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.

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.

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 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.

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

Continuity. Nothing ever matters with comics. Superman was a communist, a nazi, a zombie, a literal god and everything inbetween. But most commonly, he is about the same he was 50 years ago. Meanwhile I’ve been growing up alongside famous manga characters. I could be following Naruto to this day and he’d be roughly my age at most points.

Variety. I’m not into comics, I admit, but almost every popular comic I’ve seen is about some kind of superhero. Manga on the other hand have a wide range of topics and target audiences.

Accessibility. I can read a lot of manga right now. Offical, free and online (at least the most recent chapters). There’s no such thing for comics. And while we’re at it: Manga release at smaller chunks in shorter time intervals, which keeps more attention. Being black and white does help, I’d assume.

Anime. They are mass produced and serve to promote manga. There is no equivalent with comics and extended media like cartoons or movies and such often follow their own storyline. Assuming I’d be into the MCU, there is no single comic I could read to see exactly what’s next. If I watch a season of Jujutsu Kaisen, I can look up the correct chapter and continue the story seamlessly.

Dude the marvel cinematic universe is we…was one of the biggest hits to smash into the box office. Batman is one of the most popular fictional characters ever written. People are still talking about adventure time, regular show, Avatar the last Airbender, and they ended how long ago? SpongeBob is still on the air. Simpsons has lasted longer than most anime.

What are you talking about, Western comics and animation being less popular?

You want to know a pretty unbiased way to judge this? Look at a Halloween store. Spirit even has stuff from the hawk tuah lady, so you know they work fast and go with what’s popular. You might see an old Naruto costume or two, maybe a Goku, and an endcap of what’s popular this year possibly still demon Slayer. But you’ll see a bunch of stuff for Batman, Superman, hell the joker and Harley Quinn gave their own sections each, and that’s just DC.

At least from my perspective, manga and anime are mediums. They can be used to tell any story, and they are used like that. You can find manga and anime for any age group and in any genre. The medium is used for all kinds of stuff.

The problem with western comics and cartoons is that (at least from what I know), the medium is mostly only targetting kids or it’s superhero comics. It’s just so very limited.

For example, I’m currently watching Ancient Magus Bride. It’s a very non-traditional romance story in a fantasy setting with interesting characters and emotional dynamics. So far I’m really enjoying it. I simply can’t imagine a western cartoon/comic even attempting to produce a similar thing. Or well, perhaps I can imagine it but it just doesn’t happen for some reason.

Like others here, I was drawn to anime and manga for the varied storylines that had arcs that mattered, and an ending, and then stopped. And wrote something totally new.

Whereas comics would reboot the same story, and reboot it, and reboot it… Or they’d have a big arc that dramatically changed things… and two issues later suddenly its status quo all over again.

All of this made it hard to really get invested in their characters or stories. Why even do a story if you’re going to erase it all in the next storyline? Why care if so-and-so died if they’ll just be back in next week’s issue?

The other reason was strong female protagonists that weren’t all sexualized to the wazoo. In western comics it was all tight spandex and butt-boob shots and shots framed by women’s thighs… and most of the non-super women were just plot points to be stuffed in a fridge.

Meanwhile there were piles of strong, well-rounded, independent women of all different ages in manga and anime. Even the sexy women were developed characters first and sexy second. With western comics it definitely felt the other way around.

I grew up on Magic Knight Rayearth and Slayers and Iria and Cowboy Bebop. Watching those was like a breath of fresh air compared to Batman Reboot #242 or whatever.

And I really liked the varied art styles. Western comics were pretty much all of a muchness, the same style or close to it. Manga, meanwhile, had everything from Clamp’s super-detailed art to Dragonball’s more simplistic style. It gave them a much more unique feel.

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.

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

Comics have an issue with Marvel and DC sucking up most of the air in the room just to rehash the same characters for the millionth time. I’m generally pretty unenthused with superhero stuff and the general aesthetic around that content, however I do like batman to an extent and have enjoyed the movies and stuff related to him. If I wanted to read a batman comic where do I even start? The beginning? Which beginning? His first appearance back in the 40s or the beginning of one of the many iterations of batman? Now I have to do research into 80 years of content just to figure out what to read, or just pick one at random.

The appeal of manga is just being able to read three series in a week that each explore a different setting/idea and are only one volume apiece. If someone tells me to read a longer series I can just start at chapter one and go until I hit the end. Manga/anime absolutely have some oversaturated settings/ideas as well but there’s generally a lot more space for other stuff to get seen and do well, get anime adaptations, etc

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.

Is it more popular? Are you sure you’re not just making an assumption based on your anecdotal experiences?

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.