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I can confirm this - back in 2017 we asked the owner of a guesthouse in Toyama we stayed in about his favorite anime/manga and what he said was Slamdunk, an old

I can confirm this - back in 2017 we asked the owner of a guesthouse in Toyama we stayed in about his favorite anime/manga and what he said was Slamdunk, an older manga series about basketball - not even one of the blockbusters such as One Piece. My theory is that most in Japan people get exposed to manga and anime at their school period but not many have time for it afterwards, resulting in them only knowing older series and possibly quite a bit of nostalgia. Actually reminds me a bit of the current resurgence of retro gaming here in the West a bit.

bitwize 6y ago
Anime, yes. Manga, not so much. It's fairly common to see adult Japanese reading manga on the train, for instance. The manga adult readers consume is not like the stuff we enjoy, like One Piece. Adult manga appears to fulfill the same role for Japanese that "airport fiction" does for us, and is broadly similar in genre: spy thrillers, workplace dramas, romance, etc. The art style is also way different, more mature and realistic with less broad caricature and more emphasis on adult rather than young/teenage characters.