The 2000s are the decade in which anime's industrial structure stabilised around the production-committee model and digital-cel production replaced traditional cel animation almost completely. Output volume rose; international DVD sales financed a generation of late-night shows aimed at older teenage and adult viewers; and the cultural register settled into the moe-centric form that dominated until the early 2010s.
The production-committee model
Through the 2000s, the dominant funding model for new anime became the seisaku iinkai (production committee): a consortium of investors β typically a publisher, an anime studio, a music label, a TV broadcaster, a merchandise company, sometimes a toy maker and a video distributor β co-financing a series in exchange for proportional rights to specific revenue streams. The model spreads risk but tends to push productions toward maximally marketable forms.
2002 β Spirited Away wins the Oscar
Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away received the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature in 2003, making it the first (and only, until The Boy and the Heron) non-English-language film to win the category. The award and the film's international box office turned Studio Ghibli into a fixture of international cinema.
Moe and the Haruhi era
Kyoto Animation's The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (2006) and Lucky Star (2007), together with the wider light-novel adaptation boom, made 'moe' (the emotional response to cute, vulnerable characters) the dominant register of late-night anime. The 'cute girls doing cute things' configuration became a recognisable subcategory.
Long-running shΕnen
The decade's spine was the long Shueisha shΕnen adaptations: Naruto (2002β2007 and 2007β2017 sequel), Bleach (2004β2012), Reborn!, Hunter x Hunter (2011 follow-up), and the still-running One Piece. These provided the international audience that supported anime streaming services when they emerged at the end of the decade.
Other landmark works
- Fullmetal Alchemist (2003 and the 2009 Brotherhood remake).
- Death Note (2006).
- Code Geass (2006).
- Gurren Lagann (2007).
- Mushishi (2005), the canonical iyashikei.
- Macross Frontier (2008).