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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

I think one of the biggest reason is how easy and accessible it is to read manga or watch anime. There are countless sites where you can consume each for free.

I tried a few years ago trying to find a way to read comics online for free and found nothing.

Sure not the most legal thing but when you are tight on cash, last thing I want to do is spend it on entertainment.

I did used to read a ton of comics growing up, but I would borrow them from the library.

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.

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.

Comics have always been campy to me. Anime when I grew up felt like a new direction. It did gritty before gritty was cool. The entire aesthetic was new and creative.

The music overshadowed anything western animation (at the time) had. I think the cultural impact made waves and western animation is pretty good now.

Although I consider the two things to be very different.