Whether you have a Naruto-obsessed little sibling, a preteen niece adorning her wall with Bleach posters, or an uncle with a growing Gunpla collection, by now most people know and love at least one anime fan. The Japanese animation style has so thoroughly pervaded popular culture that reportedly more than half of Netflix’s global audience (around 111 million subscribers) watched at least one anime title last year.

But the genre’s appeal to all sorts of people can make buying anime-related gifts especially tricky. “Anime is so broad and deep that ‘baby’s first anime’ will be vastly different from what the 40-year-old fan loves,” says Peter Tatara, the event director of Anime NYC, New York’s largest annual anime convention. So to help you zero in on what will most delight the anime lover in your life, we surveyed anime fans of all ages — from young kids and tweens to college students and adults — about which franchises they’re watching and reading and what merch they’d most like to receive as a gift this year.

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