‘Jujutsu Kaisen’ Vaults MAPPA to Anime Studio Lead as Streaming Shifts From Licensing to Ownership

A new report says MAPPA has vaulted to lead studio status within Anime, with streaming platforms shifting from licensing content to outright ownership of it. The change marks a notable shift for the industry, with studios now working directly with streamers rather than simply licensing their shows to them.

Media Partners Asia’s latest report, The Anime Economy, shows streaming platforms shifting their strategy from buying anime series from studios to building their own franchises instead. The findings come from audience data across eight Asian markets, along with Netflix’s own figures and conversations with industry leaders.

The move comes from audience figures. Between July 2025 and August 2026, anime drew a larger monthly audience than any other genre on Asian streaming platforms, while viewing on Netflix grew nine times faster than the service overall. In Japan, the world’s largest anime market, the numbers were even more striking.

Anime Leads the Streaming Audience

Across the eight Asian markets followed by MPA, between 31% and 47% of premium-VOD viewers watched anime each month, which was a stronger performance than the other seven genres, whose monthly averages ranged from 26% to 34%. In Japan alone, the numbers were even more pronounced, with anime audiences running from 45% to 59%, while the remaining genres sat at 24% to 36%.

In the second half of 2025, anime made up 15.6% of all recorded premium-VOD hours, while it reached 28% in Japan. In the first half of 2026, the figure was 14.0%. Across those two periods, the genre’s share moved between those two numbers. Variety’s report also found that “Jujutsu Kaisen” topped the list of anime titles in seven of the eight markets tracked during the first half of 2026.

That performance pushed MAPPA’s share of regional anime hours from 6.1% in the second half of 2025 to 17.3% in the first half of 2026. MAPPA edged past TMS Entertainment, which held 16.6%, followed by Toei Animation at 13% and titles mastered by Aniplex at 12%.

Direct funding of production by platforms, along with purchases of studios by Japanese intellectual property groups, is a growing pattern that the report’s authors expect to persist. These two approaches are now learning to operate alongside one another.

Netflix’s Share of Anime Viewing

Across the tracking period, Netflix accounted for about half of the region’s anime viewing, with 51% of anime hours in the second half of 2025 and 50% in the first half of 2026. Prime Video held a 43% share of anime hours in Japan in the second half of 2025, while Netflix matched that with 42% each in the first half of 2026.

The report’s analysis of Netflix’s engagement figures shows the platform’s Japanese anime viewing rising from 3.33 billion hours in the first half of 2023 to 4.64 billion hours in the first half of 2026. That is a 39% jump against 4.5% growth in Netflix’s total viewing over the same period. Anime rose from 3.6% to 4.75% of all Netflix hours in that window.

That four-fifths of the viewing still falls under licensed library content, even as MPA cites Netflix’s January 2026 partnership with MAPPA as evidence of the move toward owned franchises.

YouTube Turns Into a Production Base

The report says YouTube now serves as both a marketing channel and a production base for anime. In Japan alone, the MPA estimates that 70 million people watch anime-related content on the platform each month, amounting to 2.8 billion hours.

Aniplex, which has 5.1 million monthly viewers, and Toho animation, which has 4.8 million, both operate as independent media operations today. At the same time, YouTube-based studios like Plott are generating franchises at a small fraction of the cost of a conventional TV production.

Since 2021, MPA has recorded 21 anime alliances and transactions, with 11 of them occurring in 2025 and 2026. Among these, Sony participated in seven, which MPA says makes it the only company to run an end-to-end anime operation.

Sony has assembled a group including Sony Pictures, Sony Music and Aniplex around Crunchyroll, which boasts 21 million paying subscribers, while also keeping stakes in both Kadokawa and Bandai Namco. Outside that corporate grouping, Toei Animation, Toho, Bandai Namco and other broadcasters have separately purchased studios, distributors and pipelines of their own, building up their own capacity along the way.

What Comes Next for the Industry

The global anime market is projected to grow at roughly 10% per year through 2030, according to MPA estimates. The expansion is primarily being fueled by regions beyond Japan in Asia, alongside North America, with most of the gains landing with a select few franchise owners, studios and streaming services.

Over the coming 24 months, the firm expects a hybrid financing arrangement to prevail, with platforms funding production costs while studios retain ownership of the rights.

Media Partners Asia’s CEO and executive director, Couto, described where the industry sits today. He noted that the foundation has been laid, and the issue now is identifying the source of future expansion and determining who ends up securing it.

He listed three catalysts:

1. Streaming pushing deeper into new markets globally
2. Theatrical events on the scale of “Infinity Castle” becoming repeatable
3. Games and merchandise carrying franchises well beyond the screen

But Couto also pointed to a constraint. “The constraint is capacity, not demand or capital,” he said. “The studios making the biggest hits are often the least able to invest, and the industry still leans on a handful of franchises. The companies that solve for capacity, and bring the animators with them, will be best placed for the next phase of growth.”

The Path to Owned Franchises

A shifting landscape is described by the report’s findings: studios that used to sell their productions to broadcasters are instead taking over their own distribution channels, while platforms that previously purchased individual series are now investing in the creators themselves.

The most obvious sign of this change comes from MAPPA, which has climbed to the top of the studio rankings. The success it found with “Jujutsu Kaisen” changed the regional anime hour market entirely, and its partnership with Netflix signals a turn toward building owned franchises.

Everyone faces a problem of size. As Couto put it, the companies that address capacity, and take the animators along with them, will be best positioned for the next stage of growth.

The direction of streaming growth in Asia is easy to see at present: anime is pulling the largest crowds, and the companies that control the rights to those shows are the ones expanding the most rapidly.

Anime · Jujutsu Kaisen · MAPPA · Netflix · Streaming