Not against the medium I consume it.
But it occurred to me that there seems to be a lot more exposure to anime and manga largely thanks to services like crunchyroll and manga reader services, this includes physical sales as well.
It’s just that you’d think say, Superman would be more stupidly popular since everyone knows who he is than someone such as Lelouch from Code Geass.
Is it because comics just doesn’t have the same spark with the younger generation? Or is it because there are a billion different issues of comics so it makes manga more streamlined?
I would like to know your thoughts as I am quite curious about this phenomenon, since even in the early 2000s I was into anime, and you could get your fix from non legit services via the Internet, but I’m sure as shit it didn’t hit this mainstream until the mid 2010s and now the roaring 2020s.
I personally think that anime and manga having a ‘pipeline’ helps them.
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A publisher like Weekly Shonen Jump shotguns a load of new series into their comic and sees if any stick.
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If a series is popular, then their individual volumes sell well, encouraging WSJ to continue publishing.
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After a while, the popular series will most likely be given an anime (which nowadays tend to be very manga accurate), which tend to export better.
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If the anime is popular, volume sales increase worldwide, and you have a massive hit.
While this quite effectively creates new popular series, it leads to a massive manga graveyard.
Western comics don’t really have this kind of pipeline and I’m not aware of any WSJ-like publications for new Western projects.
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Dude the marvel cinematic universe is we…was one of the biggest hits to smash into the box office. Batman is one of the most popular fictional characters ever written. People are still talking about adventure time, regular show, Avatar the last Airbender, and they ended how long ago? SpongeBob is still on the air. Simpsons has lasted longer than most anime.
What are you talking about, Western comics and animation being less popular?
You want to know a pretty unbiased way to judge this? Look at a Halloween store. Spirit even has stuff from the hawk tuah lady, so you know they work fast and go with what’s popular. You might see an old Naruto costume or two, maybe a Goku, and an endcap of what’s popular this year possibly still demon Slayer. But you’ll see a bunch of stuff for Batman, Superman, hell the joker and Harley Quinn gave their own sections each, and that’s just DC.
It obviously depends on location. But where I live, anime is nowhere near more popular than Western animation.
Like others here, I was drawn to anime and manga for the varied storylines that had arcs that mattered, and an ending, and then stopped. And wrote something totally new.
Whereas comics would reboot the same story, and reboot it, and reboot it… Or they’d have a big arc that dramatically changed things… and two issues later suddenly its status quo all over again.
All of this made it hard to really get invested in their characters or stories. Why even do a story if you’re going to erase it all in the next storyline? Why care if so-and-so died if they’ll just be back in next week’s issue?
The other reason was strong female protagonists that weren’t all sexualized to the wazoo. In western comics it was all tight spandex and butt-boob shots and shots framed by women’s thighs… and most of the non-super women were just plot points to be stuffed in a fridge.
Meanwhile there were piles of strong, well-rounded, independent women of all different ages in manga and anime. Even the sexy women were developed characters first and sexy second. With western comics it definitely felt the other way around.
I grew up on Magic Knight Rayearth and Slayers and Iria and Cowboy Bebop. Watching those was like a breath of fresh air compared to Batman Reboot #242 or whatever.
And I really liked the varied art styles. Western comics were pretty much all of a muchness, the same style or close to it. Manga, meanwhile, had everything from Clamp’s super-detailed art to Dragonball’s more simplistic style. It gave them a much more unique feel.
Continuity. Nothing ever matters with comics. Superman was a communist, a nazi, a zombie, a literal god and everything inbetween. But most commonly, he is about the same he was 50 years ago. Meanwhile I’ve been growing up alongside famous manga characters. I could be following Naruto to this day and he’d be roughly my age at most points.
Variety. I’m not into comics, I admit, but almost every popular comic I’ve seen is about some kind of superhero. Manga on the other hand have a wide range of topics and target audiences.
Accessibility. I can read a lot of manga right now. Offical, free and online (at least the most recent chapters). There’s no such thing for comics. And while we’re at it: Manga release at smaller chunks in shorter time intervals, which keeps more attention. Being black and white does help, I’d assume.
Anime. They are mass produced and serve to promote manga. There is no equivalent with comics and extended media like cartoons or movies and such often follow their own storyline. Assuming I’d be into the MCU, there is no single comic I could read to see exactly what’s next. If I watch a season of Jujutsu Kaisen, I can look up the correct chapter and continue the story seamlessly.
Comics have an issue with Marvel and DC sucking up most of the air in the room just to rehash the same characters for the millionth time. I’m generally pretty unenthused with superhero stuff and the general aesthetic around that content, however I do like batman to an extent and have enjoyed the movies and stuff related to him. If I wanted to read a batman comic where do I even start? The beginning? Which beginning? His first appearance back in the 40s or the beginning of one of the many iterations of batman? Now I have to do research into 80 years of content just to figure out what to read, or just pick one at random.
The appeal of manga is just being able to read three series in a week that each explore a different setting/idea and are only one volume apiece. If someone tells me to read a longer series I can just start at chapter one and go until I hit the end. Manga/anime absolutely have some oversaturated settings/ideas as well but there’s generally a lot more space for other stuff to get seen and do well, get anime adaptations, etc
Is it more popular? Are you sure you’re not just making an assumption based on your anecdotal experiences?
Yes.
Demon Slayer either nearly sold the same amount of units in one year as the entire American comic industry or actually just straight up outsold it. Manga is very much larger than comic books.
Didn’t realize this was only comics
Every major book store has a manga section about twice as big as western comics.
That’s also because of how they are printed.
The sheer volume and variety of anime and manga is why it has such a reach
There’s only about a dozen things that always pop up when you mention western animations, regardless of the genre or target audience
Why? My personal guess is that it costs too much/doesn’t generate a lot of profit and that due to that, series don’t build on top of each other like they do in Korea or Japan
Example off the top of my head, Korea has a lot of “awakened player” stories like Solo Leveling, the anime of which you may have seen recently; those stories are good because they keep building off of each other, eliminating the boring tidbits and coming up with more creative ways for the stuff that is interesting, and more importantly, its current, not 10 years ago, not 20, they refine the genre every season and it gets incrementally better, something that has simply not been happening in the west for a good long while now.
It’s been over 40 years that Japan has been massively exporting anime to the west.
People under 50 yo grew up watching Dragon-ball, Sailor-Moon, Naruto or one piece rather than Superman/batmanI’d argue that I’m smack in the middle of the generation that grew up watching Dragonball and Sailor Moon etc. but I also grew up watching Superman, and Batman, and Spiderman etc.
The problem I have with American comics is a whole list.
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The serial nature of American Comics and the likelihood that the comic will end its run before the story is finished (this happens quite a lot with smaller American Comics, making it difficult to find new material and the will to invest interest in it).
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Anime Stories may not always grow with the fan base, but enough of them do that they maintain their audience over years as the story progresses. I think that’s pretty important.
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The most popular American Comic stories are over saturated on their own material. They reboot repeatedly, and have a wrote way that the main character(s) face/handle problems and conflict. You almost never have a full story that’s not just a cyclical thing. A lot of Manga have a beginning, middle and end, even if the story continues afterwards (story arcs finish more often than not). Sometimes they rehash, the same thing arc to arc, but more often than not, because those characters are new and not 50 year old icons, the audience is more willing to invest in that kind of story.
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There was definitely always this FOMO feeling about anime back in the day because it wasn’t such an outwardly accepted thing. It used to be only the “weird kids” who were into it, so there was a sense of it being scarce, even when it wasn’t necessarily. I think that helped it to be more sought after. It went from weird to cool.
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Anime often doesn’t have a way to endear you to the characters in a cheap way that’s everywhere, enough for you to invest in buying the media. Some American comics started out in news papers and on things like cigarette packets. They gained some level of notariety and recognition from the public that way. So they didn’t have to give as much effort to a first issue as anime manga often does. This to me is a notable difference.
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I think one of the biggest reason is how easy and accessible it is to read manga or watch anime. There are countless sites where you can consume each for free.
I tried a few years ago trying to find a way to read comics online for free and found nothing.
Sure not the most legal thing but when you are tight on cash, last thing I want to do is spend it on entertainment.
I did used to read a ton of comics growing up, but I would borrow them from the library.
I’d argue that the main reason you see more anime is the target audience.
Western animation is usually aimed at young children. For as much as I may have loved Disney’s Gummi Bears as a young child (decades later and I can still hear the theme song on my head), it’s now pretty painful to watch. Some shows have aged pretty well and some newer shows aren’t quite so bad. But, the target audience still seems to be younger children for much of it. There are exceptions, and several of those are pretty well known. For example, The Simpsons and Futurama are both popular animated shows, and both are not aimed at children.
Anime, by contrast is often aimed at teenagers. This means that it’s part of the audience’s formative years. People form bonds with the shows and carry some of those bonds into adulthood. And while the writing often falls into cringe inducing melodrama, there’s enough of it that is passable fun, usually simple hero stories. The shows can be like a comfy blanket that doesn’t insult the audience’s intelligence too much.
I’d also note that anime’s appeal goes back further than the 2000’s. My own introduction was Robotech, back in the 80’s. While it was a bastardized version of Macross, with some pretty awful writing (not that Macross’s writing is going to win awards any time soon) and a couple other shows, it was certainly a step above what most western studios were putting on for Saturday Morning cartoons. And that created a lifelong soft spot for anime. Heck, my desktop background is currently a Veritech Fighter. I still love the idea of Robotech, even if I only watch it in my memory through very heavily rose tinted glasses. And I imagine I’m not alone. The show may be different, but I suspect a lot of folks graduated from Disney and Hanna-Barbera cartoons to some type of anime as they got older and that anime was stuck with them.
A large part of it is the target audience.
Like western (or at least, American,) animation is mostly intended for children (Disney animation, Pixar. Paw patrol… looney toons,) or is of one of two genres (dc/marvel superhero’s, or like Family guy, South Park, simpsons.)
A lot of anime is intended for kids, too, don’t get me wrong. But a lot of it is also very much not. You also have a much broader array of genres, as well as a much broader distinctions in style in them.
If I want to read Spider-Man, I would probably post the question “where should I start with Spider-Man?” on something like Lemmy and I’d get a dozen different responses suggesting different comic runs or artists. That alone means I’m not getting the full Spider-Man story.
I can go pick up volume 1 of One Punch Man and know I’m at the beginning of a cohesive story.
I don’t have any idea really, but one possible contributing element is the speed of delivery. My understanding (possibly incorrectly) is that western comics are more commonly delivered on a one book per month cycle, whereas Manga delivers a lot more content in the same time period. Part of this production time can probably be attributed to coloring time (Western comics color every panel vs Manga printed in mostly black and white).
There’s also the accessibility of Manga and anime, having relatively newer characters without the burden of decades of backstory (not accounting for One Piece). Running an anime with (mostly) similar story line helps to bring potential new readers up to speed quickly with Manga, whereas the animated adaptations of western comics often seem to pick specific story arcs of comics, or make up entirely new stories.
Tiddies
