The global premiere of Attack on Titan's last episode happened on November 5. After 10 years of running, the MAPPA studio series has gained cult status among many anime viewers. It got its start in 2013, and the last episode created a lot of discussion in the press, on social media, and in the Twitch chats.
The Attack on Titan franchise has expanded well beyond the boundaries of the television show in recent years. Numerous prominent video games, like Call of Duty, Fortnite, and Dead by Daylight, have collaborated with this anime. These events have all sparked discussion on Twitch: on the days when key episodes aired, the show was mentioned the most.
Attack on Titan mention dynamics on Twitch
Following an almost year-long hiatus, the eagerly anticipated fourth season continuation debuted in January 2022. The most Attack on Titan references in streaming service discussions in the past two years occurred on the day of the Judgment series release, with over 14.9K messages.
During the premiere of The Final Chapters: Special 1 in March 2023, the series had over 12.1K mentions, which is the second-highest number for the selected time frame. Following the presentation of the last episode, The Final Chapters: Special 2, 9.8K messages about the Attack on Titan series were made on Twitch.
Pokemon is the undisputed leader
Comparing Attack on Titan's popularity on Twitch to that of other anime series is an interesting exercise. Even with all of the excitement around the show's last episode, the series about homicidal giants didn't rank very highly. It came out that the Pokemon series is the most talked about on Twitch. It also has a significant lead: during the previous two years, it has received over 15.8 million mentions in the service's discussions. With 4.3 million mentions, the One Piece series comes in second. This comes even though a Netflix series of the same name debuted in August and was well-received by both fans and reviewers.
The number of mentions of the Naruto and JoJo series in Twitch discussions is nearly equal—3.6 million and 3.5 million messages, respectively. With 1.7 million mentions each, Dragon Ball and Bleach saw barely any difference in numbers. It's interesting to note that because of his "memability" and the overuse of emojis, Goku, the protagonist of Dragon Ball, was discussed on Twitch twice as much as the actual episode. In contrast to Pokemon, Attack on Titan received 1.4 million mentions in Twitch discussions across two years.
In general, how popular is anime on Twitch? A lot of people like it. The television series Friends has received 20.3 million mentions, making the top anime franchises the second most mentioned. The television series Office (3.1 million mentions) is ranked highly as well. It's important to remember, though, that words like "Office" and "Friends" are quite popular and are frequently used outside of television contexts.
Breaking Bad (762.2K mentions), South Park (707K), The Simpsons (615K mentions), and Dexter (430K mentions) stand out above other famous television shows and animated films. They are all much behind the well-known anime series that were previously listed.
There are several reasons why anime is so popular among streaming service users. Firstly, a lot of memes that are used regularly by young people for online interaction have their roots in anime. Secondly, the gaming community and esports have a great deal of anime collaborations: exclusive skins (like in Call of Duty), limited edition merchandise (like in Team Liquid), and even customized maps (like in Fortnite). Lastly, a lot of prominent content creators and professional gamers themselves are anime lovers, and they frequently talk about popular episodes during their broadcasts.