If Anime were Mainstream then Anime that are adaptations would be allowed to stand on their own.

I guess this is part 5 of my “no Anime isn’t mainstream” series.  But each prior part I genuinely felt like now I’ve made the most important point and these should be read backwards. But in this case I'm not sure this point is actually more important than the last two, but it is more of a coherent point then the first two.  It does still stand on it's own however.  This post's thesis does also stand on it's own of course. 

Stephen Spielberg's Jurassic Park is a bad adaptation of Michael Crichton's book, it only even tried to adapt the last half of it and changes everything, who lives and who dies isn't even the same, the very moral of the story is arguably changed somewhat.

Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is a bad adaptation of Stephen King’s book that King has vocally expressed his intense undying hatred for. 

James Whale’s Frankenstein movie is pretty much in name only (when it isn’t changing even some of the names). 

Each of these movies is near universally considered a Cinematic Masterpiece, why? Because Cinema is respected as an artform, if the movie is undeniably a good movie then how it's not like the source is fun academic trivia at best. Only if the movie is seen as a bad movie all on its own will its infidelity to the source material be then added on as another offense it committed and maybe by some book fans treated as if those changes are the reason it's bad. 

But when it comes to Anime that are adapted from a source material, especially Visual Novels, you will see a refusal to accept this, I've even literally seen people argue an Anime that seems good on it’s own is worse then one that is simply Bad because it gives people the wrong idea of what the source material is. 

This proves Anime isn’t mainstream, or to be consistent with this post’s predecessor is not currently any more mainstream than it was 20 years ago. What has increased in at least their existence being known to Westerners in those 20 years are Visual Novels. So now fans who do care about the Visual Novel at least in concept (even if they aren't actually going to read it) are a large enough percentage of those watching the Anime, especially the ones invested enough to make YouTube videos about them, that their perspective can dominate the discourse.

Visual Novels are themselves not a very mainstream artform, especially here in the west where they are inarguably even more niche then Anime is. And so the grudge fans have against Anime they feel misrepresents certain VNs comes in part from that place of resentment. 

If any of the artforms related to Otaku Media is mainstream at least in Japan it’s Manga.  Not all Manga, not Doujinshi by definition, but the ones serialized in popular weekly Magazines by the biggest publishers. So no surprise the rare Anime that are somewhat normal to be praised as equal to or even better than their source material are Manga Adaptations, not all or even most of them, but enough to be notable. It does kinda bug me how often this happens to be Shoujo Manga made by Women adapted to Anime primarily by Men.  But I will highlight an example of the opposite, the Manga for  K-On was made by a dude, but the Anime was written and directed mainly by two women with a woman as the character designer and a studio largely founded by women. and that Anime has been proclaimed by one highly respected Anime Scholar, The Ultimate Adaptation.  

I led with Jurassic Park because it’s the least contentious. Stephen King has his fanboys willing to defend his perspective on the film (I'm one of them sometimes honestly). And Frankenstein’s Novel has fans who keep wanting each new Frankenstein film to be the perfect adaptation and then complain when it isn’t (the 2004 version is the closest I think a dramatized adaptation theoretically can be). 

In the case of Jurassic Park however I find it telling that the film version’s popularity overshadows knowledge of the book’s very existence to such a degree that half of what people say when hating on the Jurassic Park sequels are unknowingly them becoming more like the original book. Chief example being every time someone gets so offended at the very concept of allowing a human to be able to kill or even momentarily harm a Dinosaur, that happened multiple times in the original novel.  

Back when most westerners didn’t even know what Visual Novels were, Higurashi When They Cry’s Studio Deen Anime was very popular and universally praised as the best Horror Anime.  It is in terms of the basic sequence of events less different from the source material than any of the three movies I mentioned up top, and certainly can't be accused of inverting the moral or the themes the way they do. But now popular opinion has been turning on it because of the influence of VN fans. 

Higurashi being the Anime I'm focusing on defending the most in this post is also a factor in why I choose the three Book to Film adaptations at the start that I did. Each of them is a story that is arguably a Horror story but also arguably not. But more specifically here the adaptation is arguably leaning into the Horror aspect more then the source material did, the percentage of the whole that is focused on being "scary" is larger in the film then it is in the book. And that is also the case with Higurashi, an Anime that is or was considered the best execution of the Horror Genre in it's medium, but the VN fans often seem to hate Higurashi even being classified as Horror in the first place even though Ryukishi07 said a major part of the goal was to make layers feel Terror the same way the Key VNs made people feel Sad. 

A lot of the time people critiquing an adaptation will accuse it of lacking an important theme or subtext that I absolutely got from the adaptation simply for not being conveyed in the exact same way. With Visual Novel adaptations that is especially potent. As someone who defends Voice Over Narration and Inner Monologues in Anime in general, I’m baffled at how determined VN fans are to think the pages of inner monologue cut from the Anime are the only way to convey a certain character has a certain psychological issue when simply watching how they act in the Anime makes it incredibly obvious. My past anti "Show don’t Tell" rants were about defending the artistic value of telling not denigrating the value of showing, but VN fans really do seem to think telling is the only way to convey information. 

Maybe it seems like I’ve rambled off topic.  The point is if most Anime were in fact being watched just as widely as Disney movies, there would be no shortage of people just enjoying the Anime as Anime and hopefully respecting the VN when they hear of it but not letting any complaints change how they feel about the Anime that got them into it in the first place. 

No one thinks Visual Novels are mainstream now, certainly not the ones actually made in Japan. What this observation proves is that Anime, especially Anime based on Visual Novels, are more mainstream then Visual Novels but only barely. 

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 as you still would be today. That they knew what you were referencing when you did that proves how mainstream Naruto already was, if you referenced an actually niche Anime they wouldn't know 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 how 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 (and disagreeing) 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 well before 2018 and the first time was back in the early or mid 00s and all through that time 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 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.

Update May 17th 2026: This is a screenshot from The Toys R Us Dragon Ball Ban by thisvthattv from around 3:38. It really shows how none of this Mainstreaming of Anime discourse is new since it's quoting an ANN article from 2000.

The Pseudo-Mainstreaming of Anime

So I’ve done a series of posts on this blog trying to debunk the notion that Anime is Mainstream now, and this recent hype over “The Vatican has Embraced Anime” has helped me realize part of the problem is how a vague understanding of the Anime Style is somewhat Mainstream.

Luce is not proof that anyone in the Vatican has seen any Anime just as someone throwing around the term “Big Brother” isn’t proof they’ve read 1984.  It’s just proof that everyone now knows how to draw the basic concept of an Anime Girl.

Just because people have heard of it doesn't mean it's mainstream.  People have always known who the Insane Clown Posse were, that didn't make them mainstream.

I realize this kind of distinction sounds to some like it’s related to the rhetoric of GateKeepers.  I don’t think you need to have seen all the Anime I’ve seen to at all qualify as being into Anime, I haven’t seen a lot of Anime others consider essential viewing like Gurren Lagan or any Satoshi Kon stuff.  I considered myself into Anime when I’d only seen a fraction of what I’ve seen now.  But my point has never been about how well versed in Anime culture any individual is.

In order for Anime as a whole to truly be mainstream the pool of specific shows and movies that are well known even to people who aren’t particularly into Anime needs to be much wider.

Feral Historian is a YouTube channel I stumbled upon recently, they are fairly conservative and so someone I disagree with a lot, but unlike a lot of Conservatives who talk about Nerdy stuff on YouTube he has actually insightful and interesting things to say rather than raving about Wokeness every time a protagonist isn’t a White Male.  He largely talks about Sci-Fi and some Fantasy stories usually with a focus on War, Dystopia and Alternate History.  He’s covered some very mainstream well known franchises and some fairly niche books and forgotten movies and tv shows.

So anyone who is very into Anime reading all that can probably quickly come with a long list of Anime right up his alley, but in fact the only Anime he’s covered is Cowboy Bebop a very mainstream show that feels barely relevant to the general themes of his channel.  For me 86 pops into my mind as the first thing I’m curious to hear his take on, but I’m sure others would more quickly jump to Gundam, Macross, Gunbuster, Evangelion, Code Geass, Psycho Pass, Attack on Titan maybe Darling in The FranXX.  But other niche even within the world of Anime options would include Muv-Luv/Schwarzesmarken, Rahxephon, Aldnoah Zero, Str.A.In, Kado the Right Answer, Babylon and the Sekaikei trilogy.

If Anime actually had the mainstream pervasiveness of Star Wars or Star Trek or Marvel and DC Superheroes there’s no way none of those Anime would have been covered by now especially since Bebop proves he doesn’t have an innate bias against Anime.

Update: Feral Historian's interest in Bebop stems form an interest in Western tropes translated to a fantastical setting.  And I have a prior post on the other Anime that can appeal to that.

https://mithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2024/04/anime-neo-westerns.html

Update December 19th 2024: I realize I really need to explain better why I think this Random YouTuber not talking about Anime much proves anything.

It shows how much trouble the vast majority of Anime has leaving the existing subculture of people already particularly into Anime that there is so much Anime that is exactly the kind of SciFi this guy is into that he seemingly hasn't even heard of even though he does know plenty of Niche stuff.

Update March 2026: A similar point could be made about how I've seen two videos about the Symbolism of White Hair in fiction which included few Anime examples, to someone who's actually into Anime it's obvious there should an entire sub section for this topic on White Hair in Anime being associated with characters who are in some way artificially created. 

What does "Mainstream" even mean anymore?

Once again I got into arguments on Twitter with people who think Anime is mainstream now.  Everything I said in the post over a year ago still stands.

https://mithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2022/01/no-anime-still-isnt-mainstream.html

But obviously I have more to say so I'm making another post on it.

And again the argument that baffles me the most is people thinking the mere existence of Anime or Manga being sold at Walmart proves it's mainstream.  They don't get how something can be Niche but still sold in mainstream stores, Walmart's whole brand is based on the illusion that you can buy anything there, that you'll never need to go anywhere else.  I'm pretty sure my brother purchased Insane Clown Posse CDs there back in the day (I'm talking the first 6 Joker Cards era well before Miracles).

And it's not even every Walmart, my local Walmart has no Manga and an increasingly shrinking Anime section.  They just assume if their Walmart has it then it must be standard.  

The Internet has always facilitated Echo Chambers, but Social Media has allowed people to be in one while thinking they're not.  When you primarily talked with other Anime fans on old Message Boards or Yahoo Groups you also knew this was not the whole of society.  But now we talk with other Anime fans on the same website where we learn what new policy the United States President has announced.  Most people on Twitter actively avoid the people with Anime Avatars, so all the Anime Avatars mostly only interact with other Anime Avatars and trick themselves into thinking non Anime Avatars are going extinct.

I of course inevitably get the accusation that I'm arguing this because I don't want it to be mainstream, that I'm some kind of modern hipster.  I'm actually actively trying to get more people into the Anime that I like, I recommend shows to the people I know offline, I leave comments on non Anime YouTube videos recommending Anime that's relevant to whatever the topic was.  And that may be exactly why I'm acutely aware of how not Mainstream Anime still is.  If Anime were indeed now just as normal a medium of entertainment as regular Movies and TV shows I wouldn't have soo much trouble getting people who specialize in talking about Horror as a Genre to watch what is nearly universally considered the best work of Horror in it's medium.

The thing is the nature of the Internet has made it more difficult to tell the difference between what indeed everyone is into now or just all the people in your circle.  And I'm starting to realize some of these people who think Anime is mainstream now don't even think of "Mainstream" and "Niche" as mutually exclusive. 

And yes to an extent everything is Niche in that people hyper into it specifically will always be Niche, even with Star Wars it's still Niche to have actually read more then a handful of the old EU Novels, or maybe even to have read any.

And maybe that's my mistake, arguing that Anime isn't Mainstream while still assuming Superheroes and Star Wars do qualify as mainstream now, by acting like regular old Nerds are totally the élite ruling class now.  Everyone loves MCU movies, but being the Comic Book Guy on the Simpsons who has opinions on how things were changed from the Comics will still get you mocked.

The difference is in how big and influential a percentage those hardcore fans are of the total viewership.  It used be if a Superhero movie was hated by most Comic Readers it would ultimately be considered a mainstream failure too because they were still most of the long term investment, they were still the vanguard who's opinions those less Nerdy would consider in deciding if something is worth watching, but now pleasing them has become less necessary.

People who wanted Modok to be taken seriously are considered joyless manchildren by the vast majority of people who are interested in seeing Ant-Man 3.  Netflix' Cowboy Bebop for all it's "hype" was still mostly watched by the people who care enough about the Original to be offended that parts of it weren't taken as seriously as they wanted.  Some of the same people who hated Netflix Bebop may also like Modok because they're Anime Fans who only recently started casually liking MCU movies like Trixie The Golden Witch.

I'm neither of those groups, I can enjoy both the silly and the serious versions of the things I care about. But that's not the point of what I'm arguing here.

And even Bebop is more mainstream then most Anime because for a certain generation there are a lot of people who've only seen a few Anime that put Bebop in that few.

Maybe not all the people who think Anime is Mainstream now are denying that those particularly into it still get socially stigmatized for it, but some definitely have. 

No Anime still isn't Mainstream

Like a week or so ago I stumbled upon a Twitter thread where someone lamented how Superheroes have become Mainstream now, among responders were people saying that Superheroes have "always been mainstream" and that is of course debatable.

Then someone made a comment implying that Anime is just as mainstream as Superheroes, and I of course objected to that sentiment as someone who gets "Anime PFP don't take seriously" anytime I insert myself into an Internet conversation not specifically in the Anime community.

One argument thrown out as proof that Anime is mainstream now is that you can buy it at Walmart.  And I found that very odd, there is plenty of niche stuff at Walmart, at least in the entertainment section, heck the book section seems to be only stuff I haven't heard of.  The only reason there is a narrower range of DVDs and Blu Rays you can buy at Walmart then at a place like FYE is that FYE sells more older and used stuff.  Yet all that said the Anime selection at my town's Walmart isn't great actually, Ghibli films, Sailor Moon, Pokémon, DBZ and maybe a few things that are indeed mostly known only within the community.  But apparently even Fate/ stuff is still too obscure for our Walmart.

Then this person went on to respond "just because not all Anime is mainstream doesn't mean Anime isn't mainstream", which floored me a bit as I was preparing to make the exact opposite argument, just because some specific Anime are mainstream doesn't mean Anime is mainstream.

And at this point I guess we have to define our parameters.  The context is comparing Anime to Superheroes, which is perhaps an innately flawed comparison, one is a medium the other is a genre, there are after all Anime about Superheroes, even by the narrowest definition of what makes a "Comic Book Superhero", One Punch Man and My Hero Academia are clearly drawing on American Superhero aesthetics and tropes.  And not coincidently those are two of the most popular mainstream Anime franchises born in the 2010s.  

However Superheroes in the strictest sense of what we're thinking here are strongly tied to a specific medium, American Comic Books.  And in that sense you could almost argue Anime is more mainstream since with the Anime that are mainstream it is the Anime people are watching, the mainstreaming of Superheroes is largely via adaptations into other mediums, actual Comic Books have not improved their sales at all.  However most Anime are adapted from some even more niche (at least to Americans) source material, like Manga (basically Japanese Comic Books), Light Novels, Visual Novels and certain kinds of Video Games, and fans of those mediums feel a similar resentment towards the Anime being what most people know that Comic Book fans feel.

But setting all those semantics aside, the reason Superheroes as a concept are mainstream now but Anime is not, is that while plenty of specific Superheroes still aren't household names yet, the moment a new Marvel or DC character gets a role in a Movie or Streaming App TV show announced they will start trending on Social Media just as much as the latest Batman news.  The same is absolutely not true for Anime.

Now you could say that's more about Marvel and DC as brands, but then you have shows like Invincible and The Boys becoming huge Pop Culture talking points for being alleged "Deconstructions" of Superheroes.  Anime "Deconstructions" rarely gain such automatic notoriety, even Ikuhara's 2010s work didn't get noticed much outside the Anime community.  And Anime does have at least one corporate Brand that can compete with DC and Marvel, Toei Animation, a number of Toei franchises are among the most globally mainstream stuff Japan has produced, but is every Anime they make cared about simply for being Toei?  No absolutely not, even Pretty Cure still struggles to get noticed in the English speaking world.

This debate was also about how mainstream Superheroes have become recently, their current mainstream status is the product of the last decade, maybe 2 decades.  In the 90s certain Superheroes already had their place in pop culture, even ones that hadn't had a big Blockbuster movie yet like Wonder Woman, The Flash and a handful of Marvel's.  But most of what people who'd call themselves a Comic Book Nerd cared about was not, if you told one of them in the 90s that within their lifetime the Goddamn Peacemaker would be the star of a hit HBO TV show, and there would be big budget Hollywood Blockbuster movies with Multiverse shenanigans, they would laugh in your face.

Anime Fandom currently is where Superhero Fandom was in the 90s, our existence is acknowledged more then we used to be, but only so we can be the cultural punching bag that people who knew what Pre and Post Crisis meant used to be.

The Anime equivalent of the Goddamn Peacemaker getting an HBOMax show would be Summer Radish Vacation getting a Netflix Live Action adaptation.