Around the end of each August, readers of the rec.arts.anime newsgroups
are encouraged to participate in an unscientific "who we are" survey. On
the opening day of the Big Apple Anime Fest, John O'Donnell of Central
Park media took an extensive look at the same question, using figures collected
from the anime industry. The major part of the results should be little
surprise to those who have spent time at anime conventions since their
beginning: anime fandom is getting younger and more female. It's still
a students' pastime, O'Donnell said, but those students spend a lot of
their incomes on anime. And every indication from those numbers promises
a lot more anime fandom and support for an art that is moving into the
American cultural mainstream,
O'Donnell pointed to a pair of surveys conducted in 1994 an 1999. The
earlier survey showed that 10 percent of fans were younger than 18, while
the later survey, taken in the year that saw the rise of Pokemon and Sailor
Moon, found that 34 percent of fans were younger than 18. Even more dramatic
was the rise in the percentage of female fans, from six percent in 1994
to 40 percent in 1999. That means a big change ahead in the kinds of anime
offered for sale in the U.S., O'Donnell predicted, He noted that the largest
anime subgenre in the U.S. has been science fiction, while Japanese anime
viewers prefer drama and romance. O'Donnell feels that's because there
is a larger female anime audience in Japan than in the U.S., and he expects
the rise in U.S. female anime fans will cause more programs to be released
that appeal to those fans.
O'Donnell also pointed to a listing of the top selling anime videos
(Dragon Ball, Akira, Robotech and Macross. Gundam and Sailor Moon, in that
order, as showing that series that appeal to females are starting to displace
programs for males (Sailor Moon outsold the Street Fighter titles, for
example). Other numbers from O'Donnell showed anime's retail power and
lack of critical respect. Anime sales in the U.S. are about the same size
as comics sales, he said. Nearly nine percent of DVD sales - and over four
percent of all home video sales - are anime titles. But even with that
commercial success, O'Donnell said it's still hard to get many people to
accept that anime is something for more than just children.
