Death Note (pictured)
Fullmetal Alchemist
Bleach
These anime series are popular now. The Naruto fad has created a growth in merchandising. The new trend is to quickly translate anime series from the Japanese airing to show them on American television.
Spirited Away (2001) & Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) were the first anime films to gain wide recognition in America. Spirited Away also won an Academy Award.
Pokemon became the first anime series to gain worldwide success as a merchandise franchise. The boom of anime popularity on American television started with Pokemon.
Toonami was a programming block on Cartoon Network for American and Japanese anime.
For the first time, anime series were available all together in one television block for viewers (mostly children) to consume. Sailor Moon, Dragonball Z, Tenchi Muyo, Gundam, Zoids and many other earlier series were re-broadcast in syndication for this block.
Around the same time, Cartoon Network's "Adult Swim" late night block featured more mature anime such as Cowboy Bebop and Inuyasha.
Dragonball Z is one of the first established anime series targeted at young boys that became a hit in America. The mid nineties was a time when people watched anime without realizing that the cartoon was created in Japan.
Dragonball Z is considered a classic fighting and martial arts cartoon, and ran on American television in syndication for over 10 years.
1995 brought Sailor Moon to American TV as an anime series for girls during a time when the cartoon and english dubbed anime industry was targeted at boys.
An infamous part of each Sailor Moon episode featured the lead character, Serena, reminding the viewers to "do you homework" or "brush your teeth, Sailor Moon says!"
Castle in the Sky (1986)
My Neighbor Totoro(1988)
Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989)
All three of these classic Hayao Miyazaki films were the first anime films to be big hits in the American market. Hayao Miyazaki has consistently created anime films that become popular worldwide.
Giant robot anime series such as Mobile Suit Gundam Wing were mass produced for boys in Japan. A few of these robot anime were dubbed for American television in the 1980s. Adults and teenagers were the primary audiences for these anime until Cartoon Network picked them up in syndication in the mid 90s.
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