No Stupid Questions

There is creativity and risk in anime that no western media company would ever touch, even if its disagreeable or just shitty. Western stuff is cookie cutter slop aimed at checking all the boxes of a profitable product.

Western media seems to only push things that fit the mold of an investor worthy price of art. Anime goes for a "throw things at the wall" approach so things that are a gamble get made. I think its an issue of scale, anime has a smaller market so the stakes of fucking up massively are survivable while having a huge farm of original indy stories dreaming of being an anime to source from. Western stuff dose not not have the pool of creativity to lift from as scaring or offending investors with risk gets you fired. Triple A gaming seems to reached the same point, bureaucracy and safety prevents new ideas that are risky or they come out bland and boring. Without risk you stagnate and people think your boring. Animation is cheap enough to take risk but has less returns since the market is smaller.

TL;DR: Western media is too bloated to take the creative risk needed and they got to throw buckets of cash to prop up Ol'Reliable season 20 instead.

Tiddies

I mean there are a lot of reasons, but the main one is that the anime industry has its shit a lot better than the Western equivalent and the night novel->manga->anime pipeline.

First, you have sheer quantity and variety. Every season, meaning four times a year, more than 50 anime are released, in all genres and for all ages. Meanwhile almost all Western animation is either for kids or marvel. Compare the darkest or most brutal Western animated show you can find to stuff like Perfect Blue (huge trigger warning BTW) and Made in Abyss. I, personally, watched more than a thousand hours of anime, likely more than all Western animation not aimed at kids below 10 put together. It just doesn't begin to compare. Even popular titles like Adventure Time or Gumball are for kids; they're just high quality works that also appeal to adults (more on this later). I know series like Invincible exist, but seriously. Name me 10 of them. Anime is a huge industry of its own right, more comparable to Hollywood than Western animation, and I think we all know Hollywood isn't interested in making anything decent right now. That's part of why anime is so popular.

Second, with anime there's usually a story that's being adapted. This means there's a lot less of the hit or miss aspect surrounding a new work, as a manga or novel needs to have a certain amount of quality before it even qualifies to be made into an anime. Also, the market cares more about its customers than in the West, so studios do their work more faithfully (otherwise they won't get new jobs). As someone making a new anime, you want to sell blue rays, you want people to buy the original work, you want them to buy merchandise, and for all these you need to create something good that will actually turn in a profit. Also, if they've got a good anime going they don't suddenly decide to kill it and spend the money on another yacht. I'm still salty we didn't get a proper season 3 for The Owl House, for example. Studios have more respect for the work they're doing, and an original story they have to follow or they won't be getting any more work. Nothing like the MBA infested mess that exists in the West.

Third, anime and manga aren't tied to a certain age in Japanese culture. 60% of Japanese people watch anime at least once in a while, and a similar percentage reads manga. It's not something you graduate as soon as you enter middle school. Light Novels are also obviously not for kids, because what kind of kid reads for entertainment today? These media all lean towards teenagers and young adults, and generally don't make too many assumptions about the viewer. I mentioned Adventure Time up there; so even anime that's made for kids doesn't treat its viewer as an idiot, which makes it watchable as an adult. Now how watchable depends on your tastes, but even a straight shonen like My Hero Academia or Demon Slayer has reasonably realistic characters with personalities, as tropey as they may be. Even the most shonen of shonen anime passes the same standard that makes Adventure Time and Gumball watchable to an adult compared to something like Paw Patrol.

So, yeah, it's not even a comparison at this point.

I think it's because comics keep refrying the same story over and over again. Boot, let it run, reboot, let it run, reboot ... You get the idea. They try to spice things up and change stuff - the equivalent of remixing a classic song ad infinitum, some iterations will be better than others and you will probably like some more than the original but it's the same song.

Manga and anime have originality on the other hand. Even if some genres become cliche, each story remains a closed entity. Characters here don't end up elsewhere, and once a story is complete it doesn't get a reboot. This means the audience can relate more easily to a franchise, because there are not as many variants, and then move on to the next.

There is also less influence in Manga from current affairs, society and history, whereas comics always meddle with those three just too much. Mangas released in the 80s remain relatable today, but a lot of comics don't for example, or feel like they've aged awkwardly.

So it's easy for people to remain 'loyal' to an anime franchise, but difficult for the average comic.

Ease of access, for one.

Because anime are allowed to tell complete stories before being cancelled out of nowhere for not selling enough merchandise.

The sheer volume and variety of anime and manga is why it has such a reach

There’s only about a dozen things that always pop up when you mention western animations, regardless of the genre or target audience

Why? My personal guess is that it costs too much/doesn’t generate a lot of profit and that due to that, series don’t build on top of each other like they do in Korea or Japan

Example off the top of my head, Korea has a lot of “awakened player” stories like Solo Leveling, the anime of which you may have seen recently; those stories are good because they keep building off of each other, eliminating the boring tidbits and coming up with more creative ways for the stuff that is interesting, and more importantly, its current, not 10 years ago, not 20, they refine the genre every season and it gets incrementally better, something that has simply not been happening in the west for a good long while now.

There's a huge range, but the anime that gets popular tends to have vastly better writing than most western cartoons. There's still a stigma against animation as a legitimate adult art form, so it's rare that even good western animation gets properly recognized.

That said DC does have a good animation team, but they don't really advertise their releases much or make them easy to see outside Max. Netflix has probably been the best for western animation in the last decade, but they generally go very raunchy and it's a turn off for some.

With comics specifically, marvel and DC have been out of touch for a very long time. The best stories tend to be one-shots or short stories that don't interfere with the ongoing arcs. There's also little perceived variety given those two powerhouses, despite them not being the only USA comic publishers.

Compared to the US, Japanese manga has much more variety in styles and stories, though some genres (flashy fighting, harem shit, Isekai shit) are beyond oversaturated. A manga that becomes a success has a high chance of becoming anime too, the same doesn't seem to be the case with western animation, which tends to work the other way around more often (a cartoon gets a comic release).

Lastly, USA lacks a single fucking mecha cartoon. Megas XLR was ages ago.

Side note: I cannot, for the life of me, understand why the fuck Netflix went with a live action rendition of Sandman, instead of an animation, which would be perfect for any and every sudden change of style instead of relying on cgi that stands out against the actors

I personally think that anime and manga having a 'pipeline' helps them.

• A publisher like Weekly Shonen Jump shotguns a load of new series into their comic and sees if any stick.

• If a series is popular, then their individual volumes sell well, encouraging WSJ to continue publishing.

• After a while, the popular series will most likely be given an anime (which nowadays tend to be very manga accurate), which tend to export better.

• If the anime is popular, volume sales increase worldwide, and you have a massive hit.

While this quite effectively creates new popular series, it leads to a massive manga graveyard.

Western comics don't really have this kind of pipeline and I'm not aware of any WSJ-like publications for new Western projects.

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.

I would say Superman is more popular.
After all, everyone knows who he is.

people have been trying to figure out why kids like the things they like for many decades, ever since they became their own demographic. the only reasonable conclusion i've heard is kids like what their friends like, and tend to move away from what their parents liked (superman). why do they latch on to some things and not others?- who tf knows

best advice is to not waste time trying to figure it out

I'd argue that the main reason you see more anime is the target audience.

Western animation is usually aimed at young children. For as much as I may have loved Disney's Gummi Bears as a young child (decades later and I can still hear the theme song on my head), it's now pretty painful to watch. Some shows have aged pretty well and some newer shows aren't quite so bad. But, the target audience still seems to be younger children for much of it. There are exceptions, and several of those are pretty well known. For example, The Simpsons and Futurama are both popular animated shows, and both are not aimed at children.

Anime, by contrast is often aimed at teenagers. This means that it's part of the audience's formative years. People form bonds with the shows and carry some of those bonds into adulthood. And while the writing often falls into cringe inducing melodrama, there's enough of it that is passable fun, usually simple hero stories. The shows can be like a comfy blanket that doesn't insult the audience's intelligence too much.

I'd also note that anime's appeal goes back further than the 2000's. My own introduction was Robotech, back in the 80's. While it was a bastardized version of Macross, with some pretty awful writing (not that Macross's writing is going to win awards any time soon) and a couple other shows, it was certainly a step above what most western studios were putting on for Saturday Morning cartoons. And that created a lifelong soft spot for anime. Heck, my desktop background is currently a Veritech Fighter. I still love the idea of Robotech, even if I only watch it in my memory through very heavily rose tinted glasses. And I imagine I'm not alone. The show may be different, but I suspect a lot of folks graduated from Disney and Hanna-Barbera cartoons to some type of anime as they got older and that anime was stuck with them.

A large part of it is the target audience.

Like western (or at least, American,) animation is mostly intended for children (Disney animation, Pixar. Paw patrol… looney toons,) or is of one of two genres (dc/marvel superhero’s, or like Family guy, South Park, simpsons.)

A lot of anime is intended for kids, too, don’t get me wrong. But a lot of it is also very much not. You also have a much broader array of genres, as well as a much broader distinctions in style in them.

I suspect the fact that I had to think a minute before I could name a recently released western cartoon that wasn't Disney or aimed at the under 6 crowd may have something to do with it.

Sadly Saturday Morning cartoons just aren't a thing anymore in the US.

As for comics, when was the last time you saw a comic at a grocery store or gas station? I know Marvel still makes comics but I haven't seen them in a store in almost 30 years.

Japan likes their anime and manga so there's a lot of variety, but for whatever reason our corporate overlords here in America decided that we didn't want our equivalent anymore.

It's been over 40 years that Japan has been massively exporting anime to the west.
People under 50 yo grew up watching Dragon-ball, Sailor-Moon, Naruto or one piece rather than Superman/batman

It obviously depends on location. But where I live, anime is nowhere near more popular than Western animation.