenchi and Urusei Yatsura.

This dramatic growth of anime in the last half decade has been helped along substantially by the Internet. Starting with people sharing their love of anime by talking about it, more people were brought into the genre and became hooked. Soon a few series started attracting cult followings in the west.

Eventually some series made their way onto TV such as Sailor moon, Dragonball and Pokemon. This sparked further growth of anime fan sites online, bringing even MORE people into the anime world.

That's how things are today. But the pace of change is increasing....

Japanese studios are starting to become aware of the growing western market for anime. More and more anime is being released to the west soon after the animes airing in Japan. Some talk is happening even of simultaneous releases. The recent Princess Mononoke phenomenon is a great example.

But it's not going to end there. Ties between east and west are getting closer. Just in the last couple of weeks, Lucasfilm announced a partnership with a Japanese animation studio to co-produce an anime movie. Lucasfilm will produce and fund the movie, provide the "inbetweener" artists, and distribute the film worldwide. The Japanese studio will provide the creative origin, direction and all keyframe animation. The result will be a pure anime movie, funded and distributed by the wests leading film studio.

Where George Lucas goes, the rest of the movie industry tends to follow. Many times before he's blazed new paths into unexplored territory. Do not underestimate the power of Lucasfilm.

Where do I see this heading? More and more anime movies and series will be produced through east-west colaboration. More anime will be recorded with the english and japanese actors working together in the same studio. More anime will be seen in western media, and will quickly become the "flavour of the month" which will then blend into mainstream popular culture. Anime will become as much a part of western culture as it is for our friends in the east.

And where does that leave online anime websites? On top of the world Established anime sites, especially non series specific, such as search and review sites, will gain much more attention than at any time before. If you thought the influx of anime interest because of Pokemon was big, that's nothing compared to what it will become.

The future is bright for the western anime fan. And those of us who have dedicated so much time to making beautiful and functional anime sites will finally see it pay off as we are inundated by a brand new broad varied and excited anime fan community.


Oh and speaking of broad, what do you think the medium for this western anime revolution will be? TV? Movies? Nope - boradband internet. I wonder how long it'll be before anime production studios will start approaching the most successful anime websites for broadcast partnerships?

Anyone interested can email me at neil@creek.name!

Or at a gmail address if this ploy to post this entry works ;)