GEM Partners recently conducted a nationwide survey in Japan of more than 30,000 people aged 15 to 69 to find out what media or entertainment brand is their favourite and they are most likely to recommend that entertainment brand to others.
It was a completely open-ended survey, where answers were not based on a prepared list, and the participants could freely answer with whatever that came to their minds. With this, series names such as “Detective Conan”, group names such as “Nogizaka46”, and service names such as “Netflix” were all viable answers, making it possible to visualize “brand power” beyond media.
Demon Slayer Came Out on Top as the Favorite Entertainment Brand in Japan.
Anime and manga have always been incredibly popular in Japan, but with the release of Demon Slayer in 2019, both mediums have seen an unprecedented amount of growth. The manga industry was worth 498 Billion Yen before the release of the Demon Slayer anime, but with the popularity of the series skyrocketing the following year, the industry jumped to an all-time high market value of over 612 Billion Yen in 2020 and has been constantly growing since then despite the staple manga series which shattered all sorts of records ending the same year.
Demon Slayer is a cultural phenomenon in Japan, and while it may come as a surprise to some, Demon Slayer is more dominant than any other brand in Japan currently as it even beats YouTube to take the crown of the Favorite Entertainment Brand in Japan.
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Season 4 of Demon Slayer, which premiered last month, scored a viewership of over 14 million on traditional TV with its first episode. The Hashira Training Arc will be the final season of the TV anime, with the Infinity Castle Arc set to be adapted into a trilogy of anime films.
8 Anime IPs among the Top 10 Favorite Entertainment Brands, Including One Piece and Detective Conan.
One Piece and Detective Conan respectively ranked third and fourth in this survey of the Favorite Entertainment Brands in Japan. Both One Piece and Detective Conan need no introduction, and they both have been having a remarkable year so far, even by their own unrealistic standards of success.
READ MORE: Demon Slayer: To the Hashira Training Grosses Over $60 Million at Global Box Office
The One Piece manga is going at an excellent pace right now, and the Egghead Arc in the anime has also been delivering stellar episodes week after week. To everyone’s delight, Toei have managed to just surpass all the expectations with the animation when it really matters, especially considering the high bar they had set for themselves with Wano.
Meanwhile, the latest Conan film, Detective Conan: The Million-dollar Pentagram, posted the Second Biggest Opening Weekend of All Time at the Japanese Box Office, only behind Demon Slayer: Mugen Train, and grossed over 3.3 Billion Yen (~$20 Million) on its debut weekend.
The Million-dollar Pentagram is the 27th film in the Detective Conan franchise and is already the Biggest Detective Conan film ever domestically, grossing over $93 million so far in Japan.
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Including Pokemon, there are eight anime in this list of the Top 10 Favorite Entertainment Brand in Japan, with Jujutsu Kaisen, That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, and Chiikawa also making the list.
With most of the franchises and anime in this list being around for quite a while, Frieren’s inclusion here is most impressive. Considering that it has been only nine months since the anime premiered in Japan, it is quite astonishing that the series is already among the most popular entertainment brands in the country.
Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End was the most anticipated new anime of the Fall 2023 season, and with good reason. Kanehito Yamada and Tsukasa Abe’s manga already had both critical and commercial success prior to its anime adaptation, having even won big at the 25th annual Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize.
With Madhouse and some of the industry’s most talented and visionary animators and producers at the helm, Frieren was engineered to be a hit and has completely turned out to be just that. The anime premiere nabbed a record-breaking 8.6 million viewers with Live and 7 days of DVR viewing across 5.64 million households, scoring an individual rating of 6.8%.
While the anime was One of the Most-Watched TV Shows in Japan throughout its run, the manga series got an incredible boost and has already sold over 4.3 million copies this year so far. It is currently the Second Best-Selling Manga of 2024, only behind Jujutsu Kaisen, which is 6th on this list of the Favorite Entertainment Brands in Japan. You can check out the complete list below.
Top 10 Favorite Entertainment Brands in Japan Right Now:
- Demon Slayer
- Youtube
- One Piece
- Detective Conan
- Chiikawa
- Jujutsu Kaisen
- Snow Man
- Pokemon
- Frieren
- That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime.
Source: GEM Standard.
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It should be noted that the name identification is integrated across media. For example, “Demon Slayer/Kimetsu no Yaiba” is a result that includes all manga, movies, and anime. What is currently your favorite Entertainment Brand from Japan? Comment below and let us know.