While the streaming wars for anime are typically seen as a one-sided conflict with Crunchyroll winning handily via pure attrition, other services like Netflix have shown remarkable resilience. Through careful selection, many of their series have risen above the pack for their respective release cycles. However, Netflix’s latest hit anime is representative of their main advantage over Crunchyroll.
Despite two months of waiting for fans outside Japan to stream <em>The Fragrant Flower Blooms with Dignity</em>, the Netflix-original romance manga adaptation has had a killer run on the platform. Its success is in no small part thanks to its impressive promotion, including interviews with Collider. But it also owes its success to capitalizing on a Crunchyroll blind spot.
Despite a Slippery Start, Netflix’s New Romance Anime Is Soaring
The Fragrant Flower Blooms with Dignity has quickly made strong impressions with fans thanks to CloverWorks’ characteristically gorgeous animation and a charming story at its heart. Yet even then, the raw appeal of the series was not what solely drove the anime’s success. Strong promotion helped it consistently rank across the global top 10 non-English shows on Netflix all September.
The anime sparked concerns among international viewers anticipating its arrival on streaming outside of Japan. But a major component to that has been having the promotional support of Netflix backing it, alongside a highly successful domestic anime merchandise push. Per Oricon, its hype has grown so strongly that its manga sold an additional two million copies in two months.
Netflix takes time to promote its exclusive anime, whether it’s glimpses of new episodes, spotlights at conventions, or even unique giveaways like Sakamoto’s Store aprons at Anime Expo 2025. Its promotion is memorable and shows their dedication to the medium’s growing presence especially among younger audiences.
This comes despite The Fragrant Flower Blooms with Dignity being a romance anime, with the medium typically seen by viewers in the West as dominated by battle shonen series. As Aniplex producer Shoko Hori told Collider, on top of it being an excellent ensemble drama, it’s a “thoughtful depiction of how people build relationships,” an approachable angle for any viewer.
Crunchyroll’s Loss Is Netflix’s Gain With Romance
Custom Image by Ana Nieves
While there are certainly the predictable winners of Crunchyroll’s promotional attention, namely battle shonen like Gachiakuta, and action blockbusters like Demon Slayer and Solo Leveling, there are odd outliers that occasionally take off. Not all romance on Crunchyroll performs poorly, but it’s often buried between action, isekai, fantasy, and of course, One Piece.
This is the price Crunchyroll pays for superior selection, though. The anime streamer occasionally has genuine romance hits, with six of its current top 30 trending series being romance. There are occasional hits among josei and shojo offerings, while shonen or seinen hits like My Dress-Up Darling, Rent-a-Girlfriend, and Watari-kun’s ****** Is About to Collapse are the most plentiful.
However, when Netflix releases a romance anime, it’s able to potentially dominate its competition, not merely rank, and it’s no surprise; romance K-dramas perform similarly well. But the platform has seen generational hits like My Happy Marriage tear up the charts before Fragrant Flower, and other wonderful series like Blue Box wind up as contenders for Anime of the Year.
Metrics like MyAnimeList rankings are almost immaterial when even Netflix’s anime viewers aren’t concerned with what’s new and hot according to anime fans tracking hype cycles.
Niche anime popularity trackers don’t account for the vastness that is Netflix’s viewership. Metrics like MyAnimeList rankings are almost immaterial when even Netflix’s anime viewers aren’t concerned with what’s new and hot according to anime fans tracking hype cycles. The Fragrant Flower Blooms with Dignity benefits from Netflix’s mainstream presence but excels all on its own.
