Overseas market grows while domestic market sees decline

The Association of Japanese Animations (AJA) will publish its "Anime Industry Report 2018," which examines industry trends from 2017, next Tuesday. According to a preview of the report published on Wednesday, the anime market was valued at 2.1527 trillion yen (about US$19 billion) in 2017, an 8.1% increase from last year.

As the chart above shows, the industry has seen growth for the past eight years, and has reached a record high for the fifth consecutive year. The values in the chart represent the market value for each year in units of 100 million yen. (Note: The AJA has updated the numbers for 2015 and 2016. Last year's report said the market value for these two years was 1.8207 trillion yen and 2.0009 trillion yen, respectively. The organization now reports the numbers as 1.8215 trillion yen and 1.9923 trillion yen, respectively.)

The overseas market in particular has seen steady growth over the past few years, while the Japanese domestic market has seen a decline. This year, the overseas market grew 29.6% over last year and the domestic market had a 5.5% decrease. The chart below shows the domestic market with the solid line and the overseas market with the dotted line.

Last year's report also noted the growth of the overseas market, particularly in China, the country with the most contracts with the Japanese animation industry. After China, the countries with the most contracts were South Korea, Taiwan, and the United States.

Other fields that saw an increase in 2017 included live events, with a 16.3% growth, and streaming, with about a 10% growth. By contrast, the movie and home video fields were weak in 2017.

The AJA has been publishing annual reports since 2009, when the anime industry was in decline.