Anime Piracy Is Draining Japan of Billions in 2025, Report Warns
Anime and manga piracy drained an estimated $38 billion from Japan in 2025, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry reports after surveying consumers across six countries.
Japan just put a giant price tag on anime/manga piracy, and it is not pretty: roughly $38 billion in damage for 2025. That number comes straight from the country’s Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI), and yes, it’s a massive jump from just a few years ago. On top of that, studios are already lawyering up in real time — see the Jujutsu Kaisen team calling out theater recordings and threatening legal action.
What METI measured (and where)
METI ran a cross-border survey in 2025 that looked at piracy across six countries: Vietnam, France, Brazil, Japan, the United States, and China. Their headline takeaway: estimated damage from digital content piracy has tripled since 2022, rising from 2.0 trillion yen back then (about $13.3 billion) to 5.7 trillion yen in 2025 (around $38 billion). It’s a stark reminder that as anime and manga go even more global, so do the leak pipelines.
The other big number that needs a little untangling
METI also started tracking a new category this fiscal year: online piracy tied to counterfeit character goods. That bucket alone was pegged at 4.7 trillion yen — roughly $30.68 billion. The way the report words this can read a little fuzzy, but the gist is: alongside the broader digital content piracy estimate (the 5.7 trillion yen figure), Japan is now separately counting fake-merch damage online. Different bucket, similarly ugly scale.
How Japan says it plans to hit back
- Set up new cooperation hubs with local authorities to go after offenders faster.
- Beef up the litigation pipeline so cases can actually move.
- Target rights violations involving generative AI and clamp down on counterfeit character goods.
- Build a rights-ownership database to speed up lawsuits and takedowns.
Meanwhile, Jujutsu Kaisen is already cracking down
On June 5, 2025, the official Jujutsu Kaisen account warned fans after illegally recorded images and video of the ending of the current film, 'JUJUTSU KAISEN: Hidden Inventory / Premature Death – The Movie,' started popping up online. They reminded everyone that recording in theaters is a crime under Japan’s Law for Prevention of Unauthorized Recording of Films (aka the Film Piracy Prevention Law) and that penalties can be severe under that law and the Copyright Act.
"Filming a movie inside a theater is a crime under the Law for Prevention of Unauthorized Recording of Films. If copyright infringement occurs in violation of the Film Piracy Prevention Law or the Copyright Act, penalties may include up to 10 years imprisonment, or a fine of up to 10 million yen, or both."
Why this matters
The 5.7 trillion yen figure tells you the trend line is going the wrong way fast, and the separate 4.7 trillion yen hit from fake merch shows how big the problem is beyond just streaming or downloads. The government is clearly trying to modernize its toolkit — that rights database and the explicit callout of generative AI are notable — but in the meantime, you’ve still got people literally filming endings in theaters. Different century, same headache, much bigger numbers.