I hope the takeaway is just 'no need to appeal to a general audience, they are coming THEMSELVES because you provide a superior product' as that'll stop any attempts at DEI in Anime.
The inbuilt meritocracy in manga/manwha that is then made into Anime weeds them out at least in a creation level, the problem is Anime as we've seen how dubs have been terrible thanks to politicised translators. That's why AI translation has been getting a boost.
Anime is likely to be captured eventually, just because its a huge investment and that's easily bought out by investors.
But manga is so easy to both publish and spread these days that they couldn't hope to control it, and if they adapt it badly people will just not watch it enough to justify multiple seasons.
People often forget that anime is a loss leader to get secondaries to buy the manga and/or merchandise. I don't know if anyone has ever watch anime as it originally aired on Japanese TV, but there's a scrolling list of sponsors and stakeholders involved at the beginning of each episode, and they'll cut funding if they don't see an uptick in their respective sales.
Adaptation anime can be, but isn't always. Adaptations are low hanging fruit and while the anime itself doesn't always break even they aim for merch sales and the like as well.
Anime originals are not at all expected to lose money - and this is where most of the top tier shows come from anyway. Gundam sure as hell prints money, any and all gundam manga are barely tertiary compared to the show and model kits etc.
Cowboy bebop, for a less "toy salesman" example. That wasn't made as a loss leader.
I hope the takeaway is just 'no need to appeal to a general audience, they are coming THEMSELVES because you provide a superior product' as that'll stop any attempts at DEI in Anime.
The inbuilt meritocracy in manga/manwha that is then made into Anime weeds them out at least in a creation level, the problem is Anime as we've seen how dubs have been terrible thanks to politicised translators. That's why AI translation has been getting a boost.
Anime is likely to be captured eventually, just because its a huge investment and that's easily bought out by investors.
But manga is so easy to both publish and spread these days that they couldn't hope to control it, and if they adapt it badly people will just not watch it enough to justify multiple seasons.
People often forget that anime is a loss leader to get secondaries to buy the manga and/or merchandise. I don't know if anyone has ever watch anime as it originally aired on Japanese TV, but there's a scrolling list of sponsors and stakeholders involved at the beginning of each episode, and they'll cut funding if they don't see an uptick in their respective sales.
Adaptation anime can be, but isn't always. Adaptations are low hanging fruit and while the anime itself doesn't always break even they aim for merch sales and the like as well.
Anime originals are not at all expected to lose money - and this is where most of the top tier shows come from anyway. Gundam sure as hell prints money, any and all gundam manga are barely tertiary compared to the show and model kits etc.
Cowboy bebop, for a less "toy salesman" example. That wasn't made as a loss leader.