Japan’s anime industry reached a new milestone in 2025, with total sales hitting $28.5 billion, a 15.8 percent increase from the previous year. The Association of Japanese Animations (AJA) revealed these figures during its annual session at TIFFCOM, the content market of the Tokyo International Film Festival. The industry’s revenue now includes box office, streaming, TV rights, licensing, merchandising, and anime-related events, with overseas sales surpassing the domestic market for the first time in 2020.
The record-breaking performance was driven in part by the global success of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, The Movie: Infinity Castle, which earned around $800 million worldwide, including $250 million in Japan. This made it the highest-grossing anime and Japanese film of all time, surpassing the previous record set by another film in the same franchise.
Kazuko Ishikawa, president of the AJA and Nippon Animation, emphasized the importance of supporting creators to focus on storytelling. She also highlighted the government’s ambitious target of $130 billion in overseas sales of Japanese content by 2033, with anime expected to contribute $6 trillion to that goal.
Anime studios saw revenue grow by 8.4 percent to $3.2 billion, with overseas studios accounting for a record $880 million. The weak yen reduced the dollar value of these figures but boosted the earnings of Japanese animation companies when repatriating cash. Additionally, many top-ranked TV series on IMDb were anime, including Attack on Titan and Death Note.