Most Popular Anime: Rise & Fall (1970–2026) Discover the most popular anime of all time in this epic bar chart race, tracking the rise and fall of anime popularity from 1970 to 2026. Watch legendary series and global phenomena such as Dragon Ball, Pokémon, Naruto, One Piece, Sailor Moon, Attack on Titan, Demon Slayer, Jujutsu Kaisen and many more compete across more than five decades of anime history. The numbers shown by each bar represent the Historical Popularity Index (HPI) — a comparative measure designed to estimate how popular each anime was worldwide at a given point in time. Because no single consistent global popularity metric exists across the entire 1970–2026 period, the index combines and reconciles multiple historical indicators, including audience reach, television and international distribution, franchise visibility, cultural impact, contemporary interest, search interest where available, and other evidence of relative popularity. The values are normalized to create a consistent historical scale, allowing anime from very different eras to be compared while preserving their rises, peaks and declines over time. ⭐ IMDb Score: Inside each anime bar, you can also see its IMDb rating. Unlike the Historical Popularity Index, this number represents viewer reception rather than popularity. IMDb registered users rate released titles from 1 to 10, and IMDb combines those votes using a weighted-average system rather than a simple arithmetic mean. This makes it possible to compare two different dimensions at once: how popular an anime became and how highly audiences rated it. This visualization is a state-of-the-art bar chart race combining historical data reconstruction, dynamic rankings, imagery, ratings and major moments in anime history to tell the story of how the world's favorite anime changed from generation to generation. From the classics of the 1970s and 1980s to the worldwide anime boom of the 1990s and 2000s and today's streaming era, see which titles dominated their generation—and which anime ultimately became global icons. Which anime era was the greatest? And which series surprised you the most? Let me know in the comments! #Anime #MostPopularAnime #AnimeHistory #BarChartRace Data Source: Historical Popularity Index (HPI) Music: Savfk - Song of the Wanderers Savfk – First Flight Savfk