Top 20 Most Popular Anime of 2021 in Japan, Demon Slayer Ranks First

Demon Slayer beats Jujutsu Kaisen and Tokyo Revengers to become the Most-Popular Anime of  2021 in Japanese Streaming Services.

Even though Jujutsu Kaisen and Tokyo Revengers dominated the better part of the year, with the release of Demon Slayer Season 2, the series has been comfortably crowned as the Most-Popular Anime of 2021 in Japanese Streaming Services for the second year in a row, GEM Partners reports.

Not only has Demon Slayer Season 2 been scoring an insane 15 million+ viewers with its television broadcast every week, but the series has also been absolutely dominating every single streaming service in the country.

The Demon Slayer manga also continues to chart among Oricon Monthly Top 10 for Manga Sales, a year after the release of its last volume. The series has more than 150 million copies in circulation.

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Jujutsu Kaisen was the Most-Popular Anime of 2021 in Japan for the first half of the year but ended up in Second Place on the year-end chart, which is still very impressive considering the series aired its final episode in March.

The series is also the second biggest title on Shonen Jump’s current roster behind One Piece and has been selling more than 2 million copies per volume. Jujutsu Kaisen manga has more than 60 million copies in circulation.

Tokyo Revengers took the 3rd spot and has seen the biggest jump from its half-yearly ranking where it was just outside the Top 10.

The series has quickly become a phenomenon in Japan and has been selling almost more than 7,000 BD/DVD discs per volume. While the manga series was the Third Best-Selling Manga of 2021 with over 24.9 million copies sold.

Meanwhile, Attack on Titan was the Fourth Most-Watched anime of 2021 on Japanese streaming platforms, which hardly comes as a surprise knowing the humongous hype that has surrounded the series ever since the premiere of Season 4 of Attack on Titan.

Both Demon Slayer and Attack on Titan currently have the world on a chokehold as they are both airing new episodes of their respective new seasons this Winter.

Detective Conan concludes the Top 5 with its unsurprisingly consistent run in the streaming platforms. The series was also the Third-Most Popular Weekly Anime TV Broadcast of 2021 in Japan.

More than 20 years after the broadcast of its first episode, Detective Conan still shows no signs of stopping with its movie outing, Detective Conan: The Scarlet Bullet being the Third Highest-Grossing Movie of 2021 in Japan.

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That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime was in 6th place beating the likes of My Hero Academia and One Piece as it remained a hot favourite in Japanese streaming platforms throughout the year.

The beloved isekai anime series will see a movie continuation that has been announced for Fall 2022.

My Hero Academia was the 7th Most-Popular Anime of 2021 in Japan. While other usual suspects, One Piece and Kingdom were in the 9th and 10th spot on the list respectively.


Neon Genesis Evangelion ranked 8th after getting a huge boost from the release of the last film in the Evangelion Rebuild series, Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time.

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Some of the other notable entries include The Promised Neverland, which even with all the lacklustre response it got for its second season, has managed to rank just outside the Top 10. Although it is notable that the franchise got a live-action adaptation as well right before the anime’s second season which gave both the manga and anime’s popularity a boost.



Yuru Camp aired its Second Season this year and continued to see an overwhelming amount of positive response and support, with the series ranking as the 12th Most-Streamed Anime of 2021 and selling more than 6,000 BD/DVD discs per volume.

Haikyuu is in the 13th spot and is the only anime in the list which has managed to make it to the Top 20 despite having no new episodes or a film continuation being released this year.

The last episode of Season 4 aired right before the Christmas of 2020 and saw the conclusion of the Inter-high match between Karasuno and Inarizaki. The season ended with the tease of the long-awaited fated battle at the trash heap.

Meanwhile, Dr. Stone was in the 15th spot with the popular Shonen anime airing its second season last winter. Dr. Stone will be getting a third season soon which could premiere as early as Winter 2023.

You can see the full list below.

Top 20 Most-Popular Anime of 2021 on Japanese SVOD Services:

  1. Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba
  2. Jujutsu Kaisen
  3. Tokyo Revengers
  4. Attack on Titan
  5. Case Closed
  6. That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime
  7. My Hero Academia
  8. Neon Genesis Evangelion
  9. One Piece
  10. Kingdom
  11. The Promised Neverland
  12. Yuru Camp
  13. Haikyuu!!
  14. Crayon Shin-chan
  15. Dr. Stone
  16. Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai
  17. Pokemon
  18. World Trigger
  19. Cells at Work
  20. Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation

Source: GEM Partners

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GEM Partners is a Japanese marketing firm that is centred around the entertainment industry and gathers data by surveying thousands of people every week aged between 16 and 69 regarding what they watched that past week on Netflix, Hulu Japan, Disney+, docomo anime store, Amazon Prime Video, ABEMA Premium, Paravi U-NEXT, and dTV.

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