Higher % of Anime Nerds in Latin America than Japan?!

Why is Latin America the most nerd-obsessed region on Earth? Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into surprising statistics showing that Brazil and Mexico out-nerd even Japan when it comes to anime consumption, video games, conventions, and more.

From Dragon Ball Z funerals in Mexico to Crunchyroll’s Spanish dubs dominating viewership, Latin America has been anime-crazy since the 1970s. We explore why anime exploded there (uncensored dubs, telenovela-style storytelling, cheap imports), debunk common theories (like Japanese immigration), and explain the cultural factors that made LatAm the global capital of nerd culture.

We also discuss how this shared “nerd frontier” culture makes Latin American immigrants far more culturally compatible with the US than many realize — closer than historical Irish or Italian waves — and touch on broader immigration, Catholic history, and even cowboy linguistics.

This is a fun, data-packed episode for anime fans, gamers, and anyone interested in culture, demographics, and immigration.

Episode Transcript:

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today.

America is dealing with a serious problem, a flood of immigrants from Latin America. And if you know anything about Latin Americans, you know exactly what type of people they are.

Speaker 8: what they like, standard nerds.

Malcolm Collins: But no, in, in reality. If you are unfamiliar with this phenomenon, Latin America is shockingly nerdy, shockingly nerdy.

We’ll just, well, I can start with a parade that they held in service. This was in Mexico to a character in Dragon Ball Z dying.

Simone Collins: Or, oh, don’t forget that. Like in the protests that are taking place right now, there there are one police peace flags flying. Yeah, well,

Malcolm Collins: they’ve been doing that in a lot of countries.

Here’s a. Showing of dragon ballsy outside in, in, in, in Latin America. To give you an example of how big they are,

[00:01:00]

Malcolm Collins: but if we’re talking about specific statistics, did you know that in Brazil when you ask people the percentage of internet users who enjoy anime, the number the percent in Brazil is higher than the percent in Japan.

That is how nerdy they are. So to go over the, and we’re gonna go over why this is after we go over all the statistics. But to go over the statistics here in Brazil it’s between 42 to 45%. In recent estimates in Mexico, it’s 41 to 44%. In Japan it is 38 to 42%, so less than Mexico or Brazil. Wow. In compared to the us.

So keep in mind, in Mexico and Brazil, you’re looking at like 41 to 42 to like 45%. In the US it’s 15 to 21%.

Simone Collins: Oh my gosh.

Malcolm Collins: So when I see them, like [00:02:00] nerdier and, and we’re gonna go over other nerdy hobbies too, because they are nerdier across the spectrum really. I mean, like demonstrably, nerdier, like

Simone Collins: DD nerdy, like not just, not we, they’re they’re way nerd to

Malcolm Collins: video games than people in the United States or Europe as well.

Oh wow. Okay. I know this isn’t just United States, this is basically all other countries, including Japan, they’re nerdier than in the uk. Anime is is 15 to 21%. Right? And this is from the pair consumer data.

Simone Collins: Wow, that’s so low.

Malcolm Collins: If you look at watch time weekly of anime, right? Like how much, oh, oh, by the way, if you’re wondering like crunchy roll data.

Yeah. Actually, we’ll get to that in a second.

Simone Collins: Okay,

Malcolm Collins: watch Time Weekly, Brazil, Mexico 35 to 40%. This is aligned with streaming surveys. This is anime watch time. Weekly of, of like, what they’re watching is anime. Yeah. That’s 40%, so it’s a little below Japan. And in Mexico it’s 36%. In Europe it’s 20 to 25%.

And then if you look at. Percent choosing anime is their favorite genre. [00:03:00] Latam has the highest rate anywhere globally. 2018. Nice guys. Japan is 17% us, Canada, 16%. And then ema, including the UK is, is 12%. Huh. And if you look at apac, like a, A, whatever you’re looking at 17%. Okay, so, crunchy roll, crunchy roll, viewership by language.

Spanish dubs make up 40% of viewing on the platform.

Simone Collins: Wow.

Malcolm Collins: English dubs are only 30 to 40%, so more people watch anime on crunchy roll in Spanish than in English.

Simone Collins: Collectively, and Crunchy Roll is a US Incorporated entity right. So I think we applied to jobs there once and it was like, it was in Austin or Texas, I think.

Malcolm Collins: I think so. Yeah. Yeah. If you look at Japanese exports of anime products, 40 to 50% go Latin American. Wow. . Okay. [00:04:00] So let’s, let’s now be like, okay. You can be like, it’s just watching anime, right? Like, it’s not actually like nerd culture.

Okay.

Simone Collins: Okay. I mean,

Malcolm Collins: so in Brazil they have like an anime pop culture convention

that it pulls in. It’s called CCXP, that pulls in 280,000 to 297,000 people.

It’s like a city. That’s huge. Oh my god.

It’s literally twice the size of Comic-Con, which is 135,000 people. And then if you’re looking at the, the largest anime only convention in the United States, right?

Yeah. That’s Anime Expo, which is a hundred thousand to 115,000. Is that

Simone Collins: the Wait, is that the San Jose one?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, the one that we used. That’s the biggest one. No, that’s in Los Angeles.

Simone Collins: Oh, okay.

Malcolm Collins: But if you contrast that with anime friends in Brazil, that brings in 80 to a hundred thousand. So about the same.

And then if you, [00:05:00] so what I’m pointing out here is off the chart. Off the charts in terms of anime consumption. And you can say, okay, well what about this video game thing you mentioned here? Alright. Yeah. Yeah. So, if you look at total player count in Latin America, you have a total player count of 372.3 million people.

Contrast that was North America, which is only 224.8 million people. Huh. If you look at. So that means the lifetime has around 67% more players in the United States, despite a smaller population. Yeah. And because this United States, you’re looking at 249 million.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Wow. What is going on?

Malcolm Collins: Hey if you look at let’s see.

Simone Collins: Oh, okay. I have some theories.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, also much higher. What is it? A eSports viewership. Mm-hmm. Okay. So then I decided, I was like, okay, let’s try to go to other things. Let’s go to like furries and stuff like that. Are they also more in the furries? This was the only one where they do not [00:06:00] appear to be more into things. You see higher rates.

So before I go further and there’s some common explanations that I don’t really buy. And we, we’ll go deep on one of these common explanations I don’t fully buy, and then we’ll get into what I actually think caused it. Okay.

The common explanation that I don’t normally buy, that won’t go deeper on, but just so you’re aware.

As people say, well, Latin America was a highly sort of diverse marketplace where you didn’t have a lot of local content production. And so when they were buying children’s shows they disproportionately bought the rights to anime shows over Uni