The Great Anime Shift: A historical deep dive and timeline of events
It’s the year 2026. The hot-honey pandemic is running rampant, AI has wandered through our front doors and is now sitting at the kitchen table eating spag bol with Will Smith, and, more importantly, anime is cool!
Yes, anime is firmly embedded in mainstream culture today. But this wasn’t always the case…
So how did 24-minute episodes of Japanese animation go from a niche interest to a worldwide obsession? Luckily for you, I’ve compiled anime’s meteoric rise into a three-era timeline, charting the pioneers, shows, platforms and cultural moments that helped change how anime is watched, shared and perceived.
Welcome to The Great Anime Shift.
The Dark Ages: Pre-2016
To really understand how far the anime community has come, we must first look at where we’ve been.
Whilst it’s true that many iconic anime flourished during this period - Dragon Ball Z, Berserk, Death Note, Fullmetal Alchemist and even the first season of Attack on Titan, to name a few - the truth is, society just wasn’t ready to accept giant humanoid Titans running amok as peak fiction.
The Dark Ages were a turbulent period for anime fans, marked by three major dilemmas.
Illegal streaming - Did you know Crunchyroll started out as an illegal pirate site? Before you could find the latest episodes of Jujutsu Kaisen on Disney+, getting your anime fix often meant venturing into the murky world of torrents. You might’ve risked jail time by downloading episodes through services like LimeWire or torrent sites like The Pirate Bay. The downsides included slow downloads, questionable quality and the occasional accidental porn file or virus. If illegal pirating wasn’t your thing, your best bet was free, but also illegal, anime streaming sites like KissAnime, Gogoanime and WatchCartoonOnline (WCO).
Bullying — “Nerd!” “Freak!” “Hentai!” These are just some examples of the verbal abuse that might’ve been hurled your way during The Dark Ages. People had the misconception that anime watchers were all unhygienic, out-of-shape (mostly male) freakazoids who got their kicks from watching big-titty cartoon women fight bad guys. Admitting you were an anime fan could be socially risky - God forbid you were caught running around the playground with your arms dangling behind you like Naruto.
Lack of community - Fan-on-fan violence Perhaps the most damaging hardship of all was that anime fans were divided into two groups:
Hardcore fans: Anime was their whole life. They firmly believed they could go Super Saiyan and spent their time reading manga.
Casual fans: Anime was just one part of their media rotation, and they could just as easily chat about other shows, games or hobbies.
But tough times don’t last, and neither did The Dark Ages. Brighter times were just over the horizon for the anime community.
The Community Years: 2016–2019
Here’s where The Great Anime Shift really begins. Led in large part by Black people, fans began coming together in a way that would transform anime fandom from a niche bubble into a massive cultural movement.
Timeline of events:
2016 - The emergence of RDCworld1 RDCworld1 helps unite the anime community through comedy, with their hit video When People Take Anime Too Far. More content from Black creators emerges online, and the West starts to take notice.Other notable content creators of this era included CalebCity, Cilvanis and King Vader.
2017 - Attack on Titan Season 2 After a four-year gap, Attack on Titan returns with its second season and takes the world by storm: massive plot twists, incredible animation, peak cinema.Other notable anime of this era included My Hero Academia, Dragon Ball Super, Demon Slayer and Black Clover.
2018 - TikTok blows up ByteDance merges Musical.ly into TikTok, and the platform takes the anime world by storm in three main ways: 1. Trending anime sounds and videos become widespread. People no longer have to go out of their way to come across anime. 2. Clips showcasing incredible animation, plot twists and writing flood the internet, helping more and more people discover new series to watch. 3. Attractive, young people begin embracing anime. For guys, anime becomes a cool way to say, “I’m cultured”; for girls, it's a way to show off their quirky side. The stereotype of the awkward, socially isolated anime fan was starting to fade.
2019 — Demon Slayer slays With exceptional animation and an emotionally accessible story, Demon Slayer arrives at just the right time as a new wave of anime fans are being welcomed in. It wasn’t an entirely new kind of shōnen anime; it was a familiar formula executed so well that people who’d never watched anime before could finally see what the fuss was about.
Everyone Eats Saga: 2020–present
By the beginning of this new chapter, anime culture had blossomed into a widely accepted form of entertainment. Still, a handful of events would take anime to even greater heights.
Timeline of events:
2020 - The COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown arcThe pandemic devastates the globe, and lockdowns change how people spend their time. With people stuck indoors, streaming platforms became a major source of entertainment - and that entertainment included anime.
2021–2023 - Stream, stream, stream! Sony completes its acquisition of Crunchyroll in 2021. A year later, Funimation finishes moving its library across, giving Crunchyroll an even bigger catalogue. Netflix invests more in anime and anime-inspired animation, with titles like Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and Blue Eye Samurai. No matter where you watched, anime was increasingly hard to miss.
2022–2024 — Megan Thee Stallion says anime is cool Megan Thee Stallion gallops onto the scene. Her love of anime culminates in 2024 with her track “Otaku Hot Girl” and an appearance as a presenter at the Crunchyroll Anime Awards. Meg helps bring anime further into the mainstream, strengthening its visibility within hip-hop and Black celebrity culture. Plus, she’s young and hot, which helps break down lingering anime watcher stereotypes.
2023 — Jujutsu Kaisen enters Fortnite Jujutsu Kaisen join one of the most popular games of all time. Anime proves it was everywhere - and here to stay. Other anime franchises featured in Fortnite include Attack on Titan, Dragon Ball and My Hero Academia.
2024 — Digital manga goes global Manga’s growth wasn’t entirely dependent on physical books. Digital distribution becomes a major part of the industry’s business model, allowing fans around the world to read manga digitally.
2025 — Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle is a box-office hit Grossing more than $793 million worldwide, Demon Slayer proves that anime can compete for the same global cinema audiences as major Hollywood productions, with theatrical releases becoming events in their own right.
2026: What’s next?
Anime has come a long way from being dismissed as a niche interest to becoming a cultural force. But if The Great Anime Shift has taught us anything, it’s that we’re nowhere near the final arc.
So, what comes next? Bigger stories, bolder creators and a whole new generation of fans ready to take things even further. After all, as My Hero Academia puts it…
PLUS ULTRA!
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