It's even more than anime following manga - it's anime following manga following light novels. The vast majority of new anime were first successful novels and m

It's even more than anime following manga - it's anime following manga following light novels. The vast majority of new anime were first successful novels and manga before getting an anime adaptation. The pathological and deeply systemic aversion to risk is extremely obvious. This is also why so many series are extremely generic - the same tropes and tired character archetypes, the same storyline that's been done 1000x - writing webnovels is a huge industry in east Asia, and the dynamics are very similar to print-magazine/newspaper periodicals but even more so.