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> Anime is not the dominant form of media in Japan, and is largely targeted at a relatively narrow age band. Outside of the main target demographic, you're not

> Anime is not the dominant form of media in Japan, and is largely targeted at a relatively narrow age band. Outside of the main target demographic, you're not going to get a lot of familiarity with anything but the very largest show. The top two highest grossing films in Japan are both anime; Spirited Away and Demon Slayer. Titanic follows at a distant third. Forth is Frozen, which you could argue is basically anime. I live in Japan, and most anime is not really my thing, but its huge and definitely mainstream here.

Freak_NL 6y ago
Studio Ghibli (maker of Spirited Away) is in a league of its own though. That specific outlier aside; I get the impression that cartoons in Europe and the US picked up quite a bit of slack in the adult demographic with shows like Archer and Rick & Morty in the past decade, building on what Adult Swim prepared in the US. In Japan this niche was already much more explored, although it is not a pass-time most adults flaunt. While I never got the impression that adult viewers of anime were anything more than a (sizeable) minority, they are certainly a target demographic, and manga (comics) even more so. One example that always stuck out to me was former prime minister Asō Tarō who openly admitted to being quite well-read in manga.
- boraoztunc 6y ago
  I watched "10 Years with Hayao Miyazaki" [1] recently, besides knowing his stubborn character and artist life, and the work they do at Studio Ghibli is pretty outstanding, as terms of time, effort and dedication. There is also an indie movie, "Never Ending Man" [2] they shot after he suddenly announced his retirement at the age of 72, but later came back with his first CGI project. Years of hand-drawing, an old man through his digital transformation Studio Ghibli also released all their posters and stills [3] from its animations. [1] https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/ondemand/program/video/10yearshayaomiyazaki/?type=tvEpisode& https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/ondemand/program/video/10... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvslsD9F0bk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvslsD9F0bk [3] https://www.ghibli.jp/info/013344/ https://www.ghibli.jp/info/013344/
  - lioeters 6y ago
    Oh what a treat that was, thank you for the link to "10 Years with Hayao Miyazaki". Looking forward to "Never Ending Man". I'm not a fan of manga or "anime" per se, there's a ton of mediocre and mass-produced stuff. But as someone of Japanese heritage, I feel fortunate to have experienced some of the history and culture of manga books and animated films, as they blossomed after WWII - on occasions they achieve sublime expression as visual story telling.
- toyg 6y ago
  Mangas are a massive mainstream phenomenon in Japan since before animation was even a thing. Japanese long commuter-train journeys were normalized earlier than elsewhere, packed carriages didn’t suit newspapers, and reading literature is harder than average with all those kanjis (most people only know a relatively small subset of them), so mangas fit that niche better than anything else. This said, I wouldn’t be surprised to read that the sector is declining due to competition from phones and other devices - my personal feeling is that the material targeted at adults has significantly declined in both quality and quantity in recent years.
  - silicon2401 6y ago
    > reading literature is harder than average with all those kanjis Do you have a source for this claim? I have a hard time believing the average Japanese person has that much difficulty reading literature in their own language.
    - bernawil 6y ago
      Japanese folks lag behind in education simply because their language requires them to spend far longer mastering reading. This significantly delays their progress. https://japaneseruleof7.com/are-japanese-people-retarded/ https://japaneseruleof7.com/are-japanese-people-retarded/ EDIT: I see the URL seems offensive but it's clickbait, the article is actually serious.
      - matvore 6y ago
        > https://japaneseruleof7.com/are-japanese-people-retarded/ https://japaneseruleof7.com/are-japanese-people-retarded/ That is not exactly an academic source and it's from someone living in Japan that doesn't read Japanese very well (check the comment section where they admit that themselves) so this is far from authoritative as a source. I heard that after WWII the US occupation administered a national literacy test to see if Japanese people were as literate as their US counterparts, as it was becoming a serious idea to replace the existing writing system with the US alphabet. It was found that their literacy level was comparable so they didn't change anything so drastically. Consider that learning to read kanji is much different from (easier than) learning to write them. There are a ton of contextual clues when reading, and furigana inserted by the publisher if the kanji would be hard to read for the target demographic. There is also the option of just substituting kana for hard-to-read kanji. Publishers and writers will obviously add furigana to any kanji that are hard to read as they have a monetary motivation to make their content as accessible as possible. So you tend to pick up a lot of kanji based on these contextual clues and furigana over the years if you read anything, similar to how English speakers learn spellings of words when they read a word they've only "heard" before. Writing is harder because when writing you will sometimes struggle to remember the correct kanji to use, or sometimes forget a small portion of the kanji. This is the why schools need to spend so much time teaching kanji as a subject of itself.

Freak_NL 6y ago

Studio Ghibli (maker of Spirited Away) is in a league of its own though. That specific outlier aside; I get the impression that cartoons in Europe and the US picked up quite a bit of slack in the adult demographic with shows like Archer and Rick & Morty in the past decade, building on what Adult Swim prepared in the US. In Japan this niche was already much more explored, although it is not a pass-time most adults flaunt. While I never got the impression that adult viewers of anime were anything more than a (sizeable) minority, they are certainly a target demographic, and manga (comics) even more so. One example that always stuck out to me was former prime minister Asō Tarō who openly admitted to being quite well-read in manga.

boraoztunc 6y ago
I watched "10 Years with Hayao Miyazaki" [1] recently, besides knowing his stubborn character and artist life, and the work they do at Studio Ghibli is pretty outstanding, as terms of time, effort and dedication. There is also an indie movie, "Never Ending Man" [2] they shot after he suddenly announced his retirement at the age of 72, but later came back with his first CGI project. Years of hand-drawing, an old man through his digital transformation Studio Ghibli also released all their posters and stills [3] from its animations. [1] https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/ondemand/program/video/10yearshayaomiyazaki/?type=tvEpisode& https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/ondemand/program/video/10... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvslsD9F0bk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvslsD9F0bk [3] https://www.ghibli.jp/info/013344/ https://www.ghibli.jp/info/013344/
- lioeters 6y ago
  Oh what a treat that was, thank you for the link to "10 Years with Hayao Miyazaki". Looking forward to "Never Ending Man". I'm not a fan of manga or "anime" per se, there's a ton of mediocre and mass-produced stuff. But as someone of Japanese heritage, I feel fortunate to have experienced some of the history and culture of manga books and animated films, as they blossomed after WWII - on occasions they achieve sublime expression as visual story telling.
toyg 6y ago
Mangas are a massive mainstream phenomenon in Japan since before animation was even a thing. Japanese long commuter-train journeys were normalized earlier than elsewhere, packed carriages didn’t suit newspapers, and reading literature is harder than average with all those kanjis (most people only know a relatively small subset of them), so mangas fit that niche better than anything else. This said, I wouldn’t be surprised to read that the sector is declining due to competition from phones and other devices - my personal feeling is that the material targeted at adults has significantly declined in both quality and quantity in recent years.
- silicon2401 6y ago
  > reading literature is harder than average with all those kanjis Do you have a source for this claim? I have a hard time believing the average Japanese person has that much difficulty reading literature in their own language.
  - bernawil 6y ago
    Japanese folks lag behind in education simply because their language requires them to spend far longer mastering reading. This significantly delays their progress. https://japaneseruleof7.com/are-japanese-people-retarded/ https://japaneseruleof7.com/are-japanese-people-retarded/ EDIT: I see the URL seems offensive but it's clickbait, the article is actually serious.
    - matvore 6y ago
      > https://japaneseruleof7.com/are-japanese-people-retarded/ https://japaneseruleof7.com/are-japanese-people-retarded/ That is not exactly an academic source and it's from someone living in Japan that doesn't read Japanese very well (check the comment section where they admit that themselves) so this is far from authoritative as a source. I heard that after WWII the US occupation administered a national literacy test to see if Japanese people were as literate as their US counterparts, as it was becoming a serious idea to replace the existing writing system with the US alphabet. It was found that their literacy level was comparable so they didn't change anything so drastically. Consider that learning to read kanji is much different from (easier than) learning to write them. There are a ton of contextual clues when reading, and furigana inserted by the publisher if the kanji would be hard to read for the target demographic. There is also the option of just substituting kana for hard-to-read kanji. Publishers and writers will obviously add furigana to any kanji that are hard to read as they have a monetary motivation to make their content as accessible as possible. So you tend to pick up a lot of kanji based on these contextual clues and furigana over the years if you read anything, similar to how English speakers learn spellings of words when they read a word they've only "heard" before. Writing is harder because when writing you will sometimes struggle to remember the correct kanji to use, or sometimes forget a small portion of the kanji. This is the why schools need to spend so much time teaching kanji as a subject of itself.