Before I make it seem like the world begins and ends with mainstream product lets put the entertainment industry in perspective. According to my 1986 dictionary, the population of the USA is roughly 226 million people. When you eliminate the people who can't attend theaters or rent videos (prison inmates, small children, etc.), figure in the population growth rate, and realize that 226,000,000 is a real pain with which to do calculations, it seems pretty reasonable to estimate the number of people who can purchase entertainment to be roughly 200 million citizens.
The mainstream is supposed to be a majority of the population that, statistically, share similar tastes, opinions and buying power. So, estimating that the average movie ticket sold in 1996 is $5, how many people did that mega-blockbuster mainstream movie Independence Day bring into the theaters? A measly 30% of the population, if no one went to see the movie two or more times (Box Office Gross $300,000,000+ = 60 million people). If you consider a typical blockbuster (gross $100+ million) such as Phenomenon, then the percent drops to 10% (20 million people). You have to love an industry in which "mainstream" and "blockbuster" means only nine out of ten people ignore your product!
On video, the movie Twister has sold about 1.4 million videos (0.7% of the population), The Crow has sold about 700,000 videos (0.35% of the population, and the movie Seven has only sold 100,000+ units (0.05% of the population). Wow a mainstream video only has to be ignored by 99% of the people to be relatively successful!
Now let's consider anime. A successful anime title sells 20,000 to 40,000 units which only corresponds to 0.01% or 0.02% of the US population. That's right, a really popular anime is one that was only ignored by 99.98% of the people! Is it any wonder that anime companies have to work so hard to get the major distributors to buy a title when even the independent film companies can spend more, sell more, and generally appeal to more people?
To get back to anime fans, if the fan base truly is 20% of the domestic anime market, then anime fans really only 0.002 %to 0.004% of the US population. It is hard to claim to be significant when your segment of the market can be rounded off to 0%.
Still, despite our statistical irrelevance, we are not insignificant. Statistics are just cold, hard numbers open to interpretation and subject to the power of the human's capacity for action. Our influence may not be much at the corporate level, and we can not reasonably expect that to be so, but we can exercise our influence at the local level. Just as in local politics, local store owners have a limited population base, most of whom simply do not interact with the owner at all. So if a customer begins to build a relationship with the owner, the relationship will be significant.
Sure, some owners are jerks and not worth talking to. But if they are really bad they don't deserve your business anyway. Sure, some of us are jerks and may really do more harm than good if we try to be too pushy. But, if we treat the owners as human beings and visa versa, we should be able to develop mutually beneficial relationships that begin to trickle influence back up towards the top.
If you want to change the world you have to start with yourself and then go next door. There is no easy way. Good luck.