Almost every learner asks this, usually after being told by someone else that it does not work.
The honest answer: anime is useful input and a poor curriculum. It is worth using, with the limits understood.
What it is genuinely good for
Motivation. The learner who studies for two years is the one who enjoys the process. If anime is what keeps you opening the app on a Tuesday, it has already earned its place.
Ear training. Large volumes of spoken Japanese at natural speed, with visual context. That is real extensive listening: listening speed training.
Set phrases and rhythm. Greetings, reactions, sentence-final particles, and the music of the language.
Recognising contractions. ～てる, ～なきゃ, ～ちゃう - the forms textbooks omit and real speech is full of: textbook Japanese versus real Japanese.
The two cautions
1. The register is wrong for work.
Anime dialogue is casual, dramatic and often deliberately rough. おれ, やべえ, ～ぞ, ～な as a command. Using these with a Japanese supervisor is a genuine mistake, and it is a mistake people make.
You need the opposite register at work: polite, soft, indirect. Keigo basics and workplace culture.
Rule: learn it to understand, not to say. That rule makes anime safe.
2. The vocabulary is skewed.
Depending on the genre you will learn words for swords, spirits and betrayal, and none for rubbish separation, payslips or health insurance - which are the words your first month in Japan actually requires: Japanese for daily life.
How to use it well
Japanese subtitles, not your own language. Reading subtitles in your language means you are not processing Japanese at all - you are watching a translated show with Japanese background noise.
If Japanese subtitles are too hard, watch without subtitles and accept lower comprehension. It is still better practice.
Pick one scene, not one series. Three minutes, watched several times, with the words looked up, teaches more than three episodes watched passively.
Limit the words you harvest. Three per episode, into your list, with the sentence: building a personal word list.
Shadow the dialogue you understand - it is excellent pronunciation practice: shadowing.
It is not a study plan
Anime supplements structured study. It does not replace it, and the reason is simple: it does not cover the grammar in order, it does not test you, and it will never tell you what you do not know.
If your goal is an exam and a visa, you need the structured part too - and a measurement. Our free exam demo is a complete JFT-Basic mock under exam conditions, which is a quick way to see whether the anime hours are translating into ability.