Marvel & DC went woke. So people switched to manga.
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I dont think even this puts into scale just how absurd the growth in Manga was. How absurd was it? The entire American comic book market, including Indies, was outsold by just the merch of Demon Slayer.
And yet, comic pros think that this is all fine and proof that the Comic industry is healthier than it has ever been.
Yep, they’ll keep drawing heroes and villains and, uh, living mosques?!? next to speech bubbles that simply copy-paste critical theory talking points for their imagined audience, and that audience will proudly retweet screen shots of the most woke pages posted to Twitter, then go about the usual habit of not buying comic books. And the industry will have no idea what’s happening.
The graphic novels section of the industry quietly added manga to itself, too.
I'd call this out as cultural appropriation, but it's clearly the case that the converged people in charge of the numbers know the score. By adding Manga, they get to look like a healthy industry AND keep posting critical theory as comics. The fact that Disney and Warner are finally getting so financially pressured that they're looking to take the long knives to their Marvel and DC comics divisions?
"Don't look at the xir behind the curtain!" "Oz is great and mighty!" "American Comics have never been healthier!" "Bigot!"
It is to laugh.
Ah MAGA manga.
It's so incredibly easy to get into manga too. Imagine that you've heard the hype about Demon Slayer, and are curious. Where do you start? Volume 1. Oh, and there's only 23 volumes. It finished three years ago. You actually get a complete story with an ending. There's no constant, mystery-box hook, story that forces you to shamble along, long after the story has gone stale.
Some manga go on forever, like One Piece. But most have some sort of ending, even if they might last for a decade. I think that we've lost appreciation for endings, as culture. It's all "content" designed to go on forever. No wonder manga is eating superhero comics' lunch.
Writer and artist.
Who sometimes ends up being both.
I see some artwork in comics with the human characters looking like sacks of stuffed shit and think to myself 'Who the hell thought this person was worth getting paid money for this abomination?'
Very rare cases where someone else comes on board is when an author dies(see Berserk as an example, 6 more days btw for anyone wondering!) and even there it's all held together by someone who knows how the author wanted it to end. They'll put their all into it so the original author wouldn't lose any honor because of it.
That's actually the exception rather than the rule. Usually when an author dies the series simply ends out of respect for the author. See: Guin Saga
I actually hadnt considered this point. It is certainly one of the things I enjoy more. And I also enjoy that the overwhelming majority of Manga/Anime has endings where the good guys win and the bad guys are defeated. It's so uncommon in this day and age that it makes it actually worthwhile again, instead of just childish things. Its the same reason why I am getting turned off from Anti-Heroes a la "The Boys" (if its a Punisher "I am doing this because the system is broken" sort of Anti-Hero, I am still fine with it though).
Absolutely not. The desire for resolutions and endings is always there, problem is those who keep the show going has financial interest to keep delaying it for as long as possible.
Franchises are not allowed to have satisfying endings.
Why? Because consumers will leave satisfied. Hard to keep getting money out of them if they leave satisfied don't you think?
It's something that has struck me as I looked back on Warcraft universe as a whole after Shadowlands and Legion ending.
We just couldn't leave Shadowlands happy and close book on it. Zovaal just HAD to drop this "what is to come" quote just to plant that itchy bug at the back of your mind. What is to come? The Void Lords? Find out later so keep paying attention to our franchise so we can have this tiny chance of you resubbing.
We just couldn't deliver a definite killing blow to Sargeras and close book on him. Sargeras just HAD to be imprisoned instead and the Burning Legion is, we pressume, scattered. What is to come after? Find out later so keep paying attention to our franchise so we can have this tiny chance of you resubbing.
They will keep moving the goal posts over and over again through plot twist or open endings just to keep you wondering what will come next. And if that will involve slow deterioration of the franchise until one last bit of engagement and good will is exhausted, then so be it.
Another egregious example was LOST. It was insanely popular so it kept just printing money, so they threw out the ending they originally planned and tacked several extra seasons on the show, with increasingly retarded plots. It's been a decade and I am still mad about the ending. Sawyer's dad called it out in the first season, and it seemed like a reasonable explanation at the time, but then there was a mysterious bunker with an old computer and a hydrogen bomb and Egyptian statues and a smoke monster and a pendulum and then in the final episode, HA HA HA NONE OF THAT MATTERED AT ALL, SAWYER'S DAD WAS RIGHT, LOOK AT US SUBVERTING YOUR EXPECTATIONS. Blergh.
By their logic the industry is doing great. They are just too stupid or to dishonest to admit that their competitors are healthier than it has ever been and that they are spiraling the drain.
You don’t understand: their logic is stupider than that.
I saw one time that a comic author was on Twitter trying to argue that Manga selling out was a good thing for Comics. How you might ask? Well, you see, people will still want their graphic novels. And so if the manga is all sold out, then they will start looking at comics to satisfy their fix.
How do you even begin to fix the problem when your own people think that their competitors eating their lunch is good for them?!
lol. Such a great business strategy of we need our competitors to sell out and hope someone buys our crap instead of just ordering it online.
When they are out of aspirin, they'll come to me for some crack! It's amazing! Will sell BEEELLIONS.
Any chance you could recover that moment? Sounds like a great bit for my business school presentation.
Unfortunately not. That was years ago and I saw it second hand, so I dont have a link.
It's healthy because they own it, regardless of how greatly diminished it has become.
Honestly, DC and Marvel's decline started before they went woke. I love superheroes, but the nonsensical continuity, combined with frequent resets made it hard to really get into comics. I have some heroes, authors, and storylines that I really like. But it was hard to be a reader who kept up with things.
Compare that with manga, where each story is written by one author and is usually only running for a finite story. Manga is also cheaper than comics.
DC and Marvel were already in a decline, but wokeness was the kill shot. The MCU should have saved Marvel comics, but Marvel pissed away a golden opportunity by not featuring the characters who were popular in film in their comics.
It is what happens when your employees are primarily low IQ activists. The editors are checked out, afraid of being pilloried on Twitter. The lunatics are running the bullpen.
MCU was putting people into the comic shops. However, when they get there looking for Iron man, Thor, and Hulk. They are pointed towards Ironheart, Jane Foster, and Amadeus Cho. So the normie picks up some merch and browses the manga section instead. Almost a decade of foot traffic squandered.
Comicgate / Indy / manga stuff is what I buy now. Maybe some Marvel back issues once in awhile, but my enthusiasm is gone.
I remember thinking that the "Death of the Family" arc in Batman looked interesting a few years ago. It took near an entire night to find the necessary guide to all the different books I needed to read and acquire them to get the entire story.
Only for it to be almost meaningless in the greater canon, including a major character being forced out of what should be one of their most important stories and then retconned to ignore it ever happened just because the author of the "main" book for that character didn't like it ruining their "vision" for their run and not wanting to play along. Among them deciding another "major" arc needed to follow Death, so basically all the consequences from it to be moved on from despite how huge it really should have been.
On the other side, I find manga that look interesting every few months and the biggest hurdle is sometimes finding the name and after that I'm reading it in a minute. Wherein the only possible obstacle is slow/bad scanlation from there.
I agree. Spider-man for example has sucked since One More Day, and that happened all the way back in '06.
Marvel as a whole has sucked since about that time too. The continuity is awful, every new run just resets everything, so nothing ultimately matters. Writers always try to outdo each other with big events that radically change things, only for things to go very quickly back to status quo.
Woke is the biggest problem, but the continuity is another major one, and it's been that way for a while. It probably started in the mid-nineties when shock-value stories became big (clone saga, death of superman, etc.) But it seemed better by late-90s early 2000s, only to go downhill again in the mid-to-late 2000s.
That was the point that broke Spider-man comics for me. The rest of Marvel was some sad soap at that point anyway. In fact I think the X-men were always a soap.
Went to DC, and then they made the dumb Bat canon post those Bale movies, and the need for an ever sprawling 'family' of 'better than batmans'.
The worst though, was the fucking 'Conjunx endura' garbage that came out of IDW. All the fucking time. They alphabetized the original Trans for no reason than shitty plot that must mirror our culture all the fucking time.
The comic industry is dead, and I just wish it were buried already.
yeah I'm a Transformers fan (another subreddit that has been taken over) and the bots over there were gushing over IDW's "Lost Light" storyline.
I was about to get it, until some jackass mentioned how great the representation is for gays and trans. I'm sorry, but why the fuck is that shit in a comic that should be about giant transforming robots killing each other? I'm just fucking done. At least the old Marvel Simon Furman books still exist.
Yeah, back around 2008-2012 I really tried to get back in to comics, found maybe a handful of titles I enjoyed, tapped out completely by 2015.
Back when I was buying comics every week, I stuck to other publishers like Image or wholly independent releases because they offered self contained stories/worlds. There wasn't anything to get all confused by or miss out on by not buying a whole bunch of crossovers. Pick up volume one and follow the story through to its conclusion. Done. Actual storytelling rather than the endless meandering that is endemic to DC and Marvel.
I was able to get over the crossovers, even though they irritated me when I was younger because my friends had different favorites than I did, and we shared. But, it's still nonsense.
Manga, and Japan in general, has the blessing and curse of being unfathomably formulaic and the Japs themselves incredibly loud if that is messed with.
Which means anything that really shakes up the mold will be met with enough controversy to scare the Japs away from continuing and other companies from even trying. Ragebait political moves will have the opposite effect as they do here.
So, it will happen but it will be at a glacial pace comparatively to what we are used to. And at the rate "web manga" are taking off, and doujins already are, its likely the mainstream industry creating it will have lost its monolith. Which is the requirement to really push social change effectively.
No, you understimate how retarded japanese suits can be and how non-confrontational japanese companies can be. See what happened when Capcom started leaning to the west. Also, as we saw with western companies, they don't care alienating their domestic market if they think the west is more profitable: aka Squeenix
Video games went Worldwide near thirty years ago and it took 20 of those before the Japs starting vaguely catering to the West with some of their series. Manga has a long way to go and a lot more marketshare before it reaches that level.
Especially as, most of these problems are only in the biggest titles from these companies. Wherein many of the problems are completely absent in their lower marketed, and sometimes unexported, ones. Meaning the rot hasn't even completely taken over the company. Because Jap companies aren't like Western ones with single titles every few years. They have multiple per year inhouse developed, with dozens more published by them as well. Shit Squeenix has been behind every Yoko Taro game, which is offensive to every sensibility the woke have.
Its certainly going to happen eventually, but it has a lot of obstacles before it completely takes over.
They have already starting to skip volumes or cancel some titles (Ayakashi Triangle), shonen jump has quietly abandoned fanservice (shonen jump plus), etc
One of the biggest manga of the last few years (Kaguya-sama) had a spinoff created just for fanservice and lewd jokes. Web manga artists are opening pixiv accounts just to draw hentai of their characters for people to enjoy. Heck web manga as a whole are giving cancelled titles the ability to be continued regardless if the company won't. Shit every season of anime is still dominated by the popularity of its hot waifu with no signs of that changing with how much it is blowing up formerly niche titles (Call of the Night, Dress-up Darling, Tomo is a Girl).
I don't doubt it is happening in some places, I simply don't believe it'll make major waves on the industry as a whole for a bit longer due to the nature of the industry itself.
Capcom is more international than japanese at this point.
They are also obsessed with efficiency and profit above all else. So they may occasionally get battered into creating a Woke manga by Western investors or Twitter freaks. Then it will crash and burn, they will say “Well, so much for that.” And then go back to the stuff that sells until it’s time for badgering again.
Not just that, but they also are obsessed with purity. Girls not being "pure" is such a major topic of contention that it basically can destroy entire AAA companies. From idols to games to even the porn has to tiptoe around it. Same with their racism, where if they don't throw in a line about a character being "1/4" Jap, they get hounded and attacked for it.
These are anathemic to the Woke, who need those as a baseline acceptance to even begin pushing further. Which means they have to start slowly and subtly (like they did a long time ago in the West) to get in the door, and the current crop lacks those abilities.
It will lead to that: Japan is not magically immune to American cultural colonization and imperialism.
But it's so much cheaper and easier to make manga than comics, that the doujin market will always be competitive with the serials.
Ever heard of CLAMP? They started as a doujin circle, it can happen.
Doujinshi scene is a entry point into japanese mangaka career.
Take a glance at any accomplished mangaka, there are good odds that they started of in a doujin circle.
Its now a matter of time before the wokies goes full force in trying to inflitrate the manga scene, plant themselves as "experts, long time manga lovers" and demand every aspect of the medium to conform to their belief, to prostate before the golden idols of homolust, feminism, and negro worship. It wouldn't matter that those mangaka comes from a land that is ethnically homogeneous and has little to do with modern american culture. Nevermind that its demographic target is in its own genre bubbles but now pandering to male japanese readers will be considered greatest of sins in the church of woke. The japanese manga/anime industry better gatekeep now or else they'll get fucked like the west is.
Yes and people don't realize it. There was a time when it was unthinkable that games would go woke, yet here we are.
Is there any media left after manga?
It was unthinkable because the mentality wasn't common enough to be named and it did not made sense to gatekeep against something people didn't knew it existed.
It's much different now when we know it exists and now we have to be wary of it.
except none of that will work because they're not japanese
HOPEFULLY you are right. Hopefully the Japanese will hold true to their believes and give the westerners trying to influence them the middle finger....sadly, some are indeed listening like the author for SAO....though, no value was lost IMHO but it's still sad to see an author listen to the crybullies.
Looking at stuff like how they treated Pikamee/other vtubers, how they complain to artists etc...japanese are not happy at all. All we can do is pray.
Time to link this again
They already do: see uzaki chan's red cross controversy. Unseen Japan is an american soyboy who went to japan to work as an english teacher (easiest way to get in Japan)
Going to Japan as an english teacher carries as much weight as going to UK as a polish plumber.
That is not at all.
The job you're given is menial and the interest and respect towards you is faked. We're talking about a country who core cultural tenet is literally lying to your face in order not to start a fuss and then talk shit behind your back. Look up honne tatemae if you don't believe me.
That's why Unseen Japan is such a bitter whiner who put up a tough face on social media.
Manga was always going to win, because it was actually growing its audience.
Comics has basically existed entirely on the momentum of older fans spending increasingly large amounts of money on them, and abusive "you gotta buy all our books to get the ones you want" vendor contracts. Very few kids are actually getting into comics, because its an absurd ask to be able to even begin to read them in any coherent way. The irony is that kids are still loving superheroes, but only by non-comic methods which leaves plenty of money for the companies but without much of it coming from their "main" industry.
Whereas weebs are born everyday, have more than just superheroes as a genre to get into, and can easily just say "this looks neat" and read a fucking series without a wiki and flowchart needed to understand the order.
Wokeness wasn't a cause of the comic fall into any sense that matters, that was just the last gasp of an already dying industry trying to branch swing to a new audience and failing that. Now, the companies themselves are certainly a victim of that wokeness, as the MCU has killed whatever chance it had for a post-Thanos resurgence to be woke but that's almost unrelated to the issue with comics.
More than one series I read had a manga offshoot a few years ago.
When all the west has to offer is this, I don't see how manga could possibly lose. And I mean that sincerely: Wall-Might is probably the best the west has to offer comics-wise, it's making comics great again... But it's still not enough, by far.
Wall-Might is also proof you can make fun of Trump and still be funny. But the Left can’t do that because they don’t make fun of Trump, they make a caricature and then spit on and beat it. Because they hate him, so they cant have fun.
And while that's happening, in manga Trump managed to get the fucking Death Note without paying any cost and is considered the actual true victor of that universe.
I am both amazed that this exist but also deeply saddened by the fact that the absolute media control managed to keep that hidden away from me.
That probably accelerated. But there was a huge shift to manga in the 00’s before SJWs and Marxist had fully taken control of the reigns at marvel and DC.
I wouldn't say woke is SOLELY the reason they list to manga, it's because it's been the same characters, again and again that eventually it just gets too boring.
The woke stuff was just the final nail that made people jump over and once they're gone, they're not coming back as they can just enjoy the same genre but with different characters.
Manga is a breath of fresh air in that regard. Sure, there's the same series still running(like one piece) for decades...but there's just so many other series out there and for every single demographic or niche hobby if you are looking hard enough. Like fishing? There's a manga about that. Like cosplay? Here's like 3 for it. You're interested in music? Better duck cuz I could throw tons of manga @ you with that very same interest. You're into forbidden love(tm)? Better run, avalanche of mangas incoming.
What I am trying to say: You will never find a comic about someone making comics, manga has got that(Bakuman as an example) and it's so damn interesting too.
Though it has to be funny for all the manga readers when very niche work get an anime.
They must have been laughing when stuff like Reincarnated as a Sword got an anime and people thought it would be a joke but ended up loving it.
Count me as one of those who loved it....to the point where I looked for the LN and cannot for the life of me buy it anywhere.
Which will then make it woke.
Marvel and DC lap pissed enough people off restarting their universes that they've made all the universe happen all at once in an attempt to keep fans.