A Linguistic Difference Between Generations - "Anime" vs "Animes"
Recently I have noticed several people using the the word "animes" when referring to the plural of anime. Some of these people were pretty big anime fans, so their usage surprised me.
When I was coming up as a young anime fan in the US in the 2000s, everyone I knew used "anime" exclusively. In fact "animes" was a shibboleth that identified someone as being anime-ignorant. Like your parents calling a PS2 a "Nintendo".
I was curious whether this was a real phenomenon, so I checked Google Trends. Google Trends aggregates search activity over time and shows the relative intensity of a word over time. It is a great way to see broad trends like this. At least at a gut-check level of analysis.
The observation seems to hold some truth. The trend data for "anime" since 2004 begins with a healthy baseline, peaks in 2021, then drops down to a steady state above the baseline.
Compare to the "animes" data. This starts at almost nothing in 2004. It then grows in fits for the 2000s then peaks at the same time as "anime" in 2021. It drops after 2021, but then begins to grow again. in December 2025 "animes" actually peaks above where it was in 2021. "Animes" is definitely on the rise!
Make no mistake, I have no problem with this! Linguistics should always be descriptive not prescriptive. Vocabulary change is inevitable and people are allowed to use words the way they want to.
But changes in usage are still interesting to track! Particularly when, at least in my community, there was some small stigma attached to this usage. Hopefully other people find this similarly intriguing.
Has anyone else noticed this shift? I would be super interested if people would comment saying :
Do you say "anime" or "animes" when pluralizing "anime"?
What year did you start watching anime?