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’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.
I don’t think they grow as much as they don’t rely too much on the audience being a certain age. Of course a lot of anime will be more entertaining or relatable if you’re part of its target audience, but a 50 years old can easily find Demon Slayer or Nichijou entertaining. Because of that simply shaking things up every now and then will be enough to keep your audience engaged; it’s the same reason an adult can be entertained by Adventure Time and not Paw Patrol.
I suppose it depends on the Anime you watch or read vs the comics you watch or read. But comics generally have an over arcing plot and that plot goes somewhere. I’m that way the protagonists grow up or get better etc. The protagonist gets harder better/faster/stronger. Some long running comics do this eventually, but they run for so long often that these arcs just become rehashes of things that have already happened. Spiderman runs into most of the villains in his stories more than once (in one run of the comic, I know there are multiple). Batman and Joker, Superman, and just about every other person from his native planet. Hell, Superman and Lex Luther.
But perhaps it’s just harder to notice these kinds of themes repeating in a lot of anime. Or perhaps it’s just my experience or specific anime and manga. I will concede that they generally are more “audience of all ages” friendly in a specific way that American comics don’t.