> I agree that the well known works are usually the better productions, but that detail is wrong. Crunchyroll puts out almost everything that's currently being released

Japan produces a lot more media than just anime, the west does not see most of it. When was the last time you saw a live action Japanese procedural crime show localized to English? Or really any live action Japanese shows that aren't something like Kamen Rider or Godzilla?

Also, arguably the only reason Crunchyroll even exists today is because of dedicated fan subs making Japanese media available for decades

>Western comics are also incredibly hostile towards new readers

I agree with this if we are talking American superhero comics, but the European scene is decidedly different. Franco-Belgian comics are usually very pick-up-and-go, as are a great many of the homegrown UK ones. I think we're coming off a decade-ish where the massive investment in Marvel/DC 'verses have been eating up all the oxygen in the room for large comic book adaptions. Or just for general public consciousness attention for comics.

I am pretty confident that it's gonna turn around, but it might take a while on the large scale projects.

Things have definitely come a long way since the nineties where you would read a book or comic and wonder about how great it will be when the property will get adapted and reach a wider audience. It's kind of like listening to a band before they became popular or maybe rain on Arrakis. We got what we wanted and the thing that we anticipated isn't nearly as special anymore. Dinniman and Brandon Sanderson definitely deserve their wider audiences but it just seems anticlimactic as these shows and movies inevitably roll out.

Just a handful of Western comics you can pick up and read today:

The Sandman (Netflix show), The Best We Could Do, Pride of Baghdad, Superman American Alien, Superman Red Son (animated), I Hate Fairyland, Bone, Epileptic, Paper Girls (turned into an live action show), Monstress, Saga, The Watchmen (turned into a terrible movie, an adaptation show, and an animated show), Stumptown (also got a show I believe), Daytripper, Maus, Berlin…

Western comics are also incredibly hostile towards new readers

In my experience, it is easy to just pick up a trade paperback, one shot, subscribe to a limited series, etc. Even if you want to just jump in to an ongoing series, the writing and storylines are simple enough that you can usually pick it up in a few issues or just wait for a new arc.

I'm not at all involved in the industry so here's an armchair opinion; western animation is too expensive for anything but guaranteed hits or kid's shows. Arcane is one of the best western animations of today, but it cost $250 million for just two seasons.

Wages in Japan for animators are much lower, if not exploitative.

The Cradle adaptation is only an animatic, sadly. Best case scenario is that it generates enough buzz for a Netflix or an Amazon to pick it up for a full series, but then I'd be worried it would get butchered like Rings of Power or Wheel of Time have been.

>Western.

America is not the whole West, HN readers often forget it. Ditto with thinking on "Dragon Ball in the West" ended in the 00's when we the Europead finished it on mid 90's and began to watch Dragon Ball GT in 1999.

Anime gets people started, then they start reading other things from Japan. The west doesn't have such a pipeline to make casual persons into readers.

Edit: Anyway, the culture of celebrating authors in general rather than trying to create franchises helps a lot for all sorts of books.

> None of the japanese literature in this article is being adapted into animation

This is wrong btw, I looked up one and "Makato Shinkai’s She and Her Cat" was an anime. This is about animes as well, not just books.

You realize most of those stories were originally books? They turn books to mangas and then to animes.

> This article is directly talking about Japanese pure literature,

No it isn't, did you even read it? It mentions animes as well, not all of the works mentioned are books.

Makato Shinkai’s She and Her Cat is an anime, not a book, for example.

Edit: They adapted that anime to a book, but a book adapted from an anime is hardly "pure literature", it is definitely pop literature.

A sort of joke is that many anime episodes are a 30 minute ad for the soundtrack CD. If you look at the anime by itself the numbers very clearly make no sense, but shows are financed by integrated production companies that make their money on side merchandise.

Maybe in the US, Europe has been into manga since the 80's.

>I suspect for the Japanese women who are putting in perspective the extreme conservatism on gender roles prevalent in their country, most Japanese fiction shouts at them about real life too.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-19674306

The 15th of each month is a big day for 36-year-old Yoshihiro Nozawa: it is the day he gets paid.

But every month, he hands over his entire salary to his wife Masami.

She controls the household budget and gives him a monthly pocket money of 30,000 yen ($381; £243). Despite being the breadwinner, that is all the money he can spend on himself over the next 30 days.

"The last five days from the 10th of each month are usually the toughest," says Yoshihiro.

[...]

47-year-old Taisaku Kubo has been getting 50,000 yen a month from his wife Yuriko for the past 15 years.

He has tried to negotiate a pay rise each year but his wife makes a presentation to explain why it cannot be done.

"She draws a pie chart of our household budget to explain why I cannot get more pocket money," says Taisaku.

[...]

So why don't men start controlling the household budgets themselves?

"I don't think many men hand over their entire salaries happily," says career consultant Takao Maekawa of FeelWorks.

"But they feel it's their obligation to earn money for the family even if it means they have to suffer themselves."

Imagine a world where literature was preoccupied with height. A character is always slotted in who's explicitly the token short character, and the storyline is always, subtly or not, written to highlight how the world is biased against short people. Authors are very cautious about depicting a short person with any negative trait; when they do, a direct line is drawn between the social circumstances they encountered and their future actions.

This would be exhausting, and people would rightly start to roll their eyes at it. And it would be fine for readers to object to it, even as short people are a component of reality. It wouldn't mean the complainant finds short people objectionable in themselves, but simply that they don't think height is a defining part of reality that all of literature is obligated to address.

[flagged]

That is about as uneducated a take as one could possibly have.

Keep in mind "isekai" as a genre also exists in western entertainment; A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and The Chronicles of Narnia are some prominent and famous examples. Are those specifically for shut-ins and nerds too?

excuse me why are you browsing hn which is a leisure activity instead of fighting world hunger? Why are you ignoring starving people?

I value entertainment that demonstrates how to thrive more than "entertainment" that demonstrates struggle. Struggle is important and necessary, but it should never be an end unto itself. True entertainment should uphold the dignity of as many people as possible.

If capitalism wasn't the leviathan that it was, then I wouldn't blame anyone for trying to escape the life that capitalist neo-colonialism has brought into existence. Pretty soon, at this rate, life itself will be a subordinate of the democratic global capital project.

Maybe you don't realize it, but we're on the same side.

Japanese entertainment isn't In Your Dumb Face about things unlike western entertainment, it respects your intelligence and sheer common sense. You're not being talked down to, your ability to just pick another (better) product to be entertained with and walk away is respected; and it's an escape from the rest of the world shouting at you about something.