Anonymous
The rise of anime and the fall of western comics/animation 05/05/26(Tue)16:15:03 No. 7933020
The rise of anime and the fall of western comics/animation 05/05/26(Tue)16:15:03 No. 7933020
The rise of anime and the fall of western comics/animation Anonymous
05/05/26(Tue)16:15:03
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7933020
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How and why do you think anime exactly became as big as it is starting from the late 90s onward?
It's kinda funny and weird how many zoomers and zillennials born from the mid 90s onward have a weird anti-western style thing going on now, but I guess it's just how things go. Anime and japanese media in general were weird and dumb to us "old school" pre-2000 nerds back then, but now comics and western games are ugly and dumb to younger people. I also noticed that lot of weebs have like a weird face autism and think anything with grounded or realistic faces is ugly in art for some weird goddamn reason, even if it's anime/manga, If you show an current internet brainrotted kid Tetsuo Hara or Ryoichi Ikegami art I bet they'll call it ugly but if you made the faces more like generic modern anime they'll like it.
Showing all 40 replies.
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>>7933020
>Anime and japanese media in general were weird and dumb to us "old school" pre-2000 nerds back then
No it wasn't. It was "weird" to anyone else not into anime and it still is the moment the mainstream crowd watches something with 1 (one) loli in it. Don't you see the crusades actual anime fans have to put up with online because of these TCAP youtuber audience leaking into the anime space?
>but now comics and western games are ugly and dumb to younger people
Avengers movies, Spiderverse movies and recent Spiderman game, Batman, etc. Seems to still be very mainstream. I'd say more mainstream than ever.
>but if you made the faces more like generic modern anime they'll like it
The brainrotted kid would be too busy playing Roblox.
Anime is STILL weird. The only difference is Shounen slop has higher than ever budgets in the history of anime in 2026 that attracts way too many people to the medium and the moment they look at other stuff it's deemed as problematic "pedoshit". Anyway, shit thread. Made me respond.
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>>7933020
Piracy, the diversity of genres which filled a massive gaping hole in the market (for both comics and animation), and just the sheer quantity of output.
Dipshits will claim there are no good western comics or animation, but the only thing that claim proves is that they don't read or watch western comics or animation, because there's plenty of great stuff still being made.
The feedback loop for anime becoming big, and hooking people onto the manga, which then increases their attention in other manga, has been fantastic.
You can see the same thing with Incredible, where it was a fairly obscure comics series, but through the success of the television show, its sales are better than ever (despite being well finished before the show ever aired).
It's the same thing for manga, but as an entire industry.
It's interesting that anime and manga are treated so differently by western companies, who seemed to never notice how anime or manga would compete against their products and act as if they're different mediums. Had they actually tried to compete against them, they might not be having the shit kicked in on the market.
For example, people had been saying for ages that with Anime's rise, that some actually mature western animation would finally start being made... and it only took them like 20 fucking years to finally start.
It's also interesting how badly marvel fumbled their superhero movie craze - they should have been rolling in the dough from their comic sales, and yet they COMPLETELY fucked that opportunity. If I were Disney, I would have fired all the leadership there long ago, because seriously, what a bunch of incompetent morons, dropping a ball that was basically handed to them on a satin pillow.
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>>7933020
Anime is a new tradition, western art is anti-tradition.
Anime is canonical and part of Japanese civilization, western art is individualistic and revolutionary.
Anime is unburdened and virile, western art is regulated and repressed.
Anime is pagan, western art is judeo-christian.
Anime is constructive and collaborative, western art is cut-throat competitive and spiteful.
Anime is erotic, western art is grotesque.
Anime is fertile, western art is fucking dead.
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>>7933056
>All these years I avoided watching Stranger Things (westernslop) and the past week I have been marathoning it.
wow, it's almost like fags that only watch anime have stunted growth. No wonder most of the artist online are mentally ill.
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>>7933172
I'm just saying, not everything the west shits out is bad. I feel the "right" is the loudest on the internet if they see just 1 black person in the show they're consuming they'll label it as woke trash. But as an avid anime watcher since birth I've been enjoying the show. There's probably a ton of other shows off Netflix that I'd probably enjoy just as much.
I haven't even watched "Invincible" besides seeing gifs and memes of it online but from the short clips I've seen it doesn't look too bad. It certainly has more animation than...uhh Yowayowa Teacher or whatever. Maybe give the west a try one more time.
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You're only getting the top 5, maybe top 10% of anime and manga because that's the stuff good enough for people to bother importing or at least take a saturday afternoon translating, while you'll be exposed to most of what the west produces since you live there. In reality they're all equally shit but on your library's shelves most manga will be good and most comics average.
It works both ways, too, you'll notice the japanese westaboos only ever talk about the absolute best things the west has to offer, nobody is out there reading those boring as fuck filler comics we had in the 80s.
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>>7933020
>How and why do you think anime exactly became as big as it is starting from the late 90s onward?
Anime was a tiny niche in the west during the '80s and early '90s. You might stumble upon a Streamline Pictures dub in a specialty shop, then call the phone number on the video and ask for a catalog. As to how anime really took off here, I would say you can't underestimate the role of Japanese video games. Every kid in America was playing NES, Genesis, SNES, etc. and the best console and arcade games were made in Japan. For most kids here, these games were their introduction to the anime aesthetic. Street Fighter II came out in arcades in 1991 and was a huge phenomenon. RPGs like the Final Fantasy series were also growing in popularity on the SNES and then PS1. When disc-based games arrived, the anime influence became even more overt; a lot of games had fully animated intros and cut scenes. It's really not surprising that kids who grew up immersed in this stuff would want more from Japan, and would go seeking out Japanese-exclusive games, as well as anime and manga.
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>>7933258
Those are games. Anime was still for losers in the 2000s. Yeah you had your Narutos and Dragonite Balls Z on TV slowly dying in their programming blocks by 2008, but for all the other anime airing at that time you had to still actively stream it. Or you could buy dvds in bulk. I remember buying a whole box set off rightstuff that would cost me a firstborn and a leg today for just $10 or so. Any semblance of popularity came from Haruhi for a blip moment. Haruhi was the oshi no ko of 2009. And then by 2012ish you had YouTubers making it popular to make fun of weebs again. 2012-2013 I’d say was Japans last era of “weird shows” for a long time. Nowadays it has been getting much better.
Covid was the magic switch that changed everything.
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>>7933020
>have a weird anti-western style thing going on now, but I guess it's just how things go
Anime doesn't constantly try to lecture us with woke propaganda lessons beating us over the head. Yes there are animes that do do that but you can simply avoid and watch a different anime that is simply about telling an entertaining story.
Every single western cartoon either has deepest lore that destroys the tone like adventure time or it's beating you over the head with the gay tranny agenda like Steven Universe and Owl House.
Anime also features sincere storytelling. In western animation everything has to be postmodernist and full of sarcastic quips.
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>>7933020
>The rise of anime and the fall of western comics/animation
It`s actually really simple:
Modern Comics? Gay
Modern Western Animation, Cartoons? Gay
Modern Anime? Straight & Gay
>PS:
There`s more variety in anime, if you wanna watch animated gay porn you can do it in anime like yaoi and futanari but not in cartoons, there`s only lesbians in cartoons.
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>>7933020
people got tired of the same shit every time over and over again from western cartoons
anime back then used to be less formulaic and not afraid to try more serious themes or just be over the top without holding anything back
now the anime industry is a autophagy machine much like western media
a good monument to that is the "big boom" it did in recent years where every single normie and their moms started watching shit like AOT or jujutsu kaisen. It reached that point where it got so diluted even youre average getto nigger could get into it and not have his ape senses killing him inside
its a free for all as to what is going to take its place as the "next big thing"
chinese and korean slop are just way too derivative and self referential to really make a splash so any guess is as good as mine
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>>7933020
Slave labor, essentially.
Western labor is far too expensive and projects need corners cut. This goes both for rushing projects, and avoiding giving work to rockstar artists. And because of this western comics suck balls, not because westerners can't make good comics, but because making a good comic is too expensive to be economically viable.
Japs are happy to starve to death while working 80 hours a week on animu. The notion that Japan is some futuristic paradise hasn't been true since the 90s. It's practically a third world shithole squatting on the ruins of that future paradise. Labor is dirt cheap, and the infrastructure and institutional knowledge to effectively exploit that labor still exists.
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>>7933020
Economic reasons, namely.
>Companies started marketing aggressively towards women when it was found that the average woman overwhelmingly has way more debt from luxury spending than the average man
>The economy crashing meant luxury goods needed to constantly make more and more capital quickly as cheaply as possible, so companies pivoted towards women and babies which meant alienating men (see what's been done to Marvel and Star Wars as proof of this)
>Men flocked to anime and manga because it was still desiring them as a customer base, and then smartphones + the pandemic meant it was more accessible than ever
>The death of general/casual IRL puritanism and moms being moral busybodies over what their kids watch thanks to everyone having a smartphone in their pocket and parents being overworked
>Comics being unable to diversify due to pic related, as well as being too expensive for the average ideal consumer (children) with digital accessibility being borked unless you're pirating and comics being stuck at the comic book shop
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>>7933020
Marketing and animated direct adaptations. If you watch one piece you may read one piece to see where the story is going to go. If you watch the x men cartoon you have no reason to read the x men comics because the story is different. To counter this, look at invincible. The cartoon has produced a ton of new readers, because the same story is being followed.
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>>7936720
In recent years Japan has been doing the same thing by slipping lgbt shit midway in the show long enough for you not to drop it. And no it’s not the tropes kind but literal propaganda where the characters go off character and start talking past the 4th wall about how brave they are about their gender.
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>>7936747
>To counter this, look at invincible. The cartoon has produced a ton of new readers, because the same story is being followed.
Supposedly Kirkman (Invincible's creator, and a leader within Image Comics) also believes that this has huge benefits for comics and their marketing, and is aiming to have alot more of Image's catalogue adapted (perhaps into animation? Or perhaps either/or with live-action), so we'll see if this boosts Image's sales.
If it works out for them, it might boost Image into the no.1 spot for America's comic publisher.
>>7936732
>Western labor is far too expensive and projects need corners cut.
I think we also need to point out how happy companies are to outsource, and how willing consumer's are to gobble that shit up regardless of the damage it does to wages, jobs, and the economy at large. Prior to the 80's or so, there was a sense of pride in buying stuff made in your own country, and only the really exceptional foreign goods were purchased. Now we have no fucking national pride and we all run to the trough for our cheap and disposable consumerist slop... and then go on to complain how jobs are leaving the country.
I'd almost advocate for watching american cartoons over anime... if they weren't basically korean cartoons at this point.
>B-b-but they NEED to outsource!
Nah, fuck off with that corporate cock-suckery. These things could be made before, while being far more labor intensive, all whilst paying livable wages, so I don't believe for a second they can't do it again. They just want to save a few extra dollars on their budgets, at the cost of the well-being of their country and their fellow countrymen.
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>>7933020
>publisher shit
the big publishers keep pushing capeslop instead of making comics feel like a medium with actual genre variety. if someone says they read manga that could mean basically anything, but if someone says they read western comics people just assume superheroes, because thats all the average person ever sees unless they go out of their way to find indie stuff.
>access shit
most peoples only exposure to comics is either online, through movie/TV tie-ins, or through the dying comic book store scene. theres no real equivalent to just walking into a store and picking up a thick cheap magazine full of random DC/Marvel/Dark Horse/etc stories the way japan has shounen jump, ribon, weekly young jump, cocohana, etc.
>continuity shit
the continuity stuff makes it even worse. there are like 5000 different places to start reading superman or batman, theyre all written by different people, half of them contradict each other, and every few years everything gets rebooted, reset, or reinterpreted anyway. it makes the whole thing feel less like following a story and more like doing homework.
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>>7933020
Styles come and go in cycles.
>Dutch traders bring western art and oil paints to Japan during its isolationist era during the Western enlightenment and influence the art styles of the Edo period.
>Centuries later Impressionists and post impressionists discover Japanese woodblock prints and poster art and incorporate the geometric and flat colour styles into their own painting work for Western galleries.
>In the post world war 2 period Japanese artists mimicked the Disney comics American soldiers were reading when they occupied Japan (starting manga as we know it)
>Western animators start contracting Japanese animation studios to work on American shows. They see how good some of the Japanese shows are and buy them for Western broadcast, (sometimes dubbing over them with made up stories instead of translating them because nobody who worked in American TV spoke Japanese back then lol)
>Then anime and manga of the 90s becomes grittier and edgier to mimic the feel of western cape comics that have taken over the world
>Now western cape shit mimics manga work. And western animated shows mimic anime styles.
There's a consistent cultural eb and flow here. It's just not as easy to see when you're standing in it. Eventually the Western art style is gonna start eclipsing the Japanese one again and the cycle will continue. It also seems to be speeding up as media exchange is quicker than ever.
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>>7937327
1800's
>japs see western oil paintings and perspective
>start yoga (not that yoga) aka western art, ukiyo-e prints have persepctive now
>western artists get ukiyo-e prints
>become weebs and print collectors, ukiyo-e influence in art
>peace upon the earth
current day
>console wars about anime
how have we regressed so
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>>7937300
Capeshit doesn’t need continuity. The idea is the super hero is made out of steel and can fly and fight crime and his common enemies are causing havoc in (not) New York City. You can jump in at any time. Did you need continuity for tom and Jerry or scooby doo?
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indeed thats one of the reasons i just can't get myself to care for any of it. no matter who dies, there's always gonna be an alternative universe where all is good. all stakes are erased. characters get distilled to exactly nothing more than just neuron activation keywords. there is no essence to what a "spider-man" is, he can be jewish or black or a woman, his family can die and get resurrected, he loses his girlfriend but not for realsies there's an alt universe where she's totally fine
no stakes no plot nothing
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>>7937510
I think you're both right an wrong at the same time. While comics are (or were) written so that you can jump in at any time, they do have story arcs and character development. There are developments that characters will refer to, and cause the actions for the current story arc - like who is the Red Hood? He's a previous Robin Robin (Tim Drake) Batman thought had died.
You can't tell me a story arc like that, and the revelation of who the Red Hood is, wasn't improved greatly by knowledge of prior batman story lines (if not directly required).
Sure superhero comics would try and catch you up with quick blurbs about what is going on and who is what, but will that really improve the revelation of who the Red Hood was, if you've never read any of the previous work with Time Drake, or never read of his death?
So I think comics are trying to have their cake and fuck it too, they want long character histories to refer back to, they want story and character development, but they also want to allow readers to be able to jump in at any time, creating a quagmire that isn't quite satisfying on either fronts.
Not to mention, consumer just like being able to start at the beginning - there's a reason no.1's sell well and are used as a marketing gimmick, because the consumer thinks it will be a good spot to jump in.
>>7937613
indeed that's one of the reasons i just can't get myself to care for any of it. no matter who dies, there's always gonna be an alternative universe where all is good. all stakes are erased.
This wasn't really the case until the "Death of Superman", which was actually initially intended to really for reals be Superman's death... until sales slumped again and they tried to make lightning strike twice with his return. So it was the 90's edginess where they wanted to kill characters, but were unable to really do so because that would be killing their cash cows, so they came up with such plot contrivances to again have their cake and fuck it
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>>7937464
It's not like the fine art world is gonna be the place where that kind of cultural cross-pollination occurs these days. Fine art is so up its own ass that it basically exists as a cultural Gallapogas, completely cut off from the rest of human creativity.
Lowbrow mediums like illustration, comics etc. are the true subjects that this period of art will be remembered for. Similar to how the art of the rococo period is just portraits of rich landowners. The subject is pretty simplistic but it's the work that gets remembered that counts.
Nobody gives a fuck who wins the turner prize anymore. Yet every time a famous mangaka goes on hiatus all hell breaks loose.
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