Summary
- Bilibili aims to dominate the anime streaming market and surpass international services like Netflix and Crunchyroll, as well as challenge Japanese producers.
- In its annual event, Bilibili announced over 65 anime series for the coming year, more than Netflix and Crunchyroll combined.
- Bilibili’s content creation system, combining user-created content with in-house production, positions it well to become a dominant player in the anime industry.
In the increasingly lucrative yet competitive anime streaming market, Chinese online video-sharing platform Bilibili wants to rule the world of animation and is sparing no expense to see its dream come to fruition. Not only is it challenging the anime streaming efforts of international services such as Netflix and Crunchyroll, it’s also looking to take the crown away from Japanese producers.
In its annual “Anime Made By Bilibili 2023-2024” event, which convened late last month in Shanghai, China – and subsequently uploaded to the official Bilibili YouTube channel, the company announced that its users can look forward to watching over 65 anime series over the coming year – which is nearly twenty more titles than it introduced last year. By contrast, Netflix and Crunchyroll have traditionally offered less than thirty new anime series combined per year.
These series not only include user-driven content, but also titles specifically produced by Bilibili or through partnerships with local Chinese anime producers such as Shanghai Animation Film Studio as well as with international anime producers, including Sony’s Aniplex which owns part of Crunchyroll. In addition to the new titles, Bilibili also announced the return of the fan-favorite series Link Click, To be Hero X, and My Three-Body – the popular adaption of the hit anime The Three-Body Problem.
Bilibili Is Built For Content Creation – Especially Anime
To Be Hero X, Created By Pb Animation Co., LAN Studio, and Paper Plane Animation Studio
While all players in the anime streaming business aren’t against being flashy with their promises, Bilibili’s argument that it is the best-suited platform for content generation isn’t an idle boast. Bilibili started out as an anime fan’s effort to establish uninterrupted access to his favorite anime character, Mikoto Misaka, who stars in A Certain Scientific Railgun. Access was – and remains – a common issue for anime watchers in China due to government regulations and censorship. The site was initially organized as a fandom-focused platform where users could not only share anime content, but also discuss and debate the anime themselves. Soon, not only did content on the site expand to include manga and video games, but also original user-created content, such as fan-produced videos of popular anime and manga stories.
Naturally, once the site gained enough memberships, Bilibili attracted the interest of a number of high-roller investors. That investment not only helped resolve Bilibili’s rampant intellectual property issues but also established a central hub of sorts that could identify popular original content and promote it within its ecosystem. Based on Bilibili’s focus on its users, content that is popular has usually withstood the blistering critique of the site-wide user base. Ultimately, Bilibili leadership realized the benefit of popular user-created content, and how such content could become even more popular with a little help from Bilibili resources.
There Is No End To The Content Bilibili Can Produce
To increase the generation of great content, like Netflix and other streamers, Bilibili decided that there was also a benefit to creating its own content. Accordingly, the company established its own content creation system which is often populated by content produced by popular content-creating users who enter into partnerships with Bilibili. For instance, Haoliner Animation Studio, which was involved in the production of Link Click originally started out as an independent studio before Bilibili purchased them.
The combination of user-created content with in-house content puts Bilibili in a power position well situated to challenge the Japanese anime industry for supremacy. With over a quarter of a billion users uploading content that goes through its own user-based culling process, along with its own in-house production units, and licensing agreements for popular anime series from Japan – Bilibili has all its bases covered for anime dominance. Indeed, it’s already the player to beat the massive China market – only time will tell if Bilibili can repeat its anime streaming market success internationally.
Source: Bilibili YouTube,
