One bit of the story which isn't widely recognized is that the Japanese language and music are remarkably legible to westerners.

In particular, westerners "just get" the emotional tone and rhythm of Japanese and right away feel the emotions of anime characters. My wife is skeptical of my Japanese obsession but she frequently remarks that she finds commercial Japanese music surprisingly relatable. I can still sing Japanese theme songs from old Rumiko Takahashi anime like Urusei Yatsura and Ranma ½ regardless of knowing or not knowing what they mean -- it's just easy.

This is not at all the case for Chinese, where the conflict between grammatical tone and the tone in music is immense, where Chinese music frequently sounds like the worst of Eastern European traditional music, and where I struggle to feel the feeling behind Chinese speech despite pop culture exposure and taking every chance I can get to watch the faces of Chinese speakers while they converse. No wonder games like Azur Lane, Genshin Impact and Arknights default to Japanese vocals in the West.

On top of that, Hollywood productions seem like they were made by the people who were too cool to hang out with me in high school, whereas anime is in the space of fantasy and science fiction that I grew up with. (Frickin' O'Neill colonies in 1979 Gundam)

I'm inspired by the story of how Kirby, Ditko, Lee revolutionized comics in the 1960s but even more inspired by how Type/Moon made a low-budget game, then a series of increasingly complex games culiminating in the multi-billion Fate/Grand Order, or how web novel authors get a publishing contract and then a manga and an anime that becomes a global sensation. Or how anime's reach often exceeds its grasp like the botched ending of Neon Genesis Evangelion, the bungled first firing of the wave motion gun in Space Battleship Yamato or the flawed anime of Backstabbed in a Backwater Dungeon with terrible character designs that turned me on a light novel that I greatly enjoy -- Hollywood just doesn't do that.

And it's about the superfan. Maybe you spend a bit on a Crunchyroll subscription but when my son got into Bocchi the Rock! he's spent hundreds on collecting volumes of the tankobon as soon as they come out. Anime fans care whereas Hollywood slop mostly washes over people.

> In the 1950s and early 1960s, Japanese households reveled in the chance to have washing machines, televisions, and refrigerators; in the following decade, it was cars, air conditioners, and color TVs. In the 2020s and 2030s, the next set of “sacred treasures” could be futuristic gadgets like electric cars, AI assistants, heat pumps, battery-powered appliances, or personal care robots. They could be simple things like bigger houses, cheaper elder care and child care, and more comfortable sofas. Or they could be something that hasn’t even been invented yet.

This next batch of "sacred treasures" really seems crappy in comparison to the previous batch.

I'm not sure I see how the "simple things" would come, since those have only gotten less accessible since the 50s even in countries like the US whose economy grew year over year and didn't stagnate.

So everything is really hindging on "not yet invented". I do think we're all hopeful for true AGI, full humanoid robots that can replace all home labor, fully self driving cars that are not constrained by terrain, weather, or location. And so on...