This reminds me of how video games became popular.
In the old days, if you admitted that you were a gamer then you were basically opening up to people hazing you and making fun of you for playing video games. But when Mortal Kombat and Doom came into the scene, suddenly video games became cool because the cool kids at school played them; it was no longer something you got made fun of anymore because from that point on video games became a widely accepted form of entertainment.
Now and days, if you find someone that makes fun of you for playing video games then the person making fun of you will be seen as the loser because being made fun of for liking video games these days is like someone making fun of you for watching movies or watching TV or reading books. At this point, video games have become so normie that anyone that still makes fun of people for playing video games these days are part of a very tiny minority where they are now the outcasts and the gamers have pretty much won in the end (the gamers have become accepted as consumers of entertainment).
The same thing is happening with anime and manga and Japanese pop culture in general. 20 years ago, you would've been made fun of and bullied for liking anime and manga because that was seen as uncool (anyone that was around for the Internet during the 2000's will know what I'm talking about) but after Covid-19 where people were forced to stay in their homes and watch TV and streaming content for a while would expose more people to anime and eventually manga and at this point Japanese media is no longer seen as uncool. The cool kids like anime and manga now and anyone that doesn't is now the outcast.
Whether Jersh and the Kiwis know it or not, Japanese media as we know it is here to stay and no amount of tradcon talking points is going to change that in the same way video games became cool by the end of the 1990's. I'm pretty sure that by the end of this decade, Japanese pop culture media will be as accepted as movies and television and video games by that point on and anyone that still makes fun of people for liking any aspect of Japanese media will be seen as the outcast by then.