Anime, for years, was a relatively niche interest that you'd mostly only hear about from image boards, Reddit, and when it was being used as a joke punchline. However, in recent years, it seems to have, somehow, gone relatively mainstream. As a cardholding dweeb, I found this rather strange at first, until I realized that, in practice, it was pretty inevitable.

Up until the past ten or so years, the only ways to really watch anime outside of Japan were to get lucky and have the show get an official DVD release abroad, get sorta lucky and find the series uploaded in 240p on Youtube before it got taken down, or to be reasonably computer literate and use a torrent. There was no real mainstream way to watch most anime, you had to actively seek it out, and odds are, you'd never even know to seek it out unless you were involved in certain internet circles.

Now, that's not to say that anime was some completely non-existent outside of japan, only lurking in the shadows of the internet, certain shows were aired on live TV outside of Japan. Death Note and Pokemon fall into this category, among others, but this was far from the norm. Furthermore, these shows were dubbed over and usually works that were targeted towards the youth, so they occupied a position akin to that of cartoons.

Recently, in the past ten or so years, the ease of access for watching just about any piece of anime changed radically, with the advent of streaming sites. These sites, both legal, and piracy-based, made it far easier than ever before to access anime with subtitles or dub tracks, and made the previously standard elitist torrenting circles obsolete. It's common sense that if something is easier, more people will do it, and by extension, more people will talk about it.

I don't think that the popularity of anime in recent years can be solely attributed to ease of use, however, as there had to be some other external push to justify people wanting to consume the medium. This came in the form of the COVID-19 pandemic, which more or less gave the bulk of the world's population an excuse to sit around and do nothing, and in the process, necesitated that they had something to do. Anime consumption presented itself as a (usually) free time waster that was remarkebly easy, and bam, the loser population of planet Earth multiplied fivefold.

It's not as though these people just magically lost interest in their newfound hobby when the pandemic began to wind down, and as such, here we are, with anime being more popular globally than ever before. Is this a good thing? Probably not, but who cares. Have fun watching AOT with your mom, because I got to endure that experience. TM out.

also, helsing ultimate is actually a masterpiece and i'll always stand by that