Is anime finally breaking into the mainstream?

After three major exhibitions in London and the release of Studio Ghibli on Netflix, the beloved Japanese art form is finding a new audience. But there’s still a long way to go, writes James Moore

‘Promare’, one of the anime movies being screened in the English language as part of a new online festival (Screen Anime)

With his staff at home, cinemas shut and the progress of rights negotiations slowing to a crawl, anime evangelist Andrew Partridge faced the sort of challenge that would trouble even some of the medium’s fabled protagonists. The previous year was a banner one for Japanese pop culture. There were two major exhibitions in London devoted to manga (the source of some of anime’s biggest franchises), one at the British Museum, another at Japan House. The Barbican, meanwhile, devoted a season to classic anime movies.

The regular conventions, events such as Partridge’s own Scotland Loves Anime, continued to be wildly popular. Passionate fans could have been forgiven for thinking the long-anticipated breakthrough from cult to mainstream was in prospect, that they were in sight of the dawn of the Animeaissance. Netflix securing the rights to Studio Ghibli’s entire catalogue (with the notable exception of wartime weepie Grave of the Fireflies) only added to the sense of anticipation.