How Trump’s Tariffs Affect the Anime & Manga Industry
The trade war is coming for U.S. anime fans.
While many industries panic in response to Trump’s tariffs, the anime and manga industries both in Japan and in the U.S. sit in an interesting place. While there’s some cause for concern, other parts of the industry are more shielded. Here’s what we know so far.
But first….
- Miles A.
Chart of the Week
Anime and gaming, while often represented as symbiotic hobbies, do not translate to monolithic consumer behaviors. Our survey data shows clearly defined taste differences amongst self-identified anime fans, depending on their preferred gaming console.
Xbox users over-index by a wide margin watching isekai titles, while action titles perform best with Playstation users. Nintendo gamers over-index watching titles with higher female viewership.
Notably, XBox gamers have the strongest in-group trends. The title that they are more likely to watch than any other title (I’m Living With An Otaku NEET Kunoichi?!) is over 2x times more likely to be watched by that user base than either of the top titles for Playstation and Nintendo gamers were for their respective audiences. - Chloe C.
Entertainment At Large
What Working on Princess Mononoke at Studio Ghibli Taught Me (Vulture)
As Princess Mononoke’s 4k remaster is released in theaters, this lovely piece about French animator David Encinas’ journey to working on the film gives great insight into the history of cultural exchange behind anime. From speaking through a translator to Miyazaki to surviving the crunch, it’s an essential read. (Encinas also worked on A Goofy Movie, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year!) - Klaudia A.
MyAnimeList To Be Sold to Web3 Startup Gaudiy (Anime Trending)
MyAnimeList is leaving the Kadokawa family after a few rough years in a row. Per SimilarWeb, the site gets ~30M monthly visits from 6.7M unique visitors. That’s a good amount of people, so what happened?
MAL’s typical user behavior looks more similar to a wiki or an encyclopedia than a social network, which puts it in an awkward middle ground for advertisers. It’s built up novel features, but most visitors don’t even track the anime they watch. Perhaps the Letterboxd subscription model is the way to go? - Miles A.
Ones to Watch
READ: Your Forma
Your Forma’s anime adaptation began airing in Japan and certain other regions, and comes to North America soon, but you should read the original award-winning light novel it’s based on, too! I read the first volume and instantly needed to get my hands on the rest. The intricacies and politics of Your Forma’s sci-fi world unfold through major crime investigations, led by an unlikely and incredibly charming duo, with the perfect blend of thriller and intrigue. - Chloe C.
WATCH: Umamusume: Cinderella Gray
Remember last week’s issue where we talked about the horse girl racing anime franchise? There’s a new Umamusume series out for the spring season called Umumusume: Cinderella Gray! It’s a great place to jump into the franchise if you’ve never tried it before. - Klaudia A.
Will Trump Use the Death Note on the U.S. Economy?
Yesterday morning, Trump’s global trade war was supposed to go into effect, imposing massive tariffs on economic friends and foes alike. The nebulous merits, contradictory motivations, and embarrassing mathematics at play here are all compelling topics for discussion, but for our purposes at Anime by the Numbers, let’s explore how the administration’s new import tax scheme impacts the anime and manga industries.
Note: As we were hitting publish on this piece yesterday, Trump announced a 90-day pause on all tariffs except for China. This will reduce the tariff on Japan from 26% to a temporary 10% blanket “reciprocal” tariff. As such, many of the implications of these trade actions are still relevant, but please consider this was written prior to these last-minute adjustments in U.S. trade policy.
The Immediate Impact for Japan
In Japan, the average tariff on U.S. imports hovers around 3%. Prior to today, the reciprocal rate was around half that. The U.S. tariff on Japanese goods may increase nearly 10 times that to 26%, if Trump’s now-delayed plan is put in place. So how would this affect the anime and manga business in Japan?
Lets start with some context: In recent years, thanks to China’s censorship policies and development of their own burgeoning animation industry, the U.S. has become the biggest individual revenue stream outside of Japan for anime, and a top contender for manga as well. While not necessarily representative of the whole market, I find Toei Animation’s most recent investor report a good way to comprehend the breakdown:
[Normally, everything past this point would be for paid subscribers only. But for the first few issues of Anime by the Numbers, our main story will be free!]
Overseas audiences account for more than half of Toei Animation’s revenue, which is backed up by The Association of Japanese Animations’ industry-wide reports. I like this chart because it simultaneously shows how valuable North America is, but also how diverse the revenue streams are for anime publishers. The U.S. and Canada represent an outsized slice of the pie, yes, but not so much that sagging numbers for a few years would be disastrous. North America is important, but the world is very big. (Note: Mexico is categorized as Central America in this reporting).
The Japanese side of the industry is also protected by where U.S. animanga revenue comes from. Yes, many purchases from the U.S. counted as Japanese revenue are now subject to heavy taxation – notably the hundreds of millions of USD worth of anime goods purchased annually from proxy service Buyee, as Richardson Handjaja reported on last month for Animenomics. But the U.S. provides a greater share of revenue via streaming, safely outside the clammy grasp of the Trump administration’s recent actions.
As Douglas Montgomery said in a recent report from the AJA and Parrot Analytics, “North America is roughly 7% of the world’s population with almost half of the world’s [anime] streaming revenue.” The same analysis purports that merchandise still comprises the supermajority of anime-related revenue in the U.S. But having a strong foundation of streaming dollars means that typical anime airing during late night slots on Japanese TV will be spared most of the impact of tariffs. Merchandising revenue is concentrated in a very small array of titles.
Lastly, Japan is first in line to renegotiate the tariffs, per Treasury Secretary Scott Bessenet. Yesterday, Japan’s Nikkei share average dropped nearly 4% from the realization that the Trump tariffs would indeed take effect, but the tariffs on Japanese goods may not have the same longevity anticipated for other countries. While historical relations are seemingly not of concern to the Trump administration, Japanese business invests more in the U.S. economy than any other country, and Trump has generally been more favorable to the Land of the Rising Sun (so far) than other longtime allies.
However, even if Japan is able to reverse the massive tariffs, the menagerie of anime and manga-related businesses based in the U.S. are not exempt from damages, nor are audiences. Anime and manga goods are simply going to be more expensive in the U.S.
Streaming Is Safe
While no new fees will be levied towards licensing media for digital distribution, second order effects may have serious consequences to the anime streaming environment. Currently, the Japanese yen is historically weak compared to the U.S. dollar. For practical purposes, this means that it’s been relatively cheaper to pay licensing fees. If the U.S. dollar does lose some of its comparative advantage from the Trump administration’s action, it may get more expensive to license anime.
However, it’s unlikely that this will have an overall meaningful impact. Let’s break down how.
Netflix ended 2024 with a healthy operating margin of 27%, and Crunchyroll is “expected to generate 40% of Sony Pictures’ operating profit within the next two years”, per Variety+. These companies have the wiggle room to handle currency fluctuations without much concern, and have impressively low churn rates compared to other streaming services, indicating they wouldn’t be the first to go in a situation where customers are trying to cut down on monthly charges.
Not only that, but anime is much cheaper than other forms of media. This is why I consider Disney+ and Amazon Prime’s general disinterest in anime somewhat of a folly. Netflix likely spent less than the price of The Electric State on their entire anime lineup for 2024, and yet the medium accounted for over 4.1% of all hours viewed on the service. Anime is extraordinarily engaging, especially compared to the price of production and/or licensing.
In order for anime to succeed on a streaming service, it needs:
A critical mass of anime titles on the platform, so that audiences understand that it is indeed a destination for anime when they go looking for it.
A healthy dose of promotion to break through the crowded media landscape.
But these are both fairly affordable compared to the incomprehensible budgets frequently attached to streaming originals. I would not be surprised if, even in a situation where anime is slightly more expensive because of the yen to dollar ratio, there’s an increased demand from U.S.-based streaming services as a standout substitute good.
Manga is safe…for now.
As Heidi MacDonald discussed at Comics Beat, the U.S. has legal precedent in place that theoretically should provide exemptions to tariffs for printed products abroad, from a First Amendment standpoint. More than two-thirds of published books in the US are printed abroad. Goods from China, our top supplier for printed manga, are now subject to a tariff of 125%.
If tariffs do end up applying to printed manga, as many publishers fear, we may see unbelievable prices for printed manga in the U.S. COGS (cost of goods sold) on printed products have already been subject to disproportionate inflation, which has been challenging to wrangle since the pandemic started. If manga does escape the increased tariffs, the price of books may still go up to account for the second-order economic impacts of a trade war.
Will this mean more U.S. manga readers will turn to digital manga-reading apps, like Japanese readers do? Only if those apps are affordable, easy to use, and well marketed to the U.S. anime community, to compete with piracy. (This is one big reason why Korean manhwa is so popular in the U.S., because the apps to access it have these 3 factors). Right now, the people buying manga, versus those reading it digitally, are very different groups in the U.S. If buying manga becomes even more expensive, it will become even more of a collectors’ hobby than it is now.
Blu-ray Releases
Tariffs are determined not on the country of export, but on the country of origin. As Jerome Mazandarani covered in an Anime News Network Answerman column earlier this year, many of the component parts of home video releases are produced, like printed books, in China. Due to the cost of licensing, the volume of most releases, and the ever-shrinking number of distribution channels, anime Blu-rays have much tighter margins than fans may suspect. A meaningful increase in COGS will certainly necessitate an increase in price.
However, If you have a pre-order for an impending release, I wouldn’t fret just yet. I imagine all of the biggest anime home video distributors – Crunchyroll, Sentai Filmworks, Discotek, and Aniplex of America – will honor outstanding pre-orders. But I would also anticipate speedy adjustments on the MSRP for upcoming titles and reprints, even if Trump and Ishiba make nice.
Other Merchandise
If you look at the bottom of most anime and manga figures, whether it’s a scale model made of reign or an injection molded blind box prize, the majority will feature the phrase “Made in China.” While Japanese companies still roll out a portion of new anime figurines (see the excellent Crunchyroll documentary “How is a NENDOROID Made?”), the majority is produced across the East China Sea, and thus subject to the 125% tariff. Best case? You’ll pay an extra 26% on imported merchandise. The most likely case? U.S. merchandisers will have to bump up their prices.
Even those who use proxy services to purchase goods directly from Japan cannot escape the price increases: Trump has eliminated the de minimis exemption for China, effective May 2nd, with promises to lower or eliminate the exemption for other countries soon. This is the exemption of all tariffs on small packages under a certain value that made Temu and Shein the dominant ecommerce platforms. For Japan, the current de minimis exemption is 10,000 yen. If you’re looking to make small purchases without an extra 26% paid on top, I’d do it in a hurry.
Frequent anime merchandise producer Vietnam is hardly any safer. With a proposed 46% tariff on all Vietnamese goods imported into the U.S., those goods will certainly go up in price for U.S. consumers. On top of this, as our lovely neighbors to the north have long known, what pain we feel here in the U.S. we love to share with Canadians. Canada is not home to any anime or manga distributors itself, and is thus subject to whatever decisions are made by the U.S. government. So as prices go up in the U.S., Canadian prices are adjusted accordingly – and that’s before considering any potential retaliatory tariffs the Canadian government may put in place.
There are myriad second order effects worth speculation and consideration, like the effects on fan-made merchandise, conventions, and artists, but we’ve already gone long here. Plus the Trump administration might change course again, so stay tuned here for analysis the next time he changes his mind! - Miles A.
Chloe wtf dude you’re so cool