Even in that regard as someone who also worked in entertainment (Korean not western) isn't it better to get ahead of trends so you can capitalize on their growing popularity later rather than regretting not have it. I mean there is actual a classic example in Island of Adventure....when Marvel Superhero Island came out Marvel was a box office flop outside of Spiderman which came out after the land opened. DC was what was really really really hot which Marvel was still niche. Then look where it is now and look how ahead Universal was.
Objective truth is animation is trending upwards in general, objective truth number two is japanese based animation is on the forefront of that, it makes way more business sense to me to get ahead of trends rather than wait then something blow up.
This comment really feels like you're defending anime as if we're invalidating the medium when that's not the case. We're just saying as it stands now, it ain't happening.
And let's not forgot, the original plan WAS DC until they couldn't get a deal done and went with Marvel - which besides the ease of negotiations, it came cheap. But let's not pretend Spider-Man, X-Men (which had a very popular cartoon at the time) and Hulk were unknowns. We're also talking close to 30 years ago when times were
verrry different.
You would probably also get similar results if you asked people the names of the main protagonists of the Jurassic World franchise.
But they would know the T-Rex, Blue, Raptors, dinos, etc - which is the main selling point.
Let's just take a look at the facts:
1. As I said before... In Japan, where anime is king, Universal Studios has a seasonal experience for close to 6 months where they alternate different anime IPs.
2. How is it currently represented stateside? They have Hello Kitty in 2 stores. The one in Hollywood fares better which we can attribute to the higher Asian demo. The one in Orlando may be getting the ax. What about elsewhere? They have one small kiosk in CityWalk and have some representation in MIB Store, which has become a Pop Culture spot now. If it was moving merch, it would be located in more prominent locations.
3. Let's use that Netflix number of 100 million across the year (which let's be real... was a pandemic year, so there's going to be that asterisk as people were more open to watching things outside their norm). If we divide that number by the 12 mos - that's 8.3 million monthly. If we applied that to Box Office tickets, and use general fuzzy math, with the average price of a movie ticket being $9 - that's a 75 million BO take... for all of anime. Not one specific property.
Admittedly, it's hard to really compare as equals for obvious reasons - but that at least paints a decent picture to understand a little bit better.
4. Most importantly, there are no breadcrumbs about any future plans include any anime IP as a property.
That doesn't mean anime isn't on the rise. That doesn't mean anime sucks. That doesn't mean people don't enjoy it. That doesn't mean there are viable anime IPs that could make for awesome rides.
It just means it's not in the cards any time for the forseeable future.