Anime is booming: How Japanese animation became a cultural force

B y the time Jason Leigh, a 30-year-old anime fan in Merrick, heard the film "Chainsaw Man — The Movie: Reze Arc" was opening in theaters, seats were going fast. He managed to snap up advance tickets for Saturday and Sunday screenings at the Regal Westbury and attended both — one in Japanese with English subtitles, one dubbed — with two different groups of fellow fans. For Leigh, the experience was a revelation.

"The medium is so popular now," says Leigh, who remembers when anime existed mostly on home video and hardly ever played in theaters. "My friends out of state have seen the ‘Chainsaw’ movie. It was a full theatrical release."

Once a nerdy pastime, now a mainstream cultural force, the Japanese animation known as anime is setting its sights on Hollywood’s box office. In Septem