How is anime and manga more popular than comics and western cartoons?

Submitted ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Tekkip20@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

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.

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StrawberryPigtails@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I suspect the fact that I had to think a minute before I could name a recently released western cartoon that wasn’t Disney or aimed at the under 6 crowd may have something to do with it.

Sadly Saturday Morning cartoons just aren’t a thing anymore in the US.

As for comics, when was the last time you saw a comic at a grocery store or gas station? I know Marvel still makes comics but I haven’t seen them in a store in almost 30 years.

Japan likes their anime and manga so there’s a lot of variety, but for whatever reason our corporate overlords here in America decided that we didn’t want our equivalent anymore.

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- Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  For the last several months I’ve been creating Saturday morning playlists of cartoons for my kid to recreate the phenomenon for him. It’s a fun little hobby and I’ve learned a little video editing along the way. I even have a spreadsheet where I track everything so we have a good amount of variety and consistently progress so there’s no repeats and it’s always fresh. I even mix in “commercials” in between, in the form of random video memes and short indie animations, as well as appropriate music videos. Wish I could make it available to other parents, but I can be a lot more dialed in with an audience of one.
  
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  - itsathursday@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    This is awesome. I always thought I’d do the same if given the chance. You are a great parent.
    
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  - inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Well this is genuinely heart warming. Sounds super cute and definitely something they will look back on fondly when they are older.
    
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  - ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Look, man. To recreate the experience each show is gonna need 8 minutes of adds for cereals, junk food, and toys. Then every other show is going to have to be a re-run. Also, no one can be dressed for the day and breakfast is in the living room with a bowl of Cap’n Crunch.
    
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- dustyData@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  The overlords decided that comics are for selling shit to nerds and cartoons are for selling shit to children. Now that nerds are all over 30 there’s no need for comics anymore, duh!
  
  /s
  
  But in general, Japan is still way more into paper publishing still. Much more than the western world.
  
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- themeatbridge@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Check out Blue Eye Samurai, Twilight of the Gods, Arcane, and the Masters of the Universe revivals on Netflix, or Invincible on Amazon Prime, or Harley Quinn on HBO Max. It’s a good era for adult animation. Obviously there are a lot of anime influences, but these are all western-made for western audiences.
  
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- leftzero@lemmynsfw.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  recently released western cartoon that wasn’t Disney or aimed at the under 6 crowd
  
  Invincible, Arcane, Hazbin Hotel, The Legend of Vox Machina, Solar Opposites, The Boys presents: Diabolical, Krapopolis, Castlevania, Blue Eye Samurai, Star Trek: Lower Decks… and I’m sure I’m missing plenty (I intentionally left out anything by DC since you’d probably put them in the same bag as Marvel).
  
  Frankly, adult western cartoons are probably more popular (and much higher quality) now than they’ve ever been before…
  
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  - Zonetrooper@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Vox Machina, Scavengers’ Reign, Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal.
    
    But yeah, one of the last gasps of the streaming bubble was a surge of adult-oriented cartoons which were far and above anything of the type before them. I’m a little worried that that bubble has started to deflate, we’ll see this go away.
    
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- Xyre@lemmus.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  Sadly Saturday Morning cartoons just aren’t a thing anymore in the US.
  
  I save up anime episodes throughout the week and watch them all on Sunday morning during breakfast. It’s my way of recreating that magic from my youth.
  
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Dasnap@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I personally think that anime and manga having a ‘pipeline’ helps them.

A publisher like Weekly Shonen Jump shotguns a load of new series into their comic and sees if any stick.

If a series is popular, then their individual volumes sell well, encouraging WSJ to continue publishing.

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.

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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PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Because anime are allowed to tell complete stories before being cancelled out of nowhere for not selling enough merchandise.

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- BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  That’s false. Plenty of manga get cancelled after the first volume/ chapter. Only the best of the best selling get an anime adaptation.
  
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  - ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Yeah, the best become anime (if based on a Manga. Times may be a changin) so they pretty much always get to tell their whole story. Or they’re actually designed to be a single season or two instead of trying to become a cash cow that goes on way too long. NGE, Cowboy Bebop, Death Note, Love Hina, and several of the Gundam animes were all great single season stories. No 10 years of fluff.
    
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ICastFist@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
With comics specifically, marvel and DC have been out of touch for a very long time. The best stories tend to be one-shots or short stories that don’t interfere with the ongoing arcs. There’s also little perceived variety given those two powerhouses, despite them not being the only USA comic publishers.

Compared to the US, Japanese manga has much more variety in styles and stories, though some genres (flashy fighting, harem shit, Isekai shit) are beyond oversaturated. A manga that becomes a success has a high chance of becoming anime too, the same doesn’t seem to be the case with western animation, which tends to work the other way around more often (a cartoon gets a comic release).

Lastly, USA lacks a single fucking mecha cartoon. Megas XLR was ages ago.

Side note: I cannot, for the life of me, understand why the fuck Netflix went with a live action rendition of Sandman, instead of an animation, which would be perfect for any and every sudden change of style instead of relying on cgi that stands out against the actors

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- S_H_K@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  Compared to the US, Japanese manga has much more variety in styles and stories, though some genres (flashy fighting, harem shit, Isekai shit) are beyond oversaturated.
  
  I saw yesterday one guy talking about absolute Batman… another take on Batman as if we didn’t had enough. It could have the best writers and all but again, more Batman? The method Japan has is basically everyone gets a chance and try to standout with his idea by himself.
  In US is get hired by one of the corpos that brought a successful idea and do something that sells.
  
  The results are obvious there’s people that will buy Batman, Spiderman or Superman at every turn but for many there’s only so much Spandex superheroes you can have.
  
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- 0ops@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  There was that Voltron reboot that was on Netflix about a decade ago. Granted I was a teenager back then, but I remember liking it
  
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De_Narm@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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- Mr_Blott@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  I’m not into comics
  
  I can read a lot of manga right now.
  
  Pls to explain how manga is not comics
  
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  - ComicalMayhem@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Comics = American Manga = Japanese
    
    Generally that’s the accepted connotations, even though the words are technically the same.
    
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  - JackbyDev@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Those were the terms OP used lol. But yeah, generally people view comics as western rather than a catch all term.
    
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agent_nycto@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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?

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- Kolanaki@yiffit.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I wonder if perhaps they meant prevalent? Because, yeah, Western animation is extremely popular (at least, in the West where they were made) but it’s not exactly as prevelent as Japanese animation. For every Western animation, there seems to be 25 Japanese ones.
  
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  - agent_nycto@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    That makes a lot more sense
    
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SorteKanin@feddit.dk ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
At least from my perspective, manga and anime are mediums. They can be used to tell any story, and they are used like that. You can find manga and anime for any age group and in any genre. The medium is used for all kinds of stuff.

The problem with western comics and cartoons is that (at least from what I know), the medium is mostly only targetting kid’s or it’s superhero comics. It’s just so very limited.

For example, I’m currently watching Ancient Magus Bride. It’s a very non-traditional romance story in a fantasy setting with interesting characters and emotional dynamics. So far I’m really enjoying it. I simply can’t imagine a western cartoon/comic even attempting to produce a similar thing. Or well, perhaps I can imagine it but it just doesn’t happen for some reason.

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- DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Go to a comic store and ask for some recommendations that prove this take wildly wrong.
  
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  - vonbaronhans@midwest.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I dunno “comics” in the US are still mostly superhero stuff. Once you get into the non-superhero stuff it generally gets referred to as “graphic novels”. Maybe that term is used only to separate it from the superhero image, or it may have to do with syndication and release schedules? I’m not entirely sure.
    
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  - SorteKanin@feddit.dk ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    Go to a comic store and ask for some recommendations that prove this take wildly wrong.
    
    Right, I don’t doubt that some might exist. But it’s a minority of what’s available.
    
    Also I doubt any of it is serialized as a TV cartoon show in the same sense that animes are made from mangas. But I’d love to be proven wrong :)
    
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Seleni@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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Mothra@mander.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I think it’s because comics keep refrying the same story over and over again. Boot, let it run, reboot, let it run, reboot … You get the idea. They try to spice things up and change stuff - the equivalent of remixing a classic song ad infinitum, some iterations will be better than others and you will probably like some more than the original but it’s the same song.

Manga and anime have originality on the other hand. Even if some genres become cliche, each story remains a closed entity. Characters here don’t end up elsewhere, and once a story is complete it doesn’t get a reboot. This means the audience can relate more easily to a franchise, because there are not as many variants, and then move on to the next.

There is also less influence in Manga from current affairs, society and history, whereas comics always meddle with those three just too much. Mangas released in the 80s remain relatable today, but a lot of comics don’t for example, or feel like they’ve aged awkwardly.

So it’s easy for people to remain ‘loyal’ to an anime franchise, but difficult for the average comic.

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Sabata11792@ani.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
There is creativity and risk in anime that no western media company would ever touch, even if its disagreeable or just shitty. Western stuff is cookie cutter slop aimed at checking all the boxes of a profitable product.

Western media seems to only push things that fit the mold of an investor worthy price of art. Anime goes for a “throw things at the wall” approach so things that are a gamble get made. I think its an issue of scale, anime has a smaller market so the stakes of fucking up massively are survivable while having a huge farm of original indy stories dreaming of being an anime to source from. Western stuff dose not not have the pool of creativity to lift from as scaring or offending investors with risk gets you fired. Triple A gaming seems to reached the same point, bureaucracy and safety prevents new ideas that are risky or they come out bland and boring. Without risk you stagnate and people think your boring. Animation is cheap enough to take risk but has less returns since the market is smaller.

TL;DR: Western media is too bloated to take the creative risk needed and they got to throw buckets of cash to prop up Ol’Reliable season 20 instead.

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- CluckN@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Don’t worry Blackstone recently bought the largest e-manga company so we can all enjoy cookie cutter slop.
  
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  - Sabata11792@ani.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Investment firms, the 5th horseman.
    
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  - desktop_user@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    there will still be those that shove out incest rape fantasy anime.
    
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Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It obviously depends on location. But where I live, anime is nowhere near more popular than Western animation.

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sxt@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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 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 air in the room for other stuff to breathe.

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DudeImMacGyver@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Is it more popular? Are you sure you’re not just making an assumption based on your anecdotal experiences?

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- Vendetta9076@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - ICastFist@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I remember seeing that headline some time ago.
    
    www.animenewsnetwork.com/interest/…/.173234
    
    According to this fact check piece, for 2019, Demon Slayer probably sold around 10.8m copies (Shueisha reported such number), vs 15 million sum of the “top 750 titles” comics. Demon Slayer didn’t outsell “the entire western comic industry”, but it damn well outsold the vast majority of best sellers. I couldn’t find anything concrete for 2020.
    
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  - DudeImMacGyver@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Didn’t realize this was only comics
    
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- SeattleRain@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Every major book store has a manga section about twice as big as western comics.
  
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  - agent_nycto@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    That’s also because of how they are printed.
    
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HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I would argue that Western animation is more popular as anime, it is just different.

The largest media company in the USA started as an animation company and animation is at the core of the company’s identity.

After the Simpsons proved that prime time animation was profitable, there has been a resurgence in adult animation. There are several Western adult animated shows that are known as much as anime.

The eighth (Inside Out 2), fourteenth (Frozen II), and seventeenth (The Super Mario Bros Movie) top grossing films of all time are animated movies made by American companies. Moreso, the seventeenth movie uses Japanese IP but is made by Americans.

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FuglyDuck@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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- desktop_user@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  redo of healer and made in abyss are clearly childrens shows, both of them contain children and are serialized TV shows.
  
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  - _Sprite@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Play made in abyss for a classroom and you’ll end up a sex offender
    
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Whitebrow@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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sylver_dragon@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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- ICastFist@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Saint Seiya was the “graduation” anime for me, back in 1995 or 96. He-Man, Ninja Turtles and Spider Man stood no chance against a consistent story and bloody fights to the death. The anime dragged on a fucking lot, but the fights were like nothing else
  
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Ziggurat@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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/batman

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- atrielienz@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I’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.
  
  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).
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  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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Nightsoul@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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_____@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Comics have always been campy to me. Anime when I grew up felt like a new direction. It did gritty before gritty was cool. The entire aesthetic was new and creative.

The music overshadowed anything western animation (at the time) had. I think the cultural impact made waves and western animation is pretty good now.

Although I consider the two things to be very different.

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ryathal@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
There’s a huge range, but the anime that gets popular tends to have vastly better writing than most western cartoons. There’s still a stigma against animation as a legitimate adult art form, so it’s rare that even good western animation gets properly recognized.

That said DC does have a good animation team, but they don’t really advertise their releases much or make them easy to see outside Max. Netflix has probably been the best for western animation in the last decade, but they generally go very raunchy and it’s a turn off for some.

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lvxferre@mander.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I don’t know. Instead I’ll focus on my subjective experience with comics and manga, as a nobody from LatAm who likes fantasy.

Manga is something that I grew up with. As adulthood came by, I didn’t feel the need to ditch it - instead I found other manga series to enjoy. There’s stuff for young kids and adults; spicy and tame; comedic and serious; romance and no romance. No matter who you are and the stuff that you like, I feel like you could find at least one enjoyable manga series to read.

In the meantime, what I’ve found from comics elsewhere:

Local (at least in Brazil) - either tailored for kids (see: Monica’s Gang) or newspaper 4-koma with social commentary (see: anything from Glauco). So only kids get actual stories? Based on Mafalda I feel like that’s how the cookie crumbles in Latin America as a whole.

European - wider in age demographic than the local ones, and some do have fantasy (Even erotica. Druuna, I’m looking at you. ~~And your butt.~~), but I feel like they lack dynamic. Even adventure ones like Tintin. Still enjoyable to read, but sometimes my cup of tea might be yerba or coffee, you know?

United-Statian - Mary Sue protag got superpowers from Z’bh’thy, and now is fighting the Evil for the sake of their country. Skip past 20 years and they’re still in the same slop, never reaching the end, in a multiverse that makes my PC cabling look tidy in comparison.

manhua (China) - I actually found quite a few enjoyable series (like the Fairy Captivity, Yaoguai Mingdan, My Wife is the Demon Queen). Perhaps not surprisingly they’re similar in spirit to Japanese manga. I could see myself reading more of that stuff. (I’ll skip wuxia though.)

manhwa (S. Korea) - 90% of the stuff that I’ve seen boils down to either “adultery stories” (I’m not into that stuff) or what feels like ultra-shōnen: “level ZZ is not enough, MC needs to reach level ZZZ”. That said I did find a few enjoyable series, like FFF-Trashero or Carnivorous Princess Yegrinna.

Are they always like this? Probably not; I bet that people can find exceptions to every single bullet point that I’ve listed.

Something must be also said about the synergy between light novels, manga, and anime: if you want you get to enjoy the same story thrice, in three different media, and the pleasure associated with each will be different. And if the story is good enough it won’t tire you down. I simply don’t feel the same in non-Japanese series, even the ones that adapt the same universe across different media (like X-Men).
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Thcdenton@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Tiddies

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EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
As plenty of people have gone into the production pipeline, I’m gonna comment on the history of anime and manga and how that affects the way they’re produced, since I did a paper on it many years ago.

Manga dates back at least to the era of woodblock printing, as a famous artist by the name of Hokusai released a collection of prints titled The Manga, but the manga we know today was actually originally inspired by serialized Sunday comic strips from American newspapers imported via South Korea. The comparison to modern Western comics is clear, but I think this connection to the Sunday comics is why production houses like Shonen Jump have their weekly releases which allows them to try out new artists and comics without as much risk as Western comic publishers would have starting a new series with a full comic debut. Manga books can be better thought of as anthologies of weekly comic strips like Calvin and Hobbes rather than superhero comics.

Anime is very much inspired by Disney films, but both anime and manga target demographics of all kinds and every genre you can think of. I think this goes back to the woodblock prints of yore, which were an artform that had no particular demographic or subject matter, ranging from raunchy porn to advertising for theatre shows and anything in between. Add in the economic boom that Japan went through in the 80s just as anime was taking off - a time where money was so easy to come by in the industry that they were just greenlighting pretty much any project regardless of subject matter - and anime had no qualms about portraying adult themes like sex or body horror, as well as deeper musings like the common references to the atomic bombs and the deep cultural trauma that did to Japan.

Also of note: America was actually one of the last places to be introduced to anime and manga, and it took a long time to take off here. The rest of the world was getting into anime during the 80s while Steven Spielberg is quoted as saying that a cartoon movie for adults would never take off in the US in reference to the theatrical release of Akira, the profits of which funded many of the most famous studios of the 2000s.

In short, the cultural gulf between America and Japan divested the newspaper comic strip of its stereotype as a media for kids, which resulted in an artform that catered to all audiences and interests. And upon circling back to America decades later, this lack of the stereotype and willingness to show deeper stories found a niche that had been completely unattended to amongst the teens of the 2000s, who gobbled up media in a form that they had grown up with but treated with more respect than most kids’ cartoons. Also, it probably helped that many kids’ shows were created with the sole intent of selling more action figures.

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lohky@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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szczuroarturo@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Im pretty sute manga is not more popular than comics as a whole ( anime bit might be true of we count tv series only ) and even if that’s true the reason is very simple. Piracy. Its extremly easy to find manga online . Not so much with comic books.

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ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Aside from many being made for people over the age of 12, most animes have a story and an ending. It’s nice getting something that’s complete. X-men are awesome, but how many comic years was it before the end of their story? How much fluff is in there?

Western world creates a concept and milks it for as long as it can make a dollar. Japan does some of that too, for sure. Luffy may never end. But many other times they go into it to tell a story, get it done, and that’s it. Complete show. NGE was a single season. FMA was 2 seasons. Cowboy Bebop was just one season.

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ABCDE@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Ease of access, for one.

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Steve@communick.news ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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.

I would say Superman is more popular. After all, everyone knows who he is.

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- atrielienz@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Superman though is also popular just as an icon, not necessarily (in this day and age) because he’s a comic book character. There are people who have never picked up a comic who knows his name and his general story. They may have never even actually seen a show or movie about him, but he’s now such an icon that this doesn’t matter. People still know him.
  
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solsangraal@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
people have been trying to figure out why kids like the things they like for many decades, ever since they became their own demographic. the only reasonable conclusion i’ve heard is kids like what their friends like, and tend to move away from what their parents liked (superman). why do they latch on to some things and not others?- who tf knows

best advice is to not waste time trying to figure it out

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