Anime has always been Mainstream Actually

I've been struggling to explain why NO Anime isn't Mainstream now without unintentionally sounding like I'm saying Battle Shonen and Ghibli films don't count as Anime.  

But as I was watching a recent video from a YouTube channel called RoyaltyIsHere I had an epiphany.

If all the examples of unambiguously Mainstream Anime you can cite are still 90% Battle Shonen and Ghibli films or stuff like that, then you aren't referring to anything that's changed from 15 years ago.  Dragon Ball was Mainstream in America already 15 years ago, it was 16 years ago that they made a Hollywood Live Action film out of it.  

It was over 25 years ago I was in Middle School during DBZ’s original Toonami Broadcast and guess what, liking DBZ was cool and hip at the Middle School I went to, no one was bullied because they liked DBZ or Pokémon.  I was weird because I also liked Sailor Moon while being at the time Male, I didn’t get bullied for it because I wasn’t brave enough to be open about that back then, I was bullied simply for looking like a stereotypical Nerd.  But for Girls Sailor Moon was just as mainstream, and there were plenty of guys who weren't cowards like I was.

The only thing that's different now is that the amount of Battle Shonen that exists with official English Localizations has increased.  We now get all the big currently airing Battle Shonen soon after they air in Japan.  Imagine if when we got DBZ in the 90s we also got every other Battle Shonen DBZ was competing with as it aired in Japan at the same time?

I often see specific claims of "you used to get bullied for liking Naruto" and I'm like no you weren't bullied for liking Naruto, you were bullied for Naruto running in the hallways. That they knew what you referencing when you did that proves how mainstream Naruto already was, if you referenced an actually niche Anime they wouldn't known what kind of dork you were, just that you were a dork.

So the people who think Anime is mainstream in a way it wasn't before are misremembering the past by cramming everything together.  They’re pretending there was a past when DBZ and Naruto were uncool so they can pretend how cool they are now represents some kind of progress, but it doesn’t.

If Battle Shonen seems even more mainstream now it’s an increase in popularity that has been perfectly parallel to Superhero Comics and Star Wars.  To some extent they have been Mainstream as long as they have been part of American Culture at all.  But you will get called a Nerd for being particularly obsessed, both back then and now.  

Same with Ghibli films, they've been getting American Theatrical Releases distributed by friggin Disney since at least 2000.  Stephen Spielberg cited Castle of Cagliostro as an influence on the Indiana Jones films. Oh that’s right, how could I forget one of the biggest Hollywood film franchises of the 1999-2003 era was openly inspired by Anime, The Matrix.  Akira also gets refenced all the time.

And even more genuinely Niche Anime making somewhat of an impact on Pop Culture is nothing new, remember Kite inspired a Gwen Stefani Music Video.

However, the extent to which liking “Moe” Anime will get you suspected of being a potential Pedophile has if anything only gotten worse as Pedojacketing people for clout has only become even more trendy. 

As I said before VTubers and Luce only represent an increased vague familiarity with the Anime style but not what it truly represents. Art Teachers in Art Schools still forbid their students from drawing in an Anime Style, so even the style is only mainstream in a way that's mutually exclusive with true respectability.

I’ve talked before about the distinction between how NTR and Western Cuckolding Erotica usually goes.  Well that exposes why so many Erotic ASMRs with Anime Style Images are still driven by western Porn Logic, their takes on Cuckolding are purely western.   And I don’t particularly mind since as a Femdom fan that is more to my general preferences.  But since no NTR Hentai has ever gotten an English Dub I would like to hear English VAs perform a true NTR scenario for a change. 

But Femdom itself is different in Doujinshi than it is in Western Porn.  Western Femdom feels dominated by what I call Pseudo-Femdom, they’re about “Weak” men being emasculated by High School Mean Girls in a world who’s internal logic is still rigidly Misogynist.  If you want Femdom stories that actually feel like an ideological threat to the Patriarchy, I advise checking out Doujins like Eaten Up By The Bookworm Girl, Invited to The Girl’s Dormitory, Sweet and Sour, Until You Beg so Sweetly and IMAIZUMI BRINGS ALL THE GYARUS TO HIS HOUSE. And that’s without even getting into the wholesome Feminization stories that I’m unsure whether to classify as Het or Yuri.  So I also wish English Language ASMR VAs would try drawing inspiration from stories like those instead of just putting an Anime Style avatar over Audios that sound like they could have been on any Normie Femdom site 20 years ago. 

The ASMR community is good at recreating the Yandere appeal, I give them credit there. But that’s about it. 

The point of this post is, Mainstream Anime has always been Mainstream, but true Otaku Culture is not and very probably never will be. 

Update April 13th 2025: What's funny is I recently saw someone talking about how Mainstream Anime is now refer to 2018 as a time when it wasn't yet, when I was definitely already seeing it proclaimed mainstream now in 2018, that's the year Kim Kardashian cosplayed as Zero Two.

Update April 25th 2025: Barnes and Nobels' Manga section being much larger then it's section for Western Superhero Comics is also nothing new.  The last time I was ever at a Barnes and Nobels was before 2018 and the first time was back in the early or mid 00s and all through that history that was how it was, the Manga was one entire side of one aisle while all the Marvel and DC stuff was just one small section on the other side.  To some extent I think this had to do with Manga covering a wider range of genres then how much more people were actually buying it. But from what I've learned recently about the history of the industry I think some U.S. Manga distributors were just more aggressive at getting their stuff on shelves.