No Stupid Questions

is it? movies are dominated by superheroes

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.

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).

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.

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.

Compare the population amount