Information Cascade about Anime
Anime is a genre of entertainment that was first developed around the 20th century. The definition of anime could be seen on Wikipedia as, “Anime is colloquial for Japanese animation and refers specifically to animation produced in Japan” (Wikipedia). The reason why anime is so different from regular cartoons or tv shows is because it provides an escape from daily life into a fantastical and crazy world.
The reason why the information cascade relates to the popularity of Anime is due to the principle of the informational cascade that once person A makes the decision to watch anime, there is a high chance that person A’s friend, Person B could be influenced to watch it as well.
If Person B was to see watching anime as beneficial and not as something that is only watched by kids, then the cascade could continue and Person B could further influence the next group of people. Just as possible for this action to cause a cascade it is also possible for the cascade to fall just as easily. Anime could be seen as childish and something that is unrealistic which could lead to a reason why a person may not watch it. Keeping this in mind, Person B, Person C, and even Person D could reject the idea of watching anime ending the cascade. This was one of the principles that were portrayed about cascades: cascades could be fragile.
As of today, Anime is very popular in American Culture. As told from a newspaper from St. Petersberg College, “As of 2019, Crunchyroll has over 2 million subscribers and over 45 million registered users (“About Crunchyroll”). This is just at Crunchyroll! Imagine how many more fans are out there using other anime streaming services like Funimation and VRV. The popularity of anime has also flowed into big-name entertainment companies such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon. Netflix has acquired many anime titles to stream on its platform and has more than a few Netflix original anime shows. In addition, Hulu boasts nearly 400 anime titles (Spangler). Anime movies are now being featured in cinemas more frequently across America”(Sandbox). As seen through the numbers, the information cascade for Anime has been on an upward trend and held great magnitudes.
Works Cited
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anime
https://sandbox.spcollege.edu/index.php/2019/10/the-rising-popularity-of-anime/