However, back in the 1970’s, when both fandoms were beginning, they were pretty small. The difference is furries were pretty much hounded from the start due to the focus on anthropomorphic animals and how the media heavily conflated that with beastiality, even though most are not into that to begin with, which has kept it pretty niche for decades.

The difference is all anime is wholes damn near

you can't really compare furry and anime's beginnings, even if you narrow it down to the west

Anime brought speed racer and astro boy

furry was and is small

Later Gundam Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball

What have furry brought?

anime, even before being really introduced to the west, was growing large in Japan

Anime got off mainly because it could easily be passed off as generic, but got its controversies later on as it became more popular.

Absolutely nothing

We’re not talking about Japan.

We’re talking about it within the West.

We cant talk about anime and not japan...

if you're talking about anime you are talking about Japan too

anime is not made for the West

Not necessarily, no.

the west just adopts it

If we’re talking about a particular thing in a region, we are talking about that particular thing in that region.

no anime company makes anime for anything but Japan itself, if it is popular in the west that is just a bonus to them

You didn't even specify a region

Anime was extremely small and niche in the West for the longest time. It only became widely popular in the late 1980’s with stuff like Sailor Moon and, eventually, Dragon Ball Z.

It was niche in japan too

It disnt take off untill like 2000s

When all that moe and kawaii bullshit infected it

anime has been a big thing in Japan for a long while, long before 2000s--unless you are referring to 2000s as when it really boomed in the west, in which case carry on I can't comment on that

However, what prevented it from going down the same route as furries or DND or other types of “nerd culture” was the fact it didn’t receive as much early criticism here in the West, which probably had to do largely with the dubs basically altering the original material heavily for Western audiences and the fact most of the content that became widely popular in the West were relatively benign.

It wasnt that big in japan until recently either

no, that's not correct

In the 2000s companies started using anime to market

That didnt happen before

yea but it was still big

look at Evangelion, for example, it was and *is* huge in Japan, and that is before 2000

But there was a burst in japan to go along with the one in the west

Not in the West, no. It became extremely big starting in the late 1980’s.

It was likely the internet that helped

yes, it got a boost, but it was still sizable

before said boost

Pre-1989?

No, it was very small.

Most media of the 1980’s was dominated by American cartoon shows such as Thundercats or He-Man.

When Furry get their media out and its not degenerate they might not get made fun of