Christie’s will stage its second auction devoted to anime and manga material next month, after the first iteration of the sale earlier this year far exceeded expectations. In March, the sale Anime Starts Here: Japanese Subculture Reimagines Tradition brought in $1.4m including fees, more than four times the low end of the sale’s estimate (calculated without fees).
The first sale of its kind held at a major auction house, the lots offered an eclectic mix of traditional Japanese works and contemporary creations, tracing a cultural throughline from the classic ukiyo-e artist Katsushika Hokusai to contemporary art-market darlings like Yayoi Kusama and Yoshitomo Nara. The sale also included movie and television posters from classic Japanese productions like Godzilla.
Highlights from that sale included Shiomi Ryosuke's take on samurai armor, Wolf and Armor (2019), which sold for $698,5000 with fees—35 times its low estimate, setting a record at auction for the metalwork artist. The top anime work sold during that sale was Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon by Ito Ikuko, who worked on the cult classic Sailor Moon anime series from the 1990s. The sketch features five of the series' main characters and sold for almost 18 times its low estimate: $88,900 with fees.
“Anime made a big statement,” says Takaaki Murakami, Christie’s head of Japanese and Korean art. “Christie's showed that the New York auction market has been waiting to see popular, contemporary Japanese artforms stand alongside more traditional works. We are overwhelmed by the response.”
The success helped usher in the second edition of the sale, soon to go on view at Christie's in New York (8-12 October), followed by an online sale (9-22 October).
This original cel of the character Kaneda riding his motorbike in Akira from 1988 is estimated to sell for between $5,000 and $7,000 Courtesy Christie's
This year, Christie’s will double down on anime and manga featuring works from some of the most recognisable series like Dragon Ball, Pokémon, Sailor Moon and films from director Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli.
The auction house will offer original drawings by the “Father of Manga" Osamu Tezuka, the creator of Astro Boy (one of the first Japanese series broadcast in the US) and soft vinyl figures from Ultraman, the science-fiction franchise that began in the 1960s.
The sale will also feature original celluloids (or cels), the transparent sheet used for hand-drawn animation, from titles like Pokémon, Akira, My Neighbor Totoro and Dragon Ball Z.
“Anime made a big statement at Christie’s in March,” Murakami said in a statement this week. “Now, we are back with another sale that shows the beauty, power and creativity of Japanese subcultures.”
The sale comes as collectibles and memorabilia have become increasingly important for auction houses, particularly over the past few years, when fine art sales have been stagnant.
The upcoming sale will coincide with the 20th edition of New York Comic Con, the largest fan convention of its kind in North America. Held at the Javits Center (8-10 October)—just weeks after The Armory Show—the convention features artist installations, panels, talks and retail tables centred on pop culture, including anime and manga.
This original production cel from the Pokémon series carries an estimate of $2,000-$3,000 Courtesy Christie's
Once considered niche forms of entertainment outside Japan, anime and manga have grown significantly in popularity in the US in the past decade. Anime viewership doubled between 2020 and 2025, according to the Tokyo-based entertainment analytics firm GEM Partners, which earlier this year found that 22% of US-based respondents watched anime regularly. Classic shows produced for children (like Pokémon, Dragon Ball and Naruto) led in Western markets, and new action titles like Jujutsu Kaisen have proved popular with US audiences.
The increase in access to anime through streaming services like Netflix and Crunchyroll has made the genre more accessible in the West—along with changes in entertainment consumption during the Covid-19 pandemic, when lockdowns gave people more time at home.
While the popularity of anime in the US is a more recent phenomenon, the genre has had a passionate fan base in Latin America for decades. Because Japanese animation programming was more affordable to import, Latin American television stations broadcast Spanish-dubbed series like Speed Racer as early as the 1960s. Dragon Ball is particularly beloved in Mexico, where the character Goku has been referred to as “a Latino icon”. The 2018 finale of Dragon Ball Super drew crowds of tens of thousands to outdoor screenings all over Mexico.
Surveys indicate much of the increase in the US is driven by younger viewers, who often discover new series through fan edits on social-media platforms like TikTok. This lines up with the ages of winning bidders during the first iteration of Christie’s Anime Starts Here sale; according to the auction house, 35% of buyers were Millennials or Gen Z, a higher rate than usual for its auctions.
The auction will coincide with the arrival in New York of The Art of Manga, the first major exhibition in the Americas to examines the subject as an art form, which opens on 3 October at the Brooklyn Museum will stage. The critically acclaimed show debuted at the de Young Museum in San Francisco last year.
