Image by: Gracia Dharma
Anime has been part of global culture for decades, though the road to get here was anything but smooth. Dragon Ball premiered in Japan in 1986 and Sailor Moon in 1992, but their early international spread was a grassroots effort built on fansub communities trading VHS tapes, heavily edited local TV versions, and erratic syndication deals. Mainstream breakthrough came later in the decade, when Cartoon Network's Toonami block introduced a generation of Western audiences to anime on primetime television. Studio Ghibli brought a different kind of credibility, with Spirited Away winning the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature in 2003.
Then, Naruto arrived in the mid-2000s, and the scale shifted again. What has changed since then is not just the size of the audience but how it reaches people. For the longest time, finding anime meant seeking it out. Streaming put it on the same home screen as everything else, and audiences did not need any more of an invitation than that.
In 2025, anime titles on Netflix were accumulating reach figures and hours viewed that put them in the same conversation as the biggest live-action series on the planet. Not just in Japan. Not just in South Korea. In the US, the UK, Brazil, France, Germany, and markets where a generation ago you would have had to go looking very hard to find any of it.
We looked at the top 10 anime titles by reach on Netflix in 2025, across 20 markets. Here is what we found.
1. Dandadan: 24.6 million accounts, 133.4 million hours viewed
Dandadan topped the list in 2025 with 24.6 million accounts reached. For a title that only began its manga run in 2021, that is a remarkable place to find itself.
The story sits at the collision of two very different obsessions. Momo Ayase believes in ghosts but not aliens. Her classmate Ken Okarun believes in aliens but not ghosts. The universe, as it turns out, has opinions about both of them. What follows is loud, strange, emotional, and frequently very funny. Dandadan arrived on streaming with the kind of energy that does not ease you in gently, and audiences responded to it.
2. Kimetsu no Yaiba (Demon Slayer): 22.1 million accounts, 303.6 million hours viewed
The reach figure for Kimetsu no Yaiba in 2025 was 22.1 million. The hours viewed figure was 303.6 million. That gap between reach and hours is the story. People who watch Demon Slayer watch a lot of it.
Tanjiro Kamado sets out to become a demon slayer after his family is killed and his sister Nezuko is turned into a demon. The premise sounds straightforward. What the show does with it is anything but. The animation quality, the fight choreography, and the emotional weight of the central sibling relationship have made Demon Slayer one of the defining anime of the last decade. The hours viewed figure in 2025 suggests that even years into its run, people are still going back to it.
3. Devil May Cry: 20.9 million accounts, 66.6 million hours viewed
Devil May Cry reached 20.9 million accounts in 2025. It is adapted from the long-running Capcom video game franchise of the same name, which has been running since 2001 and has sold over 36 million copies worldwide.
Dante is a demon hunter, half-human and half-demon, running a business called Devil May Cry that takes on supernatural cases. The franchise has always had a very particular energy: loud, stylish, self-aware, and completely committed to its own aesthetic. The animated series brought that energy to a streaming audience, many of whom were encountering the character for the first time without any video game background. 20.9 million accounts in a single year suggests that introduction landed.
4. Sakamoto Days: 19.7 million accounts, 147.1 million hours viewed
Sakamoto Days reached 19.7 million accounts in 2025. The premise is one of those ideas that sounds absurd until you watch it. Taro Sakamoto was once the greatest hitman in the world. Then he fell in love, retired, had a daughter, and now runs a convenience store. His former life, naturally, refuses to stay former.
The show takes an idea that could easily become a one-joke premise and builds genuine warmth and action around it. The contrast between Sakamoto's domestic contentment and his extraordinary abilities is where most of the comedy and the tension live. 147.1 million hours viewed on a reach of 19.7 million accounts says that once people started it, they kept going.
5. One Piece: 16.9 million accounts, 646.5 million hours viewed
One Piece has the fifth highest reach in the list at 16.9 million accounts. It has the highest hours viewed figure by a distance: 646.5 million hours.
That number requires a moment. 646.5 million hours of One Piece viewing in 2025 alone, across 20 markets. Monkey D. Luffy has been sailing the Grand Line in search of the One Piece treasure since 1997 in manga form and 1999 in anime form. The series now has over 1,100 episodes. People who watch One Piece do not dip in and out. They commit. The hours viewed figure is not just a data point about 2025. It is a data point about the nature of One Piece fandom: deep, loyal, and extraordinarily time-intensive.
6. Shumatsu no Valkyrie (Record of Ragnarok): 16.0 million accounts, 83.6 million hours viewed
Shumatsu no Valkyrie reached 16.0 million accounts in 2025. The premise operates at a scale most fiction does not attempt. The gods of every major mythology, convened to decide the fate of humanity, agree to settle the question through thirteen one-on-one battles between gods and the greatest human warriors in history.
It is exactly as chaotic and entertaining as that sounds. The show leans into spectacle over subtlety, which is precisely what it should do given the material. 16.0 million accounts in 2025 suggests there is a substantial streaming audience for mythology-scale confrontations rendered in anime form.
7. Pokemon: 15.1 million accounts, 262.2 million hours viewed
Pokemon reached 15.1 million accounts in 2025 with 262.2 million hours viewed. It is worth pausing on this one. Pokemon has been running as an anime since 1997. In 2023, the series said farewell to Ash Ketchum after 25 years and introduced a new protagonist, Liko. The 2025 figures reflect that new chapter of the franchise, still pulling in 15.1 million accounts and over a quarter of a billion hours of viewing.
Whatever transition anxiety might have surrounded Ash's departure, the audience data from 2025 suggests the Pokemon world itself remains the draw. The franchise is bigger than any single character.
8. Kusuriya no Hitorigoto (The Apothecary Diaries): 14.8 million accounts, 136.9 million hours viewed
Kusuriya no Hitorigoto reached 14.8 million accounts in 2025 with 136.9 million hours viewed. Set in a fictional imperial court inspired by ancient China, the story follows Maomao, a pharmacist's daughter who is sold into service in the imperial palace and finds herself drawn into court intrigue through her knowledge of medicine and poisons.
It is a quieter show than most on this list. No demons, no gods, no superpowers. What it has instead is a genuinely compelling central character and a mystery-driven narrative that rewards attention. 136.9 million hours viewed on a reach of 14.8 million accounts suggests an audience that found the show and stayed with it.
9. One Punch Man: 11.1 million accounts, 80.7 million hours viewed
One Punch Man reached 11.1 million accounts in 2025. The central premise is a direct inversion of the superhero genre. Saitama is a hero who has trained so hard that he can defeat any opponent with a single punch. The problem is that this has made his life completely boring. Every fight ends immediately. He feels nothing.
It is one of the sharper pieces of genre satire in recent anime, and the first season in particular holds up as some of the best action animation produced in the last decade. 11.1 million accounts in 2025, for a show whose first season aired in 2015, speaks to a catalogue that people keep going back to.
10. Castlevania: Nocturne: 10.5 million accounts, 133.4 million hours viewed
Castlevania: Nocturne closed out the top 10 with 10.5 million accounts reached and 133.4 million hours viewed. It is the sequel series to Netflix's original Castlevania adaptation, itself based on the Konami video game franchise. Where the original followed Trevor Belmont, Nocturne moves the story to 18th century France and follows Richter Belmont, a descendant of both Trevor Belmont and Sypha Belnades, against the backdrop of the French Revolution.
133.4 million hours viewed on a reach of 10.5 million accounts is the second highest hours-per-account ratio on this list after One Piece. The Castlevania audience, it turns out, is a committed one.
What the list tells us
Ten titles. Ten different stories, ten different worlds, ten different reasons why people sat down and kept watching. But a few things hold across all of them. Netflix owned this list entirely in 2025. Every title, every platform label, every one. That is not a small thing. It reflects years of investment in anime licensing and original production, and in 2025 that investment showed up in the reach figures.
The hours viewed numbers are the other thing worth sitting with. One Piece at 646.5 million hours. Demon Slayer at 303.6 million. Pokemon at 262.2 million. These are not numbers generated by casual viewers. Anime builds a different kind of audience relationship, one measured not just in accounts reached but in hours given. In 2025, those hours added up to something extraordinary.
Want to go deeper?
2025 showed us just how many hours audiences spent watching anime on Netflix. What the headline reach and hours figures do not show is who those audiences actually were. At Digital i, we are in a unique position to provide granular demographic insight behind every one of these titles. We can tell you the age breakdown, the gender split, the household composition, and the completion rate. That last one matters more than people realise. Knowing how many people who started one of these anime series actually finished it is a very different data point to knowing how many people clicked play. If you want that level of detail on any of these titles, or on anime viewing more broadly across your markets, get in touch.
Source: Digital i. Interval: 01/01/2025 – 31/12/2025, Netflix accounts across the US, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Poland, the Netherlands, South Korea, Japan, Australia.
