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Comment by thefz | Hacker News Reader

I don't know, seems to be a cultural US thing. I live in the EU and I have a hard time finding anything even resembling anime on the TV and any public media.

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> I live in the EU and I have a hard time finding anything even resembling anime on the TV and any public media.

What does "I live in the EU" mean specifically? I grew up in Italy and I can 100% guarantee you that most Italians (and from what I heard Spaniards and French too) are very familiar with anime. Anime is *huge* in Italy (at least it was 30 years ago). I grew up with Ranma 1/2, Sailor Moon, Dragonball, Evangelion, GTO, and a lot of other older "Italian-ified" anime that I don't even know the proper name of (because they got translated into Italian). Italy is home to the world's second largest anime/comic convention after Comiket (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucca_Comics_%26_Games). I live in Japan now, and I don't know what kids these days watch on TV in Italy (if they even watch TV) but every single one of my peers is familiar with anime as a medium and has watched several dozens of series growing up (and some of us still watch them today). All of this from public TV and public media.

EDIT: https://www.otaquest.com/anime-in-italy/ good article about it actually

> at least it was 30 years ago

It was but I’m not sure it still is. I’ve not been following the scene in a very long while, but anecdotally I’ve not heard any of the nieces and nephews mention anything which sounded like anime, it’s all 3D/CGI american animation, with the odd Chinese stuff: paw patrol, blue’s clues, bubble guppies, deer squad, blaze and the monster machines, ...

My feeling is that anime / manga is more popular than ever. Kids in my 8 yo nieces and 10 yo nephews class are crazy about Pokemon, Naruto (both seem to be still around...), Haikyuu and My Hero Academia. They are even wearing Haikyuu shirts for PE class. They also have all Yotsuba books and loved reading it. (I read the first two books with them together and it indeed is really fun!)

It would be interesting to have some data on that, but seeing all this anime content on social media and explosion of anime convetions i'd be surprised if there was no huge rise in popularity for both anime / manga.

I think anime is more popular in the teen demographics, as it is seen as the "cooler"/"edgier" stuff compared to US animation. I am not familiar with the most recent stuff, but for instance Naruto and One Piece are both huge in Italy, as were Death Note or GTO when they came out. Plus, there are cult shows that are still loved by a lot of people, such as Lupin III and Dragon Ball which are still frequently aired on national TV.

This thread is interesting! Thank you all for sharing!

How do Italy people get animes? Through some online subscription service (like US's crunchyroll) or cable?

> How do Italy people get animes? Through some online subscription service (like US's crunchyroll) or cable?

When I was a kid they were just broadcast on normal national TV. In the morning we'd have some kid friendly shows (like pingu, power rangers, etc) then we'd go to school and come back around lunch time and we'd get to watch Sailor Moon, Dragonball, One Piece, etc (depending on your generation, in order those were the big 3 "main" ones from 80s, 90s, and 00s kids). Every day we'd get new episodes (unlike in Japan where each series is weekly), so it became a part of a shared cultural phenomenon. We had lots of toys and we'd play with our friends and every day we'd discuss the previous day's episodes. For the more "grown up" kids (teenagers and up) you'd get more mature shows like Hokuto no Ken, Evangelion, etc on a different channel, not cable (it later became MTV channel) and those were usually weekly rather than daily. At least I remember watching GTO, Evangelion, Trigun, etc every Tuesday evening from 9pm to midnight.

I only realized they were "Japanese anime" by the time I was a young teenager watching Evangelion because that's when I started having access to the internet and my friends and I would look up lore and hypothetical storylines of the show and we'd stumble upon English and sometimes Japanese websites. Until then everything was properly dubbed in Italian, names of characters and shows translated/adapted to Italian, the songs (OP and ED) were sung in Italian as brand new original songs, etc so most people don't even realize they are "Japanese anime". We wouldn't make a difference between Sailor Moon or Tom and Jerry as far as country of origin went.

These days though I imagine most people watch them online using viz or netflix or similar sites, but I don't live in Italy anymore and most of my friends just pirate stuff so I don't know.

Haha "through pirating" might be the answer then ;-)

You're welcome :)

I really don't know the current trends, but anime have always been a staple of free-to-air television. It all started with regional channels in the early 80s; national channels (most famously, Italia 1) followed suit a few years later. Italia 1 still does feature several "oldies" shows daily, and recently aired Dragon Ball Super (as I said, Dragon Ball is wildly popular).

I don't think we have an anime-only service à la crunchyroll yet, but most streaming services feature anime as part of their offer. A controversial new dub of NGE by Netflix Italy even raised a minor commotion among fans.

Italian too,40something. I never ever hear about Anime,from anyone.

That's because they aren't called "anime", they are "cartoni animati". You are a 40 year old Italian and never heard of Cristina D'Avena? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cristina_D%27Avena) She'd literally fill stadiums with her concerts all over Italy, she sung most Italian "anime" songs (sigle dei cartoni animati) from the 80s/90s/00s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_theme_songs_recorded_b...).

When I was a kid in the 90s and 00s our TV program was always full of "cartoni animati" (telemontecarlo, which later became MTV I think, and also on Italia uno). I don't think there exists *any* Italian that grew up in the 80s/90s that doesn't know shows like Sailor Moon, Power Rangers (not anime, but still), Sanpei, Ken il Guerriero (with one of the best non-Japanese openings *ever* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Crm94eMuPE), Holly e Benji (Capt Tsubasa), Lady Oscar, Mila e Shiro, Dragon Ball, Ranma 1/2, Nadia e il mistero della pietra azzurra, Mazinga, E' quasi magia Johnny (Orange Road), Lupin, etc. These were all parts of the communal zeitgeist when I was in elementary school in the 90s, and my sister who's a bit older than me (about your age I imagine) also had the exact same experience (we often watched them together).

At least in the U.S., I get the sense that people increasingly rely on streaming services rather than broadcast/cable TV. So for many of us, what really matters (I think) is that we're able to access Crunchyroll and (for now) Funimation.

My point is simply that I suspect fewer and fewer people (at least in the U.S.) are limited by what's available via public broadcast.

That is why I specified "any public media". I know maybe 1 or 2 people who once told me they watch anime, and that's it. Never ever hear about it in any conversation.

Part of the point of the article is that even if you've never seen anime, you've likely seen lots of things directly influenced by it.

Ulysses 31? The Mysterious Cities of Gold? Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds?

More recently:

- Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Chat Noir

- Winx Club

- LoliRock

(All aimed at children, admittedly.)

Austrian, born in 97, here. RTL 2 used to have some anime in the oughts/early tens. But yeah, nowadays, almost nothing on tv. Pretty sure the high amount of people who just pirate it is a factor.

I "grew up" on Digimon, One piece, shaman king and the like.

Is TV still relevant in 2022 to determine a country's cultural baseline? I don't mean to say television is irrelevant, I'm saying the Internet is these days the biggest contender for people's attention.

My impression is also very different. Preteens losing their mind over korean bands like BTS and big on japanese anime, due to the internet. The same all over the world.

TV? Like Cable TV is your metric? Come on its the wrong century for this.

People aren’t going to lead with their counter culture obsession but there are other ways look.

Where in the EU do you live that you don't get Cartoon Network? Also when I was a kid the most popular cartoon that was not on cartoon network was a locally produced Japanese anime called Alfred Kwak. I imagine kids these days have access to many more anime and anime inspired cartoons.

Finland got Cartoon Network at 2017, and I'm not sure if anyone paid for cable TV at that point. Back in the day there were lots of European-produced shows that had production outsourced to Japan, but the content was still very European. The anime boom really took off here only at 2000s.

I think you are right but I have observed that many young people are into anime. Our of touch maybe?

Just for the record: I've been out of touch for a while

At least a while back the people in Anime weren't watching it on TV, but pirated shows and currently probably Crunchy Roll. Not that there wasn't some shows shown like Dragonball, but not too many. Not sure what is the current state, I haven't watched TV in years.

I’ve also noticed declining popularity in Europe, it peaked in the 90s and early 2000s

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