At least if you look at the number of anime minutes aired on tv per year, as Matteo Watzky explains over at Full Frontal:
This new set of data helps us put the previous one in perspective: while it may seem that 2008 represented a peak because of the amount of new works, it would actually have been 2006, which saw around 20,000 minutes more of animation air on TV. Actually, 2006’s record has not been beaten, even in 2018, which witnessed almost 50 more TV shows on air. The general shift from 2-cour to 1-cour shows may have inflated the overall numbers, but not the actual amount of content being aired.
It feels counterintuitive at first because we seem to be flooded with more and more series each season, but even when looking at the number of anime produced the totals for 2006 (329) and 2022 (346) are not that different. And with series lengths themselves having become shorter, with the 12-13 episode series being the norm now, it is certainly possible that 2006 was anime’s peak.
But I’m still curious about the methology behind these numbers though. The sources used by Watzky are Japanese, the number of anime coming from the Japanese anime database, with the graph of minutes of anime broadcast coming from a study on animator’s experiences, not linked to. Watzky doesn’t discuss how these two sources got their numbers, which is a pity as the original sources will not be accessible for many people, including myself. Methology is important, especially when comparing multiple sources like here. For example, the second source talks about minutes of anime broadcast on television, while the number of anime is for all anime, including shows or movies never broadcast there. Another being what is counted as broadcast on television in the first place: over the air, cable, internet based streaming services and which are counted as such. What counts as a separate anime is up for debate as well of course. Anidb e.g. usually puts specials and bluray extras under their parent series, while MyAnimeList splits everything up.
In other words, there is some room for dobut here that it really is the case anime peaked in number of minutes broadcast back in 2006, or in number of individual anime produced in 2018. I do believe these numbers are roughly correct, even if it doesn’t feel that way. It may just be that we’re just that much more aware of all anime created as almost everything these days gets a release for an English language audience now, being able to watch at the same time as the original audience, which wasn’t the case in 2006. It’ll be interesting to see what the rest of the decade will do.
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