Demon Slayer outsell entire American comic industry
4 years ago
Posts: 1143
Warn: Banned
Quote from Andy Art TV
Demon Slayer or Kimetsu No Yaiba, manga has sold more copies than the entire American comic book industry. Talk about embarrassing. While comic book companies like Marvel and DC have absolutely no idea why their comic books aren’t selling, Demon Slayer has sold 100 million copies while American comic books altogether have only sold 15 million units. Keep in mind that they are also counting manga that is being sold in America. That means that the number of comic books sold themselves are much lower.
Artist in Marvel and DC complain that the reason why they are not selling enough comic books is because of the fans. They blame the fans and attack the fans. While Manga artist in Japan believe that the reason why a manga like Demon Slayer is so successful is because of story and serving the fans.
Two different perspectives. Many American comic book creators don’t really think like they used to. Sure comic books have political message however, when a comic book is made to push a political agenda that is when readers run away. Comic book readers know when they are being brain washed into thinking a certain way. It is the very reason why the Disney Star Wars failed in the first place. The focus is not to satisfy comic book readers but rather to convince to convert to a political ideology.
Comic book readers dont want to think about politics when reading comics. They want to be entertained. Some comic books have political messages as a way to make a statement like V for Vendetta. However, there was no agenda of trying to convert people to the ideology. It was just a statement, a story.
This is why more and more American readers switch to Japanese Manga, because it has not been inundated with political things. Manga focuses on telling a good story which is what Marvel and DC are not doing.
4 years ago
Posts: 196
LOL it's funny how people go to manga supposedly to get away from politics. From my point of view manga does have a large political component ,but they introduce it in a smoother manner by strategically targeting readers with similar views /demographics and not caring for non target public as much as comics do. I mean manga literally classifies itself as shoujo, shonen …
I must add that the manga industry is clearly aiming now for a more global public and tailoring stories to our tastes. But my guess that when people around the world with too much free time check out what values some older manga have, even the newer mangas/anime will have it harder to escape the influence of their predecessors.
It's not all that bad for the readers to actually realise how they're being bombarded, but I guess in a few years it'll be the same with manga, since part of the public that outgrew those over specific marketing tactics will become aware of them. Especially after not being able to relate to some themes and problems media targeting an older public (since our values do defer a lot from theirs). But the same goes with the Asian public ,many hardcore fans started publishing their own web-comics and novels that appealed other fans more than manga for a time .Thus the out burst of ultra-nationalist isekais stories some years ago and some other that include current trends like social media /game mechanics.
I personally read Demon Slayer and dropped it on it's start and checked on it periodically after the hype of the anime, but it still didn't convince me because off how dull most techniques were and how little they left to the imagination. But seeing how well it does and how well the MCU did I guess neither will disappear ,they'll just perpetuate the trend of mainstream action selling a lot and set new standards to their respective media.
4 years ago
Posts: 221
I just have really high expectations now, and have become a storytelling snob
I'm sure the 16yr old me would have loved Demon Slayer because I loved everything at that age.
holding up this sales disparity as proof of woke = broke(n record) is very /eyeroll
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ignores the raw baseline comic book consumption rates of Japan vs USA
how many of the top 10 yearly book sales in USA are manga? if you guessed zero, you're right! whereas Japan has 5-10/10; some years all top 10 book sales are manga. -
the Covid pandemic, which continues to plague local brick & mortar distributors and prevent the comic community from recovering
Japan has a network of stores that were pandemic proof selling manga; does Walmart have great manga offerings?? what about 7-11?? Universities?
pre-pandemic(2019) USA comic book sales did its 'best ever' sales and has been steadily improving the last 10 years
Japan has been losing comic book sales for 10+ years in a row but it's still enormous.
it's not even a contest; when you step outside your house and there's 10 telephone books worth of manga in every recycle bin going down the block and that's every week.
people like to trumpet that X, Y & Z 'aren't getting your $$' but it's getting someone else's $$, so they don't care
4 years ago
Posts: 1143
Warn: Banned
A couple questions. First can you provide sources to any of this? Especially for the "best seller" lists. I cannot find any hard numbers anywhere to back up how well or poorly books are selling. Aside from proofs showing that manga is selling in the 10s of millions.
Second, why should the pandemic matter? People are locked in their homes with a limited supply of material to entertain them. Book sales should be flourishing. I remember the biggest advertisements featured in comics was demanding that people have a mail-order subscription rather than buying directly from the store, so what happened to those business models? Customers should be able to go onto the company's website and order or subscribe for mail-in copies of comics. And, speaking of which, with access to the internet, companies should be making more money than ever before since you can also buy digital copies of your comics online.
To put it another way, companies, especially media publishers, have more than enough resources to make their entire distribution model almost completely autonomous, so how is it possible for a lockdown to hamper anything?
