Anime fever in India: From Naruto to Suzume, the unstoppable wave

Anime has become a sensation in the entertainment world, sweeping across India as one of the fastest-growing markets for the genre. Its popularity has skyrocketed, with millions of fans across the country, not only in metropolitan areas but also in smaller towns.

For instance, PVR IOX hosted a fan premiere of the latest Anime movie Suzume on Thursday in Mumbai -- a day before it hit big screens in India – along with a meet and greet with the director and popular Japanese animator Makoto Shinkai.

This event drew over 800 fans not just from Mumbai, but also from cities like Pune, Delhi and Vijayawada.

Balaji, a dedicated student, made the journey from Vijayawada to Mumbai solely to attend the premiere and have the opportunity to meet Shinkai.

Similarly, siblings Saloni and Krishna Arora travelled all the way from Delhi to meet the famous director. The event attracted many students from Pune as well.

The movie, which was released across 250 screens in India, clocked pre-booking admits of 30,000+.

“I didn't even know there was so much momentum, there were so many people who love my movies and animation until I reached Delhi last year. I'll never forget the energy they had,” Shinkai said during a meet and greet.

The term Anime comes from the word Animation and is a Japanese style of hand-drawn 2D animation. It started with Japanese-style comics and Manga and eventually started getting adapted into movies in the early 1900s.

What started as a genre in Japan has now become globally popular. In India, most people were introduced to Anime through shows such as Pokemon, and Dragon Ball Z that used to air on Cartoon Network, and then on the 24x7 Anime channel Animax.

Currently in India, Anime shows such as Naruto Shippuden, One Piece, My Hero Academia, and Haikyuu!!, along with movies like Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, and Your Name, have become some of the most popular and widely consumed content among fans of the genre.

However, Anime became inaccessible to users after some of these shows went off the air in 2009 and Animax India shut down in 2017. This gave way to large consumption of Anime content through pirated websites.

But as the fan base in India grew, content platforms started taking notice and started introducing an Anime catalogue. It also gave rise to Anime-only subscription-based platforms like Crunchyroll. But fans say a lot more accessibility is required.

Amanda Fernandes, who works as an event coordinator says that while she subscribed to Crunchyroll now when she was in college, she found it hard to find access, and couldn’t afford to pay for the website.

“We do need more access to a lot more Japanese content, and it's really great content,” she adds.

In fact, when the popular movie Damon Slayer was released globally, some fans in India started a Change.Org petition in 2020 to bring the movie to the big screen in India, and it garnered nearly 50,000 signatures. At the time, PVR also received a lot of feedback on its social media platforms asking for Anime content, which it has now started taking seriously.

“We saw over 100 comments asking us to bring the movie. We spoke to the producers and bought it in India and distributed it a good two months after its release in Japan, and we were just overwhelmed by the response. We did about half a million dollars in the box office,” Sanjeev Kumar Bijli, ED, PVR INOX said.

Not just Dragon Slayer, another Japanese anime Jujutsu Kaisen: 0, which was released in June 2022 clocked Rs 1.8 crore on opening day in pre-sales.

PVR INOX has so far aired 7 Anime movies and plans to screen at least 10 anime films in a year. It expects these films to contribute about 20-30 crore rupees to its film distribution business.

OTT platforms are also cashing in on the craze. Netflix, which already has an anime catalogue, is looking to launch 40 anime titles this year globally.