Why Anime-Style Storytelling Is Winning Music Videos and Brand Campaigns

In 2023, a single animated music video - "Idol" by YOASOBI - hit 100M views in 35 days, the fastest ever for a Japanese act. Acura used the same anime style storytelling for its Type S ad series and pulled in 275M views. These aren't outliers - they're proof of a format that punches above its weight. Here's what's behind it.

ANIME IS A MEDIUM, NOT A GUARANTEE

Is Attack on Titan an anime? Not exactly - it's a story told through manga, anime, and a live-action film. Same story, different containers. The container doesn't automatically make a story good; a badly made anime is still a bad story.

So the real question isn't "does anime work" - it's "what specifically does anime-style storytelling give a story that other formats don't." Three things, mainly: characters unbound by a single market's look, worlds built to feel lived-in rather than shot on location and a budget that goes toward narrative decisions instead of production logistics. The case studies below show what anime-style storytelling looks like when it's done well and later in this piece, where it tends to fall short.

3 CASE STUDIES: WHAT ANIME-STYLE STORYTELLING ACTUALLY DELIVE**RS**

YOASOBI - "Idol" (2023)

The song's official video is an original anime-style animated music video, directed by Naoya Nakayama as the opening theme for the anime Oshi no Ko.

• 100M views in 35 days - the fastest ever for a Japanese act
• 600M+ views total since release
• First Japanese-language song to top the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. chart

The chart performance suggests the video's reach fed directly into commercial success, not just YouTube numbers.

Yorushika - "Say It." (2017)

No anime tie-in at all. This is a standalone song from Yorushika's debut mini-album, years before the band became known for anime theme songs. The animated video, directed by Otori, was made purely as original storytelling - no existing IP to borrow an audience from.

• 190M+ plays with zero franchise support

This suggests anime style storytelling itself - not a franchise attached to it - is doing the real work here.

Acura - "Chiaki's Journey" (Western brand, not music)

Not a Japanese music video - a U.S. car brand. Acura built an original anime series, Chiaki's Journey, to launch its Type S vehicles.

• ~275M views - Acura's most-viewed campaign to date
• Measurable lift in brand consideration
• Reported sales boost for TLX and MDX Type S
• Gold Effie Award - an industry award tied to marketing effectiveness, not just reach

Why is this case the strongest of the three? It combines attention with a measurable business outcome - not just a big view count.

Three very different goals - a J-pop song, an original MV with no IP behind it and a car launch - all leaning on anime-style storytelling, each with results that go beyond simple view counts.

WHY IT WORKS: 3 SIMPLE REASONS

1. Characters are built to travel

Anime characters are usually not tied to one specific country or ethnicity by design. That lets a viewer in Italy, Vietnam, or the U.S. connect with the same character without needing literal representation. Fewer specific markers, wider potential audience - part of why "Idol" and "Chiaki's Journey" both performed well internationally, not just at home.

2. A relatable character in a detailed world feels real

Anime pairs flexible character design with richly built worlds. The character is easy to connect with; the world feels lived-in. That combination is what makes anime style storytelling emotionally immersive, not just visually distinct from live-action.

3. The budget goes toward story decisions, not production logistics

Animation isn't automatically cheaper than live-action - a fully realized animated series still costs real money in labor, design and rendering. The difference is what that money buys. Live-action budgets go heavily toward things animation doesn't need at all: location permits, travel, insurance, casting logistics. Anime-style storytelling redirects that same spend toward the story itself - a more elaborate world, a sharper character design, a bigger action sequence. That's why the format handles ambitious, fantastical ideas well - not because it's cheap, but because its cost sits in a different place.

WHERE THIS FORMAT DOESN'T FIT

To be fair to its limits: anime-style storytelling works best when a brand or artist wants to reach a younger, global audience emotionally and has enough lead time to build a real character and world, not just a logo animation.

Poor fit for:

• Messages that need to feel grounded in a specific, real place (local business, regional campaign)
• Timelines too short to develop a character worth caring about

All three examples above had months of development behind them - not a quick turnaround.

SHOULD YOU CONSIDER THIS FORMAT?

If you're planning a music video, a brand film or an original series, these examples point to something specific: anime-style storytelling is a way to reach a global audience emotionally, with a budget that goes toward narrative control rather than physical logistics - provided you have the character development time it requires. Few visual formats are built to do both at once: reach that wide and land that personal.

WHY OTSU LABS BUILDS ON THIS FOUNDATION

This is why Otsu Labs was built around anime-style storytelling as a format, not just an aesthetic. Our approach pairs the same mechanism behind these examples - relatable character design, immersive worlds, budget directed at story rather than logistics - with production pipelines built to deliver anime-style storytelling at scale.

We're upfront that this format isn't a shortcut: it takes real development time to build a character and world worth watching. What we bring is the ability to do that at a global level without cutting the artistic corners that made these examples work in the first place.

If any of this sounds like your next project, we'd love to hear about it.