this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2026
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Anime & Donghua

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He continued to add, “in Japan, it’s closer to ‘literature,’ and anyone can read it, and it’s not just hero stories. There’s a much wider range of genres, like stories about cooking and soccer. You can draw stories from that. So I’m very happy that the manga has been so successful, because it gives me a ‘goal’ to aim for. The manga market is bigger than our industry, so the question becomes, ‘what can we learn from this?’“

"Another thing to add is that in the West, comics and animation have been considered ‘children’s media.’ As people grow up, they move on to live-action. But in Japan, that’s not the case. Not only is there a wide range of genres, but adults also read manga and watch anime. As a culture, it’s an ‘art’ that isn’t limited to a specific age group," Lee said.

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[–] CthulhusIntern@hexbear.net 29 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

I can read most Manga from start to finish. There's a clear start point and a clear end point. It's usually the same author, so it's not a bunch of conflicting ideas about a character. And most of them, emphasis on most are not too long.

Superhero comics have decades of history. And most of their creators are either retired or long dead, so we've had a whole bunch of different authors give a whole bunch of different takes on the character, of varying degrees of quality, there's a whole bunch of different continuities, some of which even cross over with each other, so if I want to understand everything, I need to either read decades of comics, or start at some unclear point, and have a wiki open.

And then there's also the problem of popularity putting heroes in everything, even stories clearly not ideal for them, like Spider-Man is clearly meant for stories like "Oh no! The kid's science fair experiment went way wrong and now the gym teacher is a hippopotamus man!" and Batman is clearly meant for stories involving him investigating and unraveling a crime ring that goes really deep, but both heroes have to be involved in intergalactic conflict due to their popularity.

[–] purpleworm@hexbear.net 11 points 4 days ago

This is a very good description of problems I have also mostly had. Some western comics are amazing, but Marvel/DC is all such a continuity clusterfuck with wildly varying quality that it's very difficult to approach any of their comics.

Manga is usually extremely finite, and it's almost always just a straight line of publications without reboots or crossover lore or anything like that.

[–] Evilsandwichman@hexbear.net 5 points 4 days ago

It's the crossover stuff that drives me up the wall about reading DC comics; with manga I read from start to finish and there's RARELY supplemental material I need to know to understand what's happening. I tried reading DC's metal series because it sounded fascinating and found an official compilation aaaaaaaand........it's this confusing jumble of specific entries in Superman, specific entries in Batman, specific entries in teen titans, etc etc

Basically you jump in around (fictional numbers to illustrate) issue 345 of Superman with zero idea what had just been happening in the last 20-30 issues, jump into batman around issue 234 with zero idea what had just been happening prior, and the same for the others as well. It's a confusing jumble.