At the beginning of the 21st century, East Asian culture was a niche interest in the West — anime screened at specialist events, K-pop was unknown outside South Korea, and manga was available only in specialist shops. Two decades later, everything has changed. Anime is one of the most-watched entertainment genres on Netflix globally. K-pop groups like BTS perform to sold-out stadiums on every continent. Squid Game became Netflix's most-watched series in history. Studio Ghibli films are referenced in fashion, interiors, tattooing and wall art worldwide. East Asian culture is not a subculture anymore — it is the culture.

At 98types Studio, we've been printing and selling anime and East Asian culture posters from our Camden Market shop for over 14 years. The anime posters below — from Spirited Away and Akira to Perfect Blue and My Neighbor Totoro — are printed on museum-grade 260gsm satin paper with archive pigment inks, ready to frame, same-day dispatch. Buy 3 get 1 free, from £3.

The word anime derives from the English word "animation" — but in Japan it refers specifically to a distinct visual storytelling tradition that developed its own language, aesthetic and emotional register over a century. The first preserved anime dates to 1917. By the 1980s, films like Akira (1988) had demonstrated that anime could be serious adult cinema. By 2003, Studio Ghibli's Spirited Away had won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature — the only non-English-language film ever to win that category. Today, anime is one of the most-watched genres on Netflix globally, with series like Demon Slayer, Attack on Titan and One Piece commanding audiences that rival any Western franchise.

What makes anime distinct from Western animation? Several things: the visual grammar (large eyes, expressive movement, stylised anatomy), the willingness to explore adult themes (Grave of the Fireflies, a Ghibli film about two orphaned children in wartime Japan, is regularly cited as one of the most emotionally devastating films ever made), and the sheer breadth of genres — from Studio Ghibli's ecological fantasies to Ghost in the Shell's cyberpunk philosophy to Perfect Blue's psychological horror. Anime is a medium, not a genre — and it contains everything.

Manga are Japanese comics — but the word undersells what manga actually is. In Japan, manga accounts for roughly 40% of all printed matter — every demographic reads it, from children to pensioners. The greatest manga series are multi-decade cultural institutions: One Piece began in 1997 and has now sold over 500 million copies, making it the best-selling manga series in history. Naruto sold over 250 million copies. Dragon Ball shaped an entire generation of animators, games designers and filmmakers around the world.

Most anime are adapted from manga — the manga provides the story infrastructure and the existing fanbase, and the anime brings it to life. Studio Ghibli is the great exception: Miyazaki and Takahata mostly created original stories for cinema. But for most of the anime ecosystem, manga is the foundation. Understanding manga is understanding why anime works the way it works: the visual rhythm, the panel pacing, the emotional directness.

Similar comic traditions exist across East Asia: manhwa in South Korea and manhua in China — and the Korean webtoon format (long vertical scrolling strips designed for phones) has now become a major source material for K-drama adaptations that are watched globally.

K-pop — Korean pop music — is not just a music genre. It is a complete cultural system that integrates music, choreography, fashion, visual identity, social media strategy and fan community management in a way that no Western music industry has come close to replicating. The specific, meticulously choreographed dance routines. The fashion (which has driven South Korean beauty products onto the shelves of Boots and Superdrug across Britain). The use of English phrases woven into Korean-language lyrics. The KCON festivals, where fans gather globally. K-pop is arguably the most systematically engineered popular culture phenomenon in history.

How it works: agencies recruit trainees as young as 12, train them for years in singing, dancing, languages and performance, and then debut them as a group they believe the market will embrace. Out of dozens of groups launched every year, only a few break through. But the ones that do — BTS, Blackpink, TWICE, aespa — command fanbases of extraordinary loyalty and global scale. BTS's ARMY fan community has mobilised to match corporate charitable donations, influence chart results and defend the group in political contexts. No Western pop act has anything comparable.

South Korea's government investment in cultural exports has been strategic: after calculating in the 1990s that Jurassic Park earned more than 1.5 million Hyundai car exports, successive administrations funded the entertainment infrastructure that created K-pop's dominance. The result is that K-pop is now how many British young people first learn about Korean and East Asian culture — the gateway to language learning, travel, food, beauty and fashion.

If K-pop was the music industry's East Asian revolution, K-drama is television's. Korean drama series have been enormously popular across Asia since the early 2000s — Winter Sonata (2002) created a wave of Japanese middle-aged women learning Korean to understand the dialogue. But it took Netflix and streaming to bring K-drama to the rest of the world.

Squid Game (2021) became Netflix's most-watched original series of all time — 111 million households in the first 28 days. Created by Hwang Dong-hyuk and starring Lee Jung-jae, the nine-episode survival drama about debt-ridden contestants competing in deadly children's games became a genuine global cultural event. The green tracksuit and white jumpsuit costumes were the most popular Halloween outfits of 2021. The poster became one of the most widely shared images of the year.

Parasite (2019), directed by Bong Joon-ho, became the first non-English film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture — shattering the last barrier between East Asian cinema and Western mainstream recognition. These are not isolated events. They are the culmination of decades of creative investment and the fruit of a generation of Western audiences who grew up with anime and K-pop already in their cultural bloodstream.

Every anime poster below is confirmed in stock at 98types. Buy 3 get 1 free — build your anime gallery wall from £9 for 4 prints. Museum-grade 260gsm satin paper, same-day dispatch before 3pm.

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