Scorecard: 2025 Anime Predictions
I was 0.05 points too many for a 6.7.
Happy New Year!
The second half of 2025 went by fast, so let me share my 2025 Anime Predictions scorecard.
The table should be fairly self explanatory, but here are a few quick fire thoughts for each prediction, below:
I saw Crunchyroll’s path to 25 million through bundling and emerging markets, but looks like not yet.
Bandai Namco has the critical mass to keep dominating anime gaming. And as they grow, other players are making good money in the space too.
We didn’t quite get a dedicated “next tier” streamer, but plenty of players are serving viewer needs outside Netflix and Crunchyroll.
Not quite the total creator economy convergence I expected, but some promising initiatives moved the needle in 2025.
Nonsense was the breakout in anime boutique retail this year. Exciting to watch if they can scale without losing their edge.
Low end anime is toast.
It’s funny how production AI augmentation is being quietly accepted with tools like Kamikai while localization AI sparked the backlash (this is literally the opposite of what “experts” told me before).
AI agents exploded in 2025, and anime-themed agents got some serious traction (Virtuals.io, Kindred). Seems to be ignored by the industry in general so far.
Is Web3 the solution to all of anime’s problems? Probably not. But lots of smart people are still betting real resources on it.
The massive dataset deals happened, just not in anime specifically yet. The OpenAI-Disney deal was groundbreaking.
Overall, not too bad (and better than last year).
2026 predictions around the corner!