Last month, Netflix released its viewing statistics for the first half of 2025. Here’s a look at the most watched animated movies and TV shows between January and June.
Criteria
Numbers are based on global viewing, and ranked by number of views. Not every show or film listed below is available on the US version of Netflix.
I’m also not familiar with every animated cartoon, so if I’ve missed something, please let me know.
The 10 most watched animated TV shows on Netflix, January-June 2025
- Sakamoto Days (Season 1), 24,400,000 views
- Peppa Pig (Season 6), 23,100,000 views
- Devil May Cry (Season 1), 18,200,000 views
- Peppa Pig (Season 3), 17,100,000 views
- Peppa Pig (Season 1), 16,600,000 views
- Peppa Pig (Season 4), 16,000,000 views
- Asterix & Obelix: The Big Fight: Limited Series, 15,500,000 views
- Masha and the Bear (Season 5), 15,200,000 views
- Bebefinn (Season 2), 15,200,000 views
- Bebefinn (Season 1), 14,700,000 views
The 10 most watched animated movies on Netflix, January-June 2025
- The Secret Life of Pets 2, 74,500,000 views
- Despicable Me 4, 69,800,000 views
- The Secret Life of Pets, 65,900,000 views
- The Boss Baby, 55,200,000 views
- Minions, 54,100,000 views
- Shrek, 53,500,000 views
- Plankton: The Movie, 50,600,000 views
- Despicable Me 3, 49,100,000 views
- Despicable Me 2, 45,900,000 views
- Shrek 2, 44,500,000 views
My thoughts
As usual, the TV side is dominated by preschooler shows such as “Peppa Pig.” However, a few all-ages or adult oriented shows appear:
- Sakamoto Days (season 1) is the most watched animated TV show, an anime series (based on a manga series) about a retired hitman. The show’s produced by TMS Entertainment, the animation studio behind franchises such as “Lupin the Third.” The studio also did some work on Warner Bros. shows in the 90s (“Tiny Toon Adventures,” “Animaniacs,” etc.), though they no longer work on Western productions.
- “Devil May Cry,” an animated series based on the video game of the same name.
- “Asterix & Obelix: The Big Fight,” a five episode miniseries adaptation of a storyline from the popular French comic “Asterix.” Popular outside the US anyway; for whatever reason, the US doesn’t seem to care much for ongoing cartoons or comics set in Ancient Rome that don’t involve the Greco-Roman mythological deities or gladiators. Hanna-Barbera’s ‘The Roman Holidays” is the only such American cartoon I can think of, and that’s from the early 70s. As for comics, the only one I can find or think of is a now-obscure short-lived 1940s humor DC comic (“Nero Fox”).
On the film side, nearly the entire list is made up of DreamWorks and Illumination films. The only exception is “Plankton: The Movie,” a “SpongeBob SquarePants” film about the backstory behind Bikini Bottom’s copepod villain and his “computer wife,” Karen. If wondering, Netflix’s biggest animated hit this year, “KPop Demon Hunters,” debuted on June 20, so it didn’t have time to make it into the top 10 (it came in in 14th place, behind “The Croods”). That said, as of this writing, it’s Netflix’s fourth most watched English language movie of all time, and thus Netflix’s most watched animated movie ever. “KPop Demon Hunters” will certainly be at the top of the film list for the second half of 2025.
Image: “Plankton: The Movie.” (Netflix/Paramount)
