62 years ago, in 1963, 35-year-old Osamu Tezuka flew to the USA to present his hit TV series Tetsuwan Atom to the NBC network. According to Tezuka Production’s history, a preview was screened in New York on 10 March, a contract signed in May, and the series began airing as Astro Boy on 7 September.
One of my favourite authorities on anime and Japan, Matt Alt, described the Tezuka/NBC deal on LinkedIn as “the moment anime went global.” Matt is an insightful commentator on anime and you should check out his work, especially the Pure Tokyoscope podcast which he hosts with Patrick Macias – but I disagree with him on this. This was undoubtedly a key moment for anime. Astro Boy was subsequently broadcast in other countries over the next twenty years, and opened the door for other shows. But in 1963 it was a foot in the door,; it took almost sixty years to become a global flow.
Anime’s journey to going global began in 1963 – but it’s only just begun to reach its full potential.
In 1963 Tezuka sold one show to one broadcast network in one nation – the nation that had colonised Japan during the Occupation and remains its most influential Western ally. Translation into English opened the door to other languages in a period when Japanese translation skills were scarce and expensive in many countries. But sales from English and European languages did exactly what anime’s first sale to America had done – they tracked the old colonisation routes back to the West. Children in many places, including parts of the Arab world and French North African territories, viewed anime without realising it was Japanese in origin.
The barrier to anime’s global spread was affordable, easy access. In the mid to late 2000s, availability of broadband and cheap smartphones finally enabled anime to go global – beyond the rich enclaves, all over the map. Technology made it so, with a two-fisted disruption of communications such as the world has never seen.
In April 2025 a report by Statista noted that “about two thirds of the world’s population is currently connected to the world wide web.” That number would be far lower without mobile connectivity, because the most fertile consumption and future production sites of all entertainment are in countries with vast young populations whose income and access to fixed Internet connections are limited. Many areas of Africa, India, Indonesia, China and other regions rely on economies of scale and mobile connectivity for their anime fix. Cheap broadband and celphones enable anime to be truly global.