For the Japanese IP industry, the most overlooked development of Q1 2026 may be that the category of 'anime IP' itself is starting to dissolve.
The symbolic data point comes from Toho's FY2026 earnings. Under its 'Medium-Term Management Plan 2028' published in April 2025, Toho carved out IP- and anime-related businesses from its Film segment and began disclosing them as an independent operating segment. The label : 'IP & Anime' : is itself revealing. Not anime alone. Not film alone. A multimedia IP cluster that must be defined and operated as a whole.
The revenue composition of this new segment substantiates the label. Of the JPY 75.3 billion in FY2026 segment revenue, the largest line item was 'licensing of video content' at JPY 34.1 billion (+24.9%). The next was 'licensing of merchandise rights' at JPY 15.9 billion (+9.0%). Direct product sales declined to JPY 18.1 billion (-18.2%). A clear pattern: physical-goods revenue contracts, licensing revenue : both streaming and merchandise rights : expands. The monetization center of IP is shifting from 'make a product and sell it' to 'license a right and collect fees.'
ipranking.io's Global Top 20 ranking, which tracks 278 active IPs, shows the same boundary dissolution from the demand side. As of the third week of April 2026, the top of the list reads as follows:
1. One Piece (CVS 74, anime) 2. Resident Evil (CVS 67, gaming) 3. Elden Ring (CVS 64, gaming) 4. Super Mario (CVS 63, gaming) 5. My Hero Academia (CVS 63, anime) 6. Spider-Man (CVS 63, characters) 7. Chainsaw Man (CVS 63, anime) 8. Stitch (CVS 62, characters) 9. Re:Zero (CVS 62, anime) 10. Attack on Titan (CVS 62, anime)
Anime, gaming, and characters are interleaved from the second rank onward. Of the top 20, six are gaming IPs, ten are anime, two are character IPs, and two cross categories. The narrative that 'Japanese anime dominates global IP' is, quantitatively, only half true. Global IP demand in 2026 is distributed relatively evenly across anime, gaming, and character IPs.
A second pattern worth attention: social-buzz concentration. Within ipranking.io's top 20, five IPs registered a Social Buzz score of 100, the ceiling of the scale : Re:Zero, Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion R2, Parasyte -the maxim-, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders, and JUJUTSU KAISEN Season 3. What these share is a profile of moderate Search Demand and moderate Global Reach combined with exceptionally high community-mention intensity. They are 'fervent niche' IPs, distinct from 'broad-but-shallow recognition' IPs. The two types demand different commercialization strategies, even though both appear in the same top-20 table.
This is precisely the logic behind Toho's long-term target of a 32% operating margin in its IP & Anime segment. Licensing : video content and merchandise rights : is a high-margin business. Direct product sales have lower margins. Fervent-niche IPs monetize best through core-fan live events and digital experiences; broad-recognition IPs through large-scale retail merchandise. Optimizing by IP type is how you engineer a 32% margin structure.
The firms that have already internalized this structure are, notably, the non-Japanese ones. Pop Mart, based in China, built a billion-dollar franchise by pairing physical-store experience with social-media amplification around original character IP. Disney has for years treated Stitch as a character IP decoupled from its animated-film origin; it scores 62 in ipranking.io's global ranking without a recent Stitch release driving it. Neither of these are 'anime,' but both belong to what could more accurately be called the 'anime-adjacent IP economy' : a global ecosystem where anime, character, and gaming IPs compete and cross-pollinate.
The Q1 2026 data suggests the industry's vocabulary needs revision. Not 'anime IP market' but 'character-driven IP economy.' Not 'production company' but 'IP owner and licensor.' Not 'selling titles' but 'managing rights.' Toho's decision to rename its disclosure segment 'IP & Anime' is a first step in adopting this new vocabulary.
ipranking.io will track cross-category IP comparisons in subsequent issues, with particular attention to how the same IP's total CVS is driven by its multimedia expansion (anime + game + live-action + merchandise). The era for looking at 'the next hit title' is ending. The era for looking at 'the next hit IP' has begun.