I found the settei (on setteidreams) of the Wolverine anime, it works so well. Stylistically, there's such fun to have revisiting cross over through japanese creators. The Wolverine anime or the Marvel capcom pixel art sprites and derivative art are so beautiful stylistic blends. I would love to know what others exemples of stylistic cross overs you would recommend. I heard you where somkind of an expert
One thing I’ve started to believe is that if Japan had REALLY taken to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, we would’ve seen more Purple and Orange Sentai heroes at a steadier rate
At least we are getting more now, Boonboomger has both Purple and Orange, and we have gotten constant Purple's overall these last few years. KingOhger's first core purple certainly gives hope for more.
Hi, I'm just a Japanese guy who loves American comic books (“Red Hood and the Outlaws” is my favorite) and works on localizing Western games to Japan. I wanted to share my thoughts on the popularity of American comic books in Japan, as I felt the video focused more on die-hard Japanese fans of American comics. These fans go out of their way to research and purchase what they love. However, I want to discuss how challenging it is to get the general Japanese audience interested in American comics, from the perspective of someone trying to sell western entertainment to the mass market. To be honest, general Japanese people who claim to love American comic books often love the characters but don't actually read the comics themselves. Merchandise, especially from Marvel, sells well and is popular among men and also women, with some even calling it fashionable. But many of these fans have never read the books. This is largely because it's difficult to access comic books in Japan. There are only three American comic bookstores in Tokyo and fewer than 20 in the entire country. While some large bookstores have a dedicated shelf and Amazon is an option, there’s still a significant barrier of price and language. Translated versions of comic book issues (single issues) simply don’t exist. If you want to read a Japanese translation, you have to buy the paperback collections, which cost roughly $20 to $30 each. For example, I bought the translated versions of "Batman: The Long Halloween" Part 1 and Part 2, which cost a total of $60 (around 800 pages). In comparison, manga costs $3 to $6 per volume (around 200 pages). The price difference is due to translation fees and the fact that American comics are printed in full color. Additionally, because there are no reprints, the price for popular stories can increase significantly if you miss the initial release. As for manga adaptations like "Spider-Man: Fake Red" and "Superman vs. Meshi," these are primarily promotional tie-ins for movies or characters. They often end after just 2-3 volumes due to contract or early cancellation. For example, there was a Dr. Octopus and Spider-Man manga on Shonen Jump Plus, but it wasn’t popular and got axed. Japan has an abundance of entertainment options, creating tough competition. Those who love American comic books and actually buy them are already invested enough to research the characters’ backstories and lore, enabling them to read from anywhere. However, other otaku spends their time on different hobbies and are unlikely to invest effort in researching just to read comics. I’ve recommended and even lent comics to friends who enjoyed the movies, and while they read them, they didn’t go out and buy comics for themselves afterward. So how do Japanese people get interested in American comic books? Mostly through movies like the MCU, games such as the Marvel vs. Capcom series Batman Arkham series, and occasionally TV cartoons, which air some times (e.g., "Ultimate Spider-Man," "Marvel’s Spider-Man," "Nickelodeon TMNT," and Japan-produced "Disk Wars: Avengers" and "Future Avengers" in the last decade). Among the general audience, the most recognizable and popular American comic book heroes in Japan are Spider-Man and Batman. Following them are the Avengers in the Infinity Saga (Iron Man being the most popular among them). Other DC and Marvel franchises aren’t as well-known, except for the X-Men in the 1990s and Venom in recent Sony movies( Only Venom, "Morbius," "Madame Web," and "Kraven" bombed in Japan as well) However, Even "Endgame" didn’t reach the No.1 spot at the Japanese box office, losing to the "Detective Conan". As for DC movies while "The Dark Knight" got a lot of Batman fans and popularized following Batman related content, other DC movies was either mid or flopped in Japan. The power of the MCU has dwindled after "Endgame" and "No Way Home." Disney+ isn’t a popular streaming service in Japan (Amazon Prime is dominant), and the generation that watched MCU movies a decade ago is aging. With increasing competition, I fear the future of American comic books in Japan looks bleak. I agree with the video’s conclusion that American comic books are a niche hobby in Japan. However, the publishers have a goldmine of great characters and stories that could appeal to Japanese audiences if made more accessible. Accessibility is key to helping American comic books thrive in Japan. P.S. Regarding diversity, I think most Japanese people don’t identify with the concept of being "Asian" as in the United States. They typically identify as "Japanese." Yes, they appreciate seeing Japanese characters and culture represented authentically in Western media, but their main focus tends to be on good stories and strong characters rather than diversity for its own sake. The Infinity Saga was popular because of its strong character chemistry.
I do have a fascination with how cultures view other cultures. Whether it be Latin America's appreciation of Dragon Ball, debates on King of the Kill dub vs sub in Japan, or seeing the western animation section of a Japanese convention, it is interesting to see how other people... see.
There is no KotH dub/sub debates It's just copypasta originating from japanese king of the hill dub videos on RUclips that gets spread around along with "king of the hill is my favorite anime" comments
I will say, one thing I greatly prefer in manga vs. American superhero comics (the Marvel and DC ones at least) is the consistency in art style. Sometimes, the art style for a comic can be a big part of what initially draws me to it, so seeing it suddenly change to another art style that I find less appealing several issues in can be pretty off-putting to me. The Silk solo comic was a big example for me.
Neat perspective. I see where you're coming from. A manga usually has one or two artists for its whole run, and while their styles surely develop, it's still ultimately the same artists' style. It never bothered me with American comics, personally, but I get what you're saying.
In some series that's actually one of the things I like the most, but in those cases is pretty much proposital is more common in anthologies and also stories like Lemire's run of Moon Knight where when Moon Knight switches alters the art style also change which were meant to represents shifts on the perception of the POV characters and in other stories which deal with more cosmic and multiverse elements they represent literal changes on reality itself
@@beasleydad I do feel generally lots of the most noteworthy runs in Marvel and DC usually have an artist stick with the writer of said run throughout the whole run. So when a new run of a title starts, it’s fitting if a new artist hops on with a new write to reflect the changing of the guard. And I do think it’s a generally smart approach for such long-running titles. Sure, people will cite One Piece and Hunter x Hunter as long running titles that maintain quality throughout the whole run so far under one person, but plenty of other long-running manga have been criticized as eventually going down in quality. This is true of some of the longest runs under one person at Marvel or DC, the Chris Claremont era of X-men is iconic but most agree it does go downhill in its later years, the same with the Marv Wolfman era of Teen Titans. It’s hard for one person anywhere to keep the quality up on a title for so long. I’m not saying manga should change what they’re doing, but I am saying keeping the same writer/artist throughout an entire long series can be a double-edged sword.
I could deal with changes in art style (I'm an Araki fan after all lol) but what really makes me not want to invest in western comics is RADICALLY inconsistent writing and characterization. Theres a page from a Gwenpool comic where there are like seven different versions of her character all together on one page from different runs of her comic that are all supposed to be the same continuity and while it *kind of* makes sense for her character for that to be the case, the fact that she's such a new character and has already had so many different versions of who and what she is makes me glad I stopped reading after the (very very good) first comic run she had.
This was awesome, Drake. Thank you. I also want to thank everyone who spoke to Drake in spite of the trouble they had speaking in English. It's difficult even for some of us who have only ever spoken the language, especially in front of a camera. You did well and I thank you all for leaving your comfort zone to talk about comics. With that, have a wonderful everything.
@jech1216 You may want to either elaborate or delete this comment, as it's incredibly unclear what you mean and it's fairly easy for people to create something incredibly negative out of three words. I would prefer to avoid that, if at all possible. Thank you
Fun fact: Kazuki Takahashi, the creator of YU-GI-OH, was a massive fan of hellboy and even got to meet Mike migola . In on the SJ issues that came out they did fanart of each others characters Edit: my bad I meant the creator of hellboy
Another example of how Western comics influenced anime is Tatsuo Yoshida, founder of Tatsunoko, getting his start working on collected Reprints of old Superman comics and even drawing covers in the late 1950s.
And if we want another example of famous Japanese authors and writers in general being inspired by western comics look no further then nasu kinoko who is very famous for the fate series/type moon universe the manga adaptation of the saber wars event from fgo is a really good example of nasu being inspired by marvel comics
@@maxpops8427 Yusuke Murata (the artist of Eyeshield 21 and the One-Punch Man manga) has also done several covers for Marvel Comics (mostly Spider-Man)!
@@Sparksparky1 Nasu was more into writting visual novels (FSN,Tsukihime,Mahoyo) than being comic influenced actually,a better example is Osamu Tezuka who was inspired by european comic strips and Will Eisner's works
It's always "manga better cuz X, Japan better cuz Y." These conversations are always so western (American)-centric, so it's good to finally get some dialogue from the opposite angle. Also, based for hitting up the muscle girl bar. They're queens and deserve all the international love they get.
The biggest difference ive noticed in US vs Japanese superhero properties is in the US superheroes typically start out as independent operators, working outside the confines of the legal system, but Japanese heroes get registered, ranked, and are state sanctioned, and "independence vs state sanctioned" became one of marvels biggest stories
That’s more about modern superhero anime/manga like My Hero Academia, Tiger & Bunny, One Punch Man, etc. Kamen Rider established the tropes of what a classic Japanese superhero was, mysterious masked hero with a scarf delivering justice. It’s Japan’s live action superhero shows like Kamen Rider, Super Sentai, and Ultraman that fall more in line with independent operators working outside the law fighting against evil.
I wonder how Superman 2025 will be received there since a theory is that's probably a big theme of the movie, Superman is his own hero while corporation backed heroes like the JLI and The Engineer and "Ultraman" are controlled by billionaires Maxwell Lord and Lex Luthor Oh this is a theory by the way, none of this is confirmed or anything
That’s honestly a more recent development. Likely one inherited from fantasy anime doing similar stuff with adventurers etc which they inherited from D&D
Ano is butthole, Año is year! Just a friendly heads up because its a common mistake 😅 well, in a way I guess you are moving your butt to mexico though haha
IMO, people who claim that manga are superior to American comics are fake fans that are also buying into the "culture war" BS. They don't care deeply for manga, and they certainly know nothing about American comics, they are just obsessed with a hyper-specific and surface-level aesthetic of Japanese culture just to tout moral superiority.
Doesn't really surprise me that Japan loves Marvel so much considering how popular the Marvel vs. Capcom games are and how most of MHA's influences tend to be from Marvel particularly X-Men and Spider-Man and it's easy to see why. Marvel characters are usually the outcasts. They often struggle with money, getting a date or are ostracized by society in general. Yeah I can definitely see the average manga reader relating more to the X-Men than the Justice League
@@natemcgreg9701 Western properties are always gonna be more popular outside of Japan but still Sega made Marvel games, there's the X-Men arcade game by Konami. Other than Batman I can't think of alot of Japanese games or anime based on a DC property
I was wondering how big the scanlation scene is in Japan. Is there some guy in Japan trying to translate all the Moon Knight comics or something and he's getting mad that the MTL keep changing how it spells Khonshu?
I imagine it’s a lot harder as leaks are popular mainly In plot driven stories. Like scans are popular because there’s just more discussion to be had with One Piece than Batman week to week. It’s no different than there being more to discuss in a game of thrones episode than Batman. Stories that end simply have more moving parts
Huh. By contrast, this explanation has been so ingrained in me for just over twenty years now, that it didn't even occur to me it could still be news to anyone. Quite silly of me, I must say. On that note, though, with the rise of the smartphone, there is now genuine competition against print in Japan as well. Similar stories for game arcades and rental media having thrived in Japan for far longer than in the West but declining now, too.
@twincast2005 born and raised in the blue light. The feel of paper has always been a luxury. Now it feels like a necessity, somewhere not seen as an Eldorado by brainrot profiteers
@@DarkOverlord96 I said that to somebody not too long ago, but some people just cant’t be convinced of some things. It’s just validating to hear it from the perspective of other fans abroad.
Crazy how both of the English-speaking interviewees pointed out that socially-conscious topics in the comics APPEALED to them, and the woman was even aware of the stateside backlash against them. It shows that there's a market for it.
I actively live in Japan currently with my partner. He finds American comics to be confusing, overly convoluted, and hard to follow. Otaku in Japan, the hardcore ones, have limited to no issues jumping into Marvel comics becausee of the movies but it's still a very niche market outside of the movies. Also manga (modern use of the word) predates WWII by at least a decade or so. Kitazawa Yasugi (Rukatan) is the one who penned the term Manga. He's considered the actual father of modern manga by Japanese historians. Then we have Yumeji Takehisa and Jun'ichi Nakahara who popularized the Shojo style a whole decade before Tezuka fully broght manga into mainstream popularity.
I’ve been telling people for years that while manga is huge here, western comic characters are enormously popular in Japan. Love to hear the tidbit about them being more willing to just dive in, which I feel is a thing we all did as kids all the time. As a creator, I’m sure my perspective is skewed, but the idea that you can’t just start reading comics and see what you like irks me to no end.
Keep this in mind: For every shit issue of superman best pal jimmy olsen, there's an equivalent shitty manga that got like 2 issues and died in obscurity. For every Kentaro Miura, there's a Grant Morrison.
@@Chalepastel Gotta give American comics this much: Much less creepy perv stuff with high-schoolers. I mean they'll get slaughtered like pigs but we're unfortunately desensitized to that.
They do but book stores take those comics and throw them in the back of the store, on like three shelfs. Comic companies can only do so much if the stores don't care.
@ Don't be silly, Book stores are business too. They logically put upfront what sells the most. Manga weren't such a big thing a decade ago and comics used to put where manga are nowadays.
This is really making me think. When I was little, I would go to the kids section of Barnes and Noble and spend my allowance there. They had books about comics but never the comics themselves. I saved up for a giant "spiderman encyclopedia" but never saw a single spiderman comic in the kids section. Nowadays, I'm much more into manga. I'm curious how that might've changed if I saw the actual comic books or omnibuses by the other stuff made for kids.
As a western manga fan who got into comics four years ago, I really enjoyed this video :) I really dislike the blanket statements about one medium supposedly being better than the other, usually said in bad faith politics. It was difficult for me for a long time to get into comics because of genuine criticisms like confusing storylines across different books or changing artists. However when I started searching for books that weren’t always continuity heavy but simply of genres or series I already liked, then it became a lot easier. I love dinosaurs for example and one of my favorite manga right now is Dinosaur Sanctuary, like a Japanese Jurassic Park thats not only more scientifically accurate in approach but fun and like reading a manga about a zoo. When looking for western comics I really loved the artwork of Mark Schultz and now Xenozoic Tales / Cadillacs & Dinosaurs is one of my favorite comic series of all time. And western comics are a gold mine for Godzilla, one of my favorite characters ever and the IDW Godzilla run proudly sits on my shelf. Comics and manga are for everyone. If people are knocking one medium for the other, then they are truly missing out.
While it is technically a Marvel comic, I would love to hear about that Moon Knight manga. He is one of my favorite Marvel characters and I had no idea that adaptation existed
Scans don't exist online, but I reached out to Marvel staff directly. He didn't know about it, but was immediately fascinated and said he'd look into it for me.
The Italian comics scene is pretty much like a perfect combo of American and Japanese sensibilities. You have monthly single issues that are basically graphic novellas or graphic novelettes in length, they’re usually in black&white and most of the time they are standalone stories.
I know you said advertising is a big issue for Western comics (which I definitely agree with), but I feel like almost all the manga I've heard of has been through word-of-mouth too. Same with novels.
@@ComicDrakeyeah if anything the adaptations being so different from the source material just makes things even more confusing for new readers and I would love to see my favorite stories getting a more faithful adaptation
I'm from Taiwan and it's extremely hard to get your hands on physical copys of comics here, the only way to buy them if from China and Japan since they seem to be the few countries here in Asia that has consistent distribution of American comics. Also not exactly related to comic but from what I've seen a lot of Japanese also watches DC&Marvel movies both in dub and sub
You should really do Norway or France/Italy, Disney comics are the kings there with superhero comics being in the very minority. They’re published in books with three issues inside since they’re behind the US
Yeah. But we Europeans also make our own Disney / Donald Duck comics. In the Netherlands you can fill a full shelf with magazines and other publications.
The only real superhero I feel we Scandis still support is the Phantom (Fantomen). Not to the same strength as Donald Duck of course. But compared to DC and Marvel his comics are still kicking around here.... Mostly because we make them now XD
I feel like the Marvel VS Capcom series also helped a lot in giving exposure to many of the Marvel characters to the Japanese public, in fact there's a whole rabbit hole regarding their fascination or love for characters like Shuma Gorath.
One thing I've seen from Marvel Rivals is that players feel motivated to actually look up comic lore. It's insane to see that geeks on the internet are doing a better job of promoting comics than Marvel itself.
It’s more about the IP in terms of the pure story than the paper or comics themselves with sales declining since the 80s. If about promotion, just 2 years ago there was too much Marvel in media there was so much promotion and niche characters rising. Now not enough? Marvel Rivals seems to be doing well, just as you mention. And as you mention people are doing their jobs of learning with the promotion Marvel has released to dive further. Now it’s up the the culture itself.
I wonder if Marvel and DC would be doing better sales wise if they started doing what Shonen Jump does and release single issues for many diferrent series in anthology collections. Sure, you'll pick up the book because you want to read the most recent venom issue, but to get the bang for your buck you might as well read the rest and get curious about the madness hapenning in the Fantastic Four issue you got and might go out of your way to read more. It would be better in book advertising than what they currently do, plus it would reduce the tax on fans of multiple series.
@@ComicDrake Understandable from those in Japan used to the format. I was just wondering if the format would also work well here in the west, as you pointed out the lack of universally strong public transport limits the power of print media. Plus it feels like there's much more of a culture of collecting here in the west, so the idea of owning a bunch of anthologies that might not include you favourites could be seen as a net negative. More of idle curiosity then something I think there's a genuine answer to (not without market research) but thanks for the reply anyway!
@@ComicDrake I think it could be a good idea to do anthology books based on team-affiliation. like all the monthly x-men books in one anthology or the ongoing avengers book along with each of their respective solo books.
@@PokeJoshNYThey already did do that for the X-Men during the Krakoa era where a trade would release with all the different series issues that released that month together.
Marvel HAS done that throughout the years in different ways. - Marvel Comics Presents which featured short stories of different characters. - A-Force Presents which were trades with issues from different female characters with each volume having their next issue. - During Krakoa all the X-Men titles were compiled together every month in the Dawn of X / Reign of X / Fall of X trades in the right reading order None of em stick mainly I think because of the high price and availability outside comic stores.
One thing I find interesting is that Japanese also call refer to manga as comics (コミック), which makes this strict dichotomy imposed by fans even more silly. Yeah it can be argued that Japanese comics are historically and stylistically different in many ways compared to ones made in America, but that can be said a lot of entertainment mediums made in other countries.
It's interesting, because the notion of "taking what you can get as long as it's entertaining" also shapes a lot of the early anime & manga scene! Nowadays people generally stick to what they know they'll like thanks in part to how readily available Japanese media is, but back in the day you'd take whatever you could get, usually either through your local Blockbuster or On Demand. The amount of people I know who'd never give shoujo a shot in the modern day but will readily admit Ouran High School Host Club and DNAngel were their goats alongside DBZ and Tenchi growing up is staggering.
So about this whole "I don't read comics because I don't want to start in the middle of something and the continuity is too complicated". I noticed no one actually provides any examples of this in their attempts to start reading comics. That is, if they're even making the attempt to begin with and not just repeating some meme they heard on the internet. One of the big comic book fans and reviewers, Linkara, has stated that his first comic was the Technis Imperative, a massive crossover story featuring multiple teams from different books, yet that's what got him into comics. He didn't know anything about anyone involved in that story, yet it didn't matter to him because the story was good. Every comic is someone's first. Not everyone starts at Issue 1. Dragonball fans should be especially aware of this because they don't start with the original Dragonball, they started with Z
I'll say I had this experience: I started reading Young Avengers issue 1. The problem is, I didn't know about the "Volume" system in comic books, so even though I picked up #1, I had picked up Volume 2, and was very confused by everything happening in the story without the context that it was a continuation. Similarly, I tried to pick up an issue #1 for a new popular series. I couldn't. It's either soldout or selling for 3x the original price. You have to order it in advance, meaning if you aren't already a comic book nerd and you want to buy the book, you have to hope for a second printing or wait months for a TPB to come out to read the completed series. Some series are better at this than others. I hit a wall reading "Champions" because they had just come off of a huge event and without that context I was left floundering. But I picked up issue #16 of Birds of Prey (2024) and it hooked me right away. But not everyone wants to wade through all the bullshit when other forms of media aren't quite so hostile to newbies.
That’s an international thing though. In Japan, the entirety of “Z” is just part of the original Dragon Ball. So if you really liked Dragon Ball Z and only wanted to read it, you would be starting at Dragon Ball issue 194. And if you did, it would be kind of hard to keep up with no knowledge of the previous issues.
@@rainyfriday6175 It's called Z in Japan as well. Z is referred to as the anime adaptation of the second half of Dragonball. Even internationally, the manga is still just called Dragonball at that point Not that people care because all they care about are the power levels and transformations. They don't want to actually learn Goku's origins or even know that he was bitter rivals with Krillin, Piccolo and Tien.
Yes, because just like how we have overdone tropes here with our comics, they got an unholy number of trope stories releasing like every other week (80-something isekai or OP dudes with swords). Everyone craves something new and different; American comics provide that. We have a bias because the only manga volumes that get translated are the ones that sell (and even then, half the isekai slop still manages to get over here)
Thank you for touching on this topic, because being in a world where Japanese entertainment has reached different parts of the planet, we wonder how many things from outside Japan have come to that country
I like that comics can be written by different writers with the same characters. Appreciate manga because it is just one person‘s vision through and through
It's true that you don't need to know all the continuity to enjoy a new comic book (in fact, sometimes knowing the continuity can make reading the current installments much LESS enjoyable, but that's a story for another time), but even if you're the type of nerd who absolutely HAS to know everything about a character before reading their comic, there are tons of wiki articles, websites, RUclips videos, etc. where you can learn about that character - everything from a quick overview to a hyper-detailed biography. Or, y'know, you could literally pick up a new issue and read the little blurb at the beginning that explains the character.
There's also the certain vibe to guessing what happened in previous issues. Reminds me of how most of anime i watched as a kid i first saw not from first episode.
Manga and western comics both have their own unique trends and tropes, both contain amazing stories and art. Consuming both manga and western comics is a real treat, and trying to gatekeep comic medium consumption is such a weird concept to me. Genuinely, if you lover super hero comics, there’s a ton of manga for you, and if you’re a fantasy manga fan, there’s a ton of western comics for you as well! (Etc etc for whatever genres you like!) if you like manga and are curious about western comics, u highly recommend the first run of Gwenpool “The Unbelievable Gwenpool” (2016), illustrated by Gurihiru!
I expect comics to blow up more with marvel rivals coming out on the scene and bringing mass appeal. The game features Chinese and Japanese Dub as well as the English VA has the cast of voices that have been doing the characters for years like Yuri lowenthal,James Arnold Taylor and Steve Blum. Hopefully the movies and shows will be competent enough and can capitalize on the new found hype right now. But it seems like MCU is missing a major antagonist since the real life drama that happened with Kang the conqueror. But I’m excited for daredevil and hopefully we might even see Tom holland reprise his Spider-Man role one day in a project worthy of having him comeback. It seems like they don’t have any lynchpin actors, storylines or characters at the moment. Here’s hoping they can do better.
I mean my number one reason is "I don't want to get invested into a story that doesn't have an ending point and eventually will have drastic changes because writers and artists completely change and editorial staff gets silly ideas" x'D I read manga in the same "Eh, let's go to middle of it and see what its like" tactic (I do still read individual western superhero stories, just not interested in starting to collect issues. Because again, there is no guarantee I will like the next story since I like consistent quality in my serialized stories.)
This was super interesting ! Thank you so much! Coming from Germany I recognised myself in some of the hurdles the Japanese fans were talking about. But the most surprising thing for me was that they aren't afraid to start a series in the middle of an ongoing plot. I hesitated to get into comics precisely because I found it hard to start in the middle of the action. It's also cool that Donald Duck inspired Manga! Donald Duck was my entry into comics too (together with the French Astérix). These books were bigger than superhero comics when I was a kid. I think the main reason is that they sell them almost exclusively in collected paperback pocket books. Makes it easier for grocery stores to stock them because the stories inside are finished plots and don't depend on a monthly series.
One thing I have to bring up is that the 1967 Fantastic Four cartoon was dubbed into Japanese as Space Ninja Golmes, with all the characters' names being changed and some very weird dialogue. It has become a meme in Japan, particularly Doctor Doom (who is called Doctor Devil) and his extremely thick Nagoya dialect. To this day some Japanese people still call the Fantastic 4 cast by their Space Ninja Golmes names and reference the show any time the franchise is brought up.
I haven't seen the whole vid yet but It would be worth mentioning that Manga and Anime used to actually take western inspiration pretty often, a prime example being of Monkey Punch Lupin the third. Many Japanese animators have even worked on Western properties. Honestly, fans need to stop going at wars with each other cause it's never been about one over the other imo
There's a manga that i read called Colorless where when i was reading it I was like this feels a little different than other mangas that I have read and felt like it had a western comic influence in it. And then in one of the authors interviews he confirmed that he was a fan on western super heroes and how western comics did have some influence on the writing of it Also very good video and enjoy led seeing how the comic industry is in Japan
I enjoy both manga and western comics (mostly DC and Marvel), but here in Spain, manga is also more popular. I dont have many friends who enjoy western comics, but they do like manga, and to the ones that show interest in getting into comics, they dont really know where to start, and even if i can provide them with recommendations or reading guides, most are overwhelmed by the amount of it, or have preconcive notions of comics that drives them away of them. As a cosplayer, many of my friends(who also are) move looking into fandoms and character designs, and they've told me that comics look very inaccesible and not very appealing for their age group. I really think that marketing and adaptations that encourage consumers to get into comics are really important and Marvel and DC are lacking in that deparment right now (although, Marvel Rivals for example i think is a step in the right direction for getting people interested in less known characters like Lin Lie)
Same for Gurihiru who are currently working on an OEL Manga reboot of Osamu Tezuka's Unico series for Scholastic. The art duo are massive fans of Tezuka's works!
Personally, I've never been bothered by jumping into the middle of a comic or manga storyline either. It might be because as a kid we didn't really have the money to follow full runs, so figuring out what was going on through context clues was a must. I was usually limited to picking a handful of comics from the bargain bin. The rare time I'd get most a full story was when omnibus collection style books would go on sale.
Another reason the take that manga is better than comics because it's a singular story doesn't sit right is because the fan bases actively does what comics do just on their own. The entire reason AUs and Fanfics exist is because fans want to see the characters they love doing different and more than just the things they do in their stories.
Great video! I love both Manga and American comics, and consume both on a weekly basis. Going to the local comic shop on Wednesday is a super important part of my week. I have real sense of community there. A couple of thoughts on the topic: 1. I tell people all the time to just pick up a book and see if they like it. You can learn more about continuity later. But I have trouble following my own advice, and I personally don't like jumping into the middle of a story. I tend to wait for a new writer to start on a book, or pick up a solo title after an event, so I at least have a somewhat solid jumping on point. 2. I think in recent years, a big part of the lean toward Manga in the west is driven by economics. $9.99 can buy you a Tankoban with 160ish pages of story. That same 9.99 may barely buy you 2 issues of an American comic that are 32-36 pages, possibly with ads. And that's if you're buying the regular cover, and not one of the variants, which often cost a dollar more. 3. In addition to the economics, there is usually a high consistency between the manga and their anime adaptations. Fans will love an anime, and then jump in the manga because they don't want to wait for a new season. Marvel and DC haven't always done a stellar job of lining up their comic initiatives with their live action line-ups. You can go back and read the story lines that inspired part of the movies, but the ongoing comics are often pretty different to what people are seeing on screen, so when they pop into the shop and say "I really liked this movie and want to try the comics..." The new, in-stock comics aren't always what they're after. And if its older stuff, it may or not be in stock, so they leave a little discouraged and empty handed. They may or may not order it later, but it does dampen enthusiasm a bit.
There definitely can be an appeal to western comics in Japan just as there is an appeal to manga in the states. It’s happened before, specifically during the 90s to early 2000s and there was confirmed interest from 2015 to 2019 with the Bio manga Skull-face Bookseller Honda-san, where the main character was in charge of the foreign comics and art books. You can even see some western design influences in early Digimon as there have been some staff statements saying western comics influenced the design choices. As long as a medium is entertaining it can find a market.
To be fair when I was a little kid buying comics I didn't always start at 1 or at the beginning of the series I was also happy to just read my favorite hero, even if the story didn't complete I dont know what happened in age or culture that made me want to just get collected series or something. I think I just might go to a comic shop and grab some random comics and discover something I wouldn't normally grab Thank you!
Same here. When I was a kid, my first comics were Superman, Captain America and the Punisher. In particular, it was Action Comics 683 and Captain America 404, both of which are in the hundredth issues already. I just picked them up because I thought the covers were cool.
in general i think Japanese are influenced by the ideas brought forth by American comics but not the artform itself. many people that enjoy comics in Japan are mostly aspiring mangaka or people that interested in visual arts and graphics. they are attracted to the ideas but for the artform itself Japanese prefer their stylized style rather than realistic drawings of comics. maybe explore Korea next, manwha (korean comics) industries are on the rise and they are the perfect marriage between stylized Japanese manga and realistic American comics. maybe you will find many interesting insights and opinions from korean fans and artist.
Ive been living in Japan for a few years now. My friend Tetsuo is a sucker for anything time travel (not multiverse stuff) and I recently showed him Flash Point Paradox the movie and then he got hooked (His English is decent enough to understand but I would fill in some gaps with my own translation after we paused the movie) Just wait till he finds out Reverse Flash is alive in that " Suicide Squad hell to pay " movie from 2016. lmao I will say that Marvel Rivals is very well received here, especially Jeff the land shark simply because Japan has a Kawaii culture. And about the Japanese language learning community.... No other community is quite like it thanks to anime unfortunately. And what I mean is, for a community that has so many " experts " it's crazy how little of them actually ever get to the point of speaking it. Granted, it's a very hard language, slightly harder than Chinese. Imo (I took 2 years of Chinese in high school)
The public perception Manga: “each Manga is it’s own continuity in it’s own universe” Comics: “it’s either a comic that’s part of the Marvel Comic Universe or part of the DC Comic Universe, both universes probably have continuities going all the way back since their first released issues In short, the public thinks that DC and Marvel comics is like if One Piece was split between multiple different Manga and you had to read all of them to understand the story Despite it being a misconception
and also dc marvel like to produce something weird like starfire daughter in manga bad manga just got cancelled or even not published why people like talking about bad comics because we love comic and want cpmic to be better
A lot of the issue can also be chalked up to visual language theory as well. Essentially Japanese Visual Language and American Visual language are mutually intelligible syntaxes that add a ton of meaning from timing cues to eye draw creating motions that suggest feelings. The problem is that while they are mutually intelligible, they aren't the same and if you attempt to read either using exclusively the syntax of the other a lot of meaning is lost that makes the panel to panel reading experience more in depth and enjoyable.
Some cool, lesser known asian characters to get into are Armor in Marvel, she's a mutant. For DC there's Lady Shiva, a villainess, and the world's greatest martial artist.
I love both Comics and Manga and drake is right Without Comics Manga wouldn't exist. Both comics and manga should be respected none is definitively superior yes in certain things one is better than the other but overall both are amazing.
@@hailgiratinathetruegod7564 that's not true at all they are all there to read they are not replaced but are of different eras and universes and comics are not failing at all I don't know what world your living in but that is not true.
My issue with comics is purely how convoluted the sequence of consuming them is. Not that I think you need to know every series down to the beginning in the 60s, just that it's hard to even look up the current version of the series going on at the time and if it's even interesting. In addition to how authors just seem to come in and completely change everything that was going on previously, cutting off the connection to the series entirely. I prefer manga which is just far more accessible and consistent in how you read it. It also helps that anime and manga have a symbiotic relationship a lot of the time where the anime or manga will both provide interest in the manga to see more of the story. Whereas with comics it's not the same. Cartoons and movies most times contain their own version of the story where it's not even necessary to engage with the source comics at all. Which is why superheroes have become such cultural icons despite comics remaining a super niche medium. The DCAU and 90s cartoons as well as games were my entree to DC and marvel. I probably would not even know them if the comics just existed as they are. With all that being said however, I did get into the "white knight" batman comic series, just because I happened to come across it's premise and I liked that Harley was a huge and significant part of the story since she's my favorite DC character.
@@MrInuhanyou123 Amazon, bookstores like Barnes and Noble, or a comic shop (if one is near you). They have plenty of comics from Image comics, dark horse, boom studios, dynamite, mad cave, and tons of other publishers.those publishers have thousands of comics that work just like Manga does.
I would love a deep dive into other countries' comic book cultures, here in Italy there's a great coomic book scene both with our original series like Zero Calcare, RatMan, Dylan Dog and some illustrators going across the ocean to work for Marvel and DC like Gabriele Dell'Otto Marco Checchetto, Sara Pichelli I'm sure many other countries have a thriving coomic book scene that's worth exploring
I met up with friends of the channel, Danielle Di Niculo and Simone Di Meo at Tokyo Comic Con and they told me ALL about Bonelli comics and the Italian comic industry! I've been trying to get my hands on English translations of those books because I'd love to travel to Italy and do a similar video over there.
@ComicDrake by far the biggest comic con-like event where you could do something like this in Italy is Lucca Comics (usually in October/November). As far as translations go, I'm afraid there's not much, I know Dylan Dog and Diabolik have been translated, more recently Zero Calcare thanks to the two Netflix series. You're probably better off writing to the artists and asking them directly, most of them are quite friendly and usually interact through social media with people.
You know about Mexican comics! It would be awesome to see you some classics (Fantomas, El Santo, Kalimán, Karmatron) as well as some more modern stuff, which is less superhero-oriented but pretty cool and underrated.
Can vouch for the "just jump in" thing. I've approached several comics and manga like that. For example, I started reading One Piece at around 950-something, Demon Slayer I read the most recent chapters for around the time the first season wrapped (it was on the last arc) and so on. Even my first Manga, Dragon Ball, I got into with the fucking Buu arc. And I can't even begin to list all the Superhero comics I've done the same for. (latest I did was the Chip Zdarsky Spider-Man story where he revealed his identity to JJJ, and I just read from there.) I think people are a little too stuck in that "no spoilers" mindset, to the point that it hurts their inclination to just try out more diverse stuff that may or may not be to their taste because the most convenient way to do so at that moment, is in the middle of the story somewhere.
This may have been one of my favorite videos by you Drake, seeing their perspectives on not just the industry but on things like diversity shows how important things like that are.
Another thing to add about the Marvel and Toei collaboration is part of it is Denziman and to an extent, Sun Vulcan with one of its villains with Queen Hedrian.
This was a great video! Your interview subjects gave such thoughtful and illuminating answers. I will say one advantage of japan's focus on print media is the variety of storytelling that can be supported. As you mentioned, there are tons of solo western comics artists making long running series in all sorts of genres, but the big two companies are still both superhero focused so any variety within the confines of that superhero template is always naturally constricted. Japan has much the same saturation issue with shonen jump's very similar storytelling style being by far THE most popular thing on the market, but the market as a whole is so large that it still has space to support a vast ecosystem of different genres and demographics. In the west, a romance comic like Heartstopper is seen as a huge success for getting a live action tv show adaptation, while in Japan, similar comics might get a live action drama, an audio drama, AND an anime, and they are far from the most popular stories. Even with Jump's focus on action, it's gag comedy titles often get just as much attention, alongside similar titles from other magazines. So for fans of comics outside the superhero genre, manga is clearly leagues ahead in the sheer volume of diverse offerings, but I think the rise in webcomics and independent publishing over here in the west has been a great boon to spreading comics to wider audiences who might not be drawn in by superhero stories
My issue with Marvel and DC comics isn't about the lack of defined start and end point, but that there is no real stakes. Deaths aren't actually deaths. Most relationships rarely last. Things get reset too often to feel like things really matter.
I agree but I think this is more of a modern problem especially with the reboots dc seems to reboot every 10 years and it's make me not even wanna get into it 😭
@@anaveragegamer359 true but when it comes to alot of there more popular characters spider man x men and even the hulk they tend to bring them back to a starting point ex never letting peter and mj stay together
That dude who dove into daredevils history after reading zdarskys run is dope. I love hearing stuff like that. Imagine being able to read Millers DD for the 1st time again
Ive been wondering this since marvel vs capcom. Also the people that say Manga is better than american comics usually mean better than marvel/dc, I rather read The Sandman and Saga over Berserk and Vinland Saga.
Let's not forget that all these people who argue that manga is better then comics have not read a single western comic in their life or are not up to date with recent comics and don't get me started on the angry rage bait youtube channels out their aswell
@BananaBanditos theirs a reason why I also said not up to date aswell which drake pretty much pointed out when discussing how the Japanese don't care when they start reading and for some reason westernera do also theirs been alot of ragebait channels over the years criticising marvel for the silliest of reasons I'm not saying criticism of marvel is invalid by the way it's just alot of it is pretty dumb
I tried going to Blister when I was in Japan last year but they were closed on the day I had time to go to Akihabara :( so I'm actually grateful for this video because I never got to see the inside of it and I also was hoping to see what Western Comic Culture was like in Japan. This video is pretty much exactly what I was looking for, thank you.
The perfect anti-weeb video. I like manga and anime, but I get so exhausted with people who act like it's superior when it's literally the same. Same issues. Same topics. Same abundance of genres. Even the same damn artstyles. Videos like this will probably never break that stigma, but it's so nice to be reminded that there are still sane people left. Thanks for the upload.
A few years ago I was working on a manga adaptation of the game Honkai Impact 3rd. The way I wrote the scripts were influenced by both manga and comics. For instance, some panel layouts were inspired by the likes of J.H. Williams III and Bruno Redondo. I also used more monologues and cinematic panel compositions as seen in comics. However, for action and fight scenes, I went all manga with large panels, exaggerated perspective and minimal dialogue.
You have no idea how long I’ve been wondering what Japanese people think of our comics. So seeing this video made me click without hesitation. Based on the info presented here, it would seem as though our comics are not nearly as prevalent in their culture, even though their comics (manga) seem to be becoming a large staple of western fandom
Honestly I think part of the reason why there is this misconception about “comics being more complicated than manga” is because the comic industry is mainly dominated by DC and Marvel, both who focus on the concept of “multiple superheroes living in one universe”. This causes people to have the misconception that reading any single issue would be the equivalent of picking up chapter 825 of One Piece but that chapter only focused on Chopper, so you need all previous 691 Chopper focused chapters and all 825 Luffy focused chapters to understand what has happened, what is currently happening and what Chopper’s character and motivations are like going forward.
3:30 Blister used to be in Shibuya when I lived in Japan in 2006/07. I still can't wrap my head around it having moved to Akihabara, even if, I suppose the center of tech/games and anime/manga fandom is a better fit than the center of music and fashion. Fun to still see them use the same orange cupboards as makeshift shelves.
Comics vs Manga are always ridiculous, especially this one horrible weebish relative I have no regrets cutting all ties with. It's baffling that people watch and read My Hero Acidemia thinking it is The Boys type of anti-superhero story.
Comics have a big advertisement problem but DC specifically is trying atleast, there's comic ads during wrestling shows like AEW and they've gotten into the habbit of adding comic recs at the end of movie trailers. Usually they're advertising really well known stuff like Flashpoint and Kingdom Come but hey, its something.
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I found the settei (on setteidreams) of the Wolverine anime, it works so well. Stylistically, there's such fun to have revisiting cross over through japanese creators. The Wolverine anime or the Marvel capcom pixel art sprites and derivative art are so beautiful stylistic blends. I would love to know what others exemples of stylistic cross overs you would recommend. I heard you where somkind of an expert
what kind of products do you use on your beard cuz it looks amazing
@colincasey440 I honestly don't. 😅 Just shampoo and conditioner like the rest the hair on my head.
One thing I’ve started to believe is that if Japan had REALLY taken to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, we would’ve seen more Purple and Orange Sentai heroes at a steadier rate
Purple is pretty ingrained as a bad guy color in Japan.
@ Explains the Foot Clan and Purple Dragons at least
When ya think about it, wonder if they'd seen the TMNT x Naruto conic yet. 🤔 That is, if we're on that topic.
At least we are getting more now, Boonboomger has both Purple and Orange, and we have gotten constant Purple's overall these last few years. KingOhger's first core purple certainly gives hope for more.
@mechadeka well funnily enough a prominent element of the Foot Clan in terms of design is a shade of purple on their ninjas or on Shredder himself.
Hi, I'm just a Japanese guy who loves American comic books (“Red Hood and the Outlaws” is my favorite) and works on localizing Western games to Japan.
I wanted to share my thoughts on the popularity of American comic books in Japan, as I felt the video focused more on die-hard Japanese fans of American comics. These fans go out of their way to research and purchase what they love. However, I want to discuss how challenging it is to get the general Japanese audience interested in American comics, from the perspective of someone trying to sell western entertainment to the mass market.
To be honest, general Japanese people who claim to love American comic books often love the characters but don't actually read the comics themselves. Merchandise, especially from Marvel, sells well and is popular among men and also women, with some even calling it fashionable. But many of these fans have never read the books.
This is largely because it's difficult to access comic books in Japan. There are only three American comic bookstores in Tokyo and fewer than 20 in the entire country. While some large bookstores have a dedicated shelf and Amazon is an option, there’s still a significant barrier of price and language. Translated versions of comic book issues (single issues) simply don’t exist. If you want to read a Japanese translation, you have to buy the paperback collections, which cost roughly $20 to $30 each. For example, I bought the translated versions of "Batman: The Long Halloween" Part 1 and Part 2, which cost a total of $60 (around 800 pages). In comparison, manga costs $3 to $6 per volume (around 200 pages). The price difference is due to translation fees and the fact that American comics are printed in full color. Additionally, because there are no reprints, the price for popular stories can increase significantly if you miss the initial release.
As for manga adaptations like "Spider-Man: Fake Red" and "Superman vs. Meshi," these are primarily promotional tie-ins for movies or characters. They often end after just 2-3 volumes due to contract or early cancellation. For example, there was a Dr. Octopus and Spider-Man manga on Shonen Jump Plus, but it wasn’t popular and got axed.
Japan has an abundance of entertainment options, creating tough competition. Those who love American comic books and actually buy them are already invested enough to research the characters’ backstories and lore, enabling them to read from anywhere. However, other otaku spends their time on different hobbies and are unlikely to invest effort in researching just to read comics. I’ve recommended and even lent comics to friends who enjoyed the movies, and while they read them, they didn’t go out and buy comics for themselves afterward.
So how do Japanese people get interested in American comic books? Mostly through movies like the MCU, games such as the Marvel vs. Capcom series Batman Arkham series, and occasionally TV cartoons, which air some times (e.g., "Ultimate Spider-Man," "Marvel’s Spider-Man," "Nickelodeon TMNT," and Japan-produced "Disk Wars: Avengers" and "Future Avengers" in the last decade). Among the general audience, the most recognizable and popular American comic book heroes in Japan are Spider-Man and Batman. Following them are the Avengers in the Infinity Saga (Iron Man being the most popular among them). Other DC and Marvel franchises aren’t as well-known, except for the X-Men in the 1990s and Venom in recent Sony movies( Only Venom, "Morbius," "Madame Web," and "Kraven" bombed in Japan as well) However, Even "Endgame" didn’t reach the No.1 spot at the Japanese box office, losing to the "Detective Conan". As for DC movies while "The Dark Knight" got a lot of Batman fans and popularized following Batman related content, other DC movies was either mid or flopped in Japan.
The power of the MCU has dwindled after "Endgame" and "No Way Home." Disney+ isn’t a popular streaming service in Japan (Amazon Prime is dominant), and the generation that watched MCU movies a decade ago is aging. With increasing competition, I fear the future of American comic books in Japan looks bleak.
I agree with the video’s conclusion that American comic books are a niche hobby in Japan. However, the publishers have a goldmine of great characters and stories that could appeal to Japanese audiences if made more accessible. Accessibility is key to helping American comic books thrive in Japan.
P.S. Regarding diversity, I think most Japanese people don’t identify with the concept of being "Asian" as in the United States. They typically identify as "Japanese." Yes, they appreciate seeing Japanese characters and culture represented authentically in Western media, but their main focus tends to be on good stories and strong characters rather than diversity for its own sake. The Infinity Saga was popular because of its strong character chemistry.
good comment, u should make this a short video essay
I do have a fascination with how cultures view other cultures. Whether it be Latin America's appreciation of Dragon Ball, debates on King of the Kill dub vs sub in Japan, or seeing the western animation section of a Japanese convention, it is interesting to see how other people... see.
Interesting, agreed
King of the kill?
@@ExiletheJediHank: My powers comes from the love of propane and propane accessories. It’s powerful enough to defeat you, Cruel Charocal!
King of the Hill sub or dub debate is a hoax
There is no KotH dub/sub debates
It's just copypasta originating from japanese king of the hill dub videos on RUclips that gets spread around along with "king of the hill is my favorite anime" comments
I will say, one thing I greatly prefer in manga vs. American superhero comics (the Marvel and DC ones at least) is the consistency in art style. Sometimes, the art style for a comic can be a big part of what initially draws me to it, so seeing it suddenly change to another art style that I find less appealing several issues in can be pretty off-putting to me. The Silk solo comic was a big example for me.
Neat perspective. I see where you're coming from. A manga usually has one or two artists for its whole run, and while their styles surely develop, it's still ultimately the same artists' style. It never bothered me with American comics, personally, but I get what you're saying.
In some series that's actually one of the things I like the most, but in those cases is pretty much proposital is more common in anthologies and also stories like Lemire's run of Moon Knight where when Moon Knight switches alters the art style also change which were meant to represents shifts on the perception of the POV characters and in other stories which deal with more cosmic and multiverse elements they represent literal changes on reality itself
@@beasleydad I do feel generally lots of the most noteworthy runs in Marvel and DC usually have an artist stick with the writer of said run throughout the whole run. So when a new run of a title starts, it’s fitting if a new artist hops on with a new write to reflect the changing of the guard.
And I do think it’s a generally smart approach for such long-running titles. Sure, people will cite One Piece and Hunter x Hunter as long running titles that maintain quality throughout the whole run so far under one person, but plenty of other long-running manga have been criticized as eventually going down in quality. This is true of some of the longest runs under one person at Marvel or DC, the Chris Claremont era of X-men is iconic but most agree it does go downhill in its later years, the same with the Marv Wolfman era of Teen Titans. It’s hard for one person anywhere to keep the quality up on a title for so long. I’m not saying manga should change what they’re doing, but I am saying keeping the same writer/artist throughout an entire long series can be a double-edged sword.
The discipline of the Japanese people
I could deal with changes in art style (I'm an Araki fan after all lol) but what really makes me not want to invest in western comics is RADICALLY inconsistent writing and characterization. Theres a page from a Gwenpool comic where there are like seven different versions of her character all together on one page from different runs of her comic that are all supposed to be the same continuity and while it *kind of* makes sense for her character for that to be the case, the fact that she's such a new character and has already had so many different versions of who and what she is makes me glad I stopped reading after the (very very good) first comic run she had.
This was awesome, Drake. Thank you.
I also want to thank everyone who spoke to Drake in spite of the trouble they had speaking in English. It's difficult even for some of us who have only ever spoken the language, especially in front of a camera. You did well and I thank you all for leaving your comfort zone to talk about comics.
With that, have a wonderful everything.
Not like us
@jech1216 You may want to either elaborate or delete this comment, as it's incredibly unclear what you mean and it's fairly easy for people to create something incredibly negative out of three words. I would prefer to avoid that, if at all possible. Thank you
Diss track on drake by Kendrick@@silversonic1
Fun fact: Kazuki Takahashi, the creator of YU-GI-OH, was a massive fan of hellboy and even got to meet Mike migola . In on the SJ issues that came out they did fanart of each others characters
Edit: my bad I meant the creator of hellboy
Plus the creator of Rurouni kenshin was a massive fan of X-Men to the point he based numerous villains off marvel/xmen characters
@@stevenreyes7779 he met Hellboy? What like he met Ron Perlman?
@ my bad lmao the creator of hellboy Mike mignola
Takahashi also worked on a Iron Man/Spider-Man Team-Up story, and even made the original Elemental Heroes from GX based on western heroes.
He is also a huge fan of Spawn
The muscle girl bar compilation threw me for a loop lol
I mean, you know what they say... when in Japan
I like this creator a lot but he is such a freak lol
8:30
God has his favorites
@@Chalepastel "... get the crap slapped out of you?" What's the ending of that sentence supposed to be?!?!?!
I personally love both manga and comics and honestly I have no problem with either one of them.
Same!
@@randomgamer625 ooh cool 😎
@@TevyaSmolkame too
I’m the same way.
@@TevyaSmolka me too I love manga and comics
Another example of how Western comics influenced anime is Tatsuo Yoshida, founder of Tatsunoko, getting his start working on collected Reprints of old Superman comics and even drawing covers in the late 1950s.
And if we want another example of famous Japanese authors and writers in general being inspired by western comics look no further then nasu kinoko who is very famous for the fate series/type moon universe the manga adaptation of the saber wars event from fgo is a really good example of nasu being inspired by marvel comics
@@Sparksparky1another famous Example is Yoshitaka Amano. Mostly famous for FF art but has made a few covers for Marvel and DC
@@maxpops8427
Yusuke Murata (the artist of Eyeshield 21 and the One-Punch Man manga) has also done several covers for Marvel Comics (mostly Spider-Man)!
Jojo's Bizzare Adventure is heavily influenced by western comics, Araki spent a lot of time overseas and loved them and the art style.
@@Sparksparky1 Nasu was more into writting visual novels (FSN,Tsukihime,Mahoyo) than being comic influenced actually,a better example is Osamu Tezuka who was inspired by european comic strips and Will Eisner's works
It's always "manga better cuz X, Japan better cuz Y." These conversations are always so western (American)-centric, so it's good to finally get some dialogue from the opposite angle.
Also, based for hitting up the muscle girl bar. They're queens and deserve all the international love they get.
The biggest difference ive noticed in US vs Japanese superhero properties is in the US superheroes typically start out as independent operators, working outside the confines of the legal system, but Japanese heroes get registered, ranked, and are state sanctioned, and "independence vs state sanctioned" became one of marvels biggest stories
Ironically the biggest manga in the world does neither. It’s cast are effectively anti heroes who fight independent and state forces
That’s more about modern superhero anime/manga like My Hero Academia, Tiger & Bunny, One Punch Man, etc. Kamen Rider established the tropes of what a classic Japanese superhero was, mysterious masked hero with a scarf delivering justice. It’s Japan’s live action superhero shows like Kamen Rider, Super Sentai, and Ultraman that fall more in line with independent operators working outside the law fighting against evil.
I wonder how Superman 2025 will be received there since a theory is that's probably a big theme of the movie, Superman is his own hero while corporation backed heroes like the JLI and The Engineer and "Ultraman" are controlled by billionaires Maxwell Lord and Lex Luthor
Oh this is a theory by the way, none of this is confirmed or anything
That’s honestly a more recent development. Likely one inherited from fantasy anime doing similar stuff with adventurers etc which they inherited from D&D
😮🤔@@user-io9hj9ip2d
If you ever come to Mexico City, you would be blown away by the love we mexicans have for all kinds of comics.
Estuve en Ciudad de Mexico el mes pasado. Este ano me voy a mudar a Toluca.
BASADO@@ComicDrake
I've been to mexico once and i can totally approve of this
Ano is butthole, Año is year!
Just a friendly heads up because its a common mistake 😅 well, in a way I guess you are moving your butt to mexico though haha
A huevo, bienvenido.@@ComicDrake
absolutely makes 0 sense to me why people pit manga & comics against each other like you can have 2 good things
People being dumb as always
IMO, people who claim that manga are superior to American comics are fake fans that are also buying into the "culture war" BS. They don't care deeply for manga, and they certainly know nothing about American comics, they are just obsessed with a hyper-specific and surface-level aesthetic of Japanese culture just to tout moral superiority.
Because the thing I like is better than the thing you like which also means that I am a better person than you are!1!1!1!1
Because one let's you escape reality
@@TropicaIJay How Original....
Doesn't really surprise me that Japan loves Marvel so much considering how popular the Marvel vs. Capcom games are and how most of MHA's influences tend to be from Marvel particularly X-Men and Spider-Man and it's easy to see why. Marvel characters are usually the outcasts. They often struggle with money, getting a date or are ostracized by society in general. Yeah I can definitely see the average manga reader relating more to the X-Men than the Justice League
Arent those games historically way more popular in English speaking contries than japan?
@@natemcgreg9701 Western properties are always gonna be more popular outside of Japan but still Sega made Marvel games, there's the X-Men arcade game by Konami. Other than Batman I can't think of alot of Japanese games or anime based on a DC property
Youd be amazed by the amount of early 2000s Spider-Man movie statues in some city
I was wondering how big the scanlation scene is in Japan. Is there some guy in Japan trying to translate all the Moon Knight comics or something and he's getting mad that the MTL keep changing how it spells Khonshu?
I imagine it’s a lot harder as leaks are popular mainly In plot driven stories.
Like scans are popular because there’s just more discussion to be had with One Piece than Batman week to week.
It’s no different than there being more to discuss in a game of thrones episode than Batman.
Stories that end simply have more moving parts
@@nerdking1019you clearly aren't part of the new ultimate universe fandom
"We kept Batman calling Superman his 'best friend' cuz we felt nakama just didn't have the same impact"
Isn’t pirating more taboo in Japan?
"We felt that The Thing's catchphrase, 'it's clobberin' time!' was better translated to 'dattebayo'"
Also, I never thought of the print media dependency or symbiotic relationship with urban transit system, that's a very insightful point.
Huh. By contrast, this explanation has been so ingrained in me for just over twenty years now, that it didn't even occur to me it could still be news to anyone. Quite silly of me, I must say. On that note, though, with the rise of the smartphone, there is now genuine competition against print in Japan as well. Similar stories for game arcades and rental media having thrived in Japan for far longer than in the West but declining now, too.
@twincast2005 born and raised in the blue light. The feel of paper has always been a luxury. Now it feels like a necessity, somewhere not seen as an Eldorado by brainrot profiteers
The whole bit about “not needing to know every continuity detail” was so validating. I’ve gotten so tired of having that argument over the years.
Comic continuity is a a poison anyway. Even the publishers and writers don't pay attention to all of it.
I mean, didn't Stan Lee say that "every comic is someone's first" because of that?
@@DarkOverlord96 I said that to somebody not too long ago, but some people just cant’t be convinced of some things. It’s just validating to hear it from the perspective of other fans abroad.
Crazy how both of the English-speaking interviewees pointed out that socially-conscious topics in the comics APPEALED to them, and the woman was even aware of the stateside backlash against them. It shows that there's a market for it.
yea, a smal market still exists in the US as well
I actively live in Japan currently with my partner. He finds American comics to be confusing, overly convoluted, and hard to follow. Otaku in Japan, the hardcore ones, have limited to no issues jumping into Marvel comics becausee of the movies but it's still a very niche market outside of the movies. Also manga (modern use of the word) predates WWII by at least a decade or so. Kitazawa Yasugi (Rukatan) is the one who penned the term Manga. He's considered the actual father of modern manga by Japanese historians. Then we have Yumeji Takehisa and Jun'ichi Nakahara who popularized the Shojo style a whole decade before Tezuka fully broght manga into mainstream popularity.
I’ve been telling people for years that while manga is huge here, western comic characters are enormously popular in Japan. Love to hear the tidbit about them being more willing to just dive in, which I feel is a thing we all did as kids all the time. As a creator, I’m sure my perspective is skewed, but the idea that you can’t just start reading comics and see what you like irks me to no end.
Keep this in mind:
For every shit issue of superman best pal jimmy olsen, there's an equivalent shitty manga that got like 2 issues and died in obscurity.
For every Kentaro Miura, there's a Grant Morrison.
And for every All Star Batman and Robin, there's a Usagi Drop...
@@jordanloux3883 for every "god damned batman" there's a issue of those weird tentacle "stuff"
@@Chalepastel Gotta give American comics this much: Much less creepy perv stuff with high-schoolers. I mean they'll get slaughtered like pigs but we're unfortunately desensitized to that.
@@Chalepastel hentai is usually self published
Hell, just go to a manga website and type in the word "cheat" and see how many results you get
Comics should Advertise themselves in Book Stores like in Manga.
They do but book stores take those comics and throw them in the back of the store, on like three shelfs. Comic companies can only do so much if the stores don't care.
@ Don't be silly, Book stores are business too. They logically put upfront what sells the most. Manga weren't such a big thing a decade ago and comics used to put where manga are nowadays.
This is really making me think. When I was little, I would go to the kids section of Barnes and Noble and spend my allowance there. They had books about comics but never the comics themselves. I saved up for a giant "spiderman encyclopedia" but never saw a single spiderman comic in the kids section. Nowadays, I'm much more into manga. I'm curious how that might've changed if I saw the actual comic books or omnibuses by the other stuff made for kids.
Both have their merits and i love them both
As a western manga fan who got into comics four years ago, I really enjoyed this video :) I really dislike the blanket statements about one medium supposedly being better than the other, usually said in bad faith politics. It was difficult for me for a long time to get into comics because of genuine criticisms like confusing storylines across different books or changing artists. However when I started searching for books that weren’t always continuity heavy but simply of genres or series I already liked, then it became a lot easier. I love dinosaurs for example and one of my favorite manga right now is Dinosaur Sanctuary, like a Japanese Jurassic Park thats not only more scientifically accurate in approach but fun and like reading a manga about a zoo. When looking for western comics I really loved the artwork of Mark Schultz and now Xenozoic Tales / Cadillacs & Dinosaurs is one of my favorite comic series of all time. And western comics are a gold mine for Godzilla, one of my favorite characters ever and the IDW Godzilla run proudly sits on my shelf.
Comics and manga are for everyone. If people are knocking one medium for the other, then they are truly missing out.
@@JurassicLion2049 not reading allat lil bro
@@jech1216the ultimate question, is this bait or an illiterate moron?
I've used the exact phrase "Spider-Man invented Megazords" when explaining the history of sentai to my friends for years.
"Most of which are right in the middle of-"
"-their own plots."
Please tell me that the timing of that commercial break was intentional.
Bro is so real for going to the muscle girl bar
Twice. 😅
I wanna go.
@@ComicDrake fuck yeah
@@TheFLAMEXD me too.
While it is technically a Marvel comic, I would love to hear about that Moon Knight manga. He is one of my favorite Marvel characters and I had no idea that adaptation existed
Scans don't exist online, but I reached out to Marvel staff directly. He didn't know about it, but was immediately fascinated and said he'd look into it for me.
@@ComicDrake oh my god that's actually awesome
The Italian comics scene is pretty much like a perfect combo of American and Japanese sensibilities. You have monthly single issues that are basically graphic novellas or graphic novelettes in length, they’re usually in black&white and most of the time they are standalone stories.
Nobody cares,Mangas will always be better
Cool I'm only familiar with Tex
I know you said advertising is a big issue for Western comics (which I definitely agree with), but I feel like almost all the manga I've heard of has been through word-of-mouth too. Same with novels.
Manga gets a serious advertising boost from anime since shows are frequently a one-to-one adaptation.
@@ComicDrakeyeah if anything the adaptations being so different from the source material just makes things even more confusing for new readers and I would love to see my favorite stories getting a more faithful adaptation
I'm from Taiwan and it's extremely hard to get your hands on physical copys of comics here, the only way to buy them if from China and Japan since they seem to be the few countries here in Asia that has consistent distribution of American comics.
Also not exactly related to comic but from what I've seen a lot of Japanese also watches DC&Marvel movies both in dub and sub
nice Shin Megami Tensei profile picture
You should really do Norway or France/Italy, Disney comics are the kings there with superhero comics being in the very minority. They’re published in books with three issues inside since they’re behind the US
@@MathieuLeblanc1991 EU media is irrelevant lil bro
Yeah. But we Europeans also make our own Disney / Donald Duck comics. In the Netherlands you can fill a full shelf with magazines and other publications.
@ Yep Vicar is one of the most popular there
The only real superhero I feel we Scandis still support is the Phantom (Fantomen). Not to the same strength as Donald Duck of course. But compared to DC and Marvel his comics are still kicking around here.... Mostly because we make them now XD
@ Yeah him and Mandrake the Magician
I feel like the Marvel VS Capcom series also helped a lot in giving exposure to many of the Marvel characters to the Japanese public, in fact there's a whole rabbit hole regarding their fascination or love for characters like Shuma Gorath.
One thing I've seen from Marvel Rivals is that players feel motivated to actually look up comic lore. It's insane to see that geeks on the internet are doing a better job of promoting comics than Marvel itself.
Another reason why Marvel needs to fix their business
It’s more about the IP in terms of the pure story than the paper or comics themselves with sales declining since the 80s. If about promotion, just 2 years ago there was too much Marvel in media there was so much promotion and niche characters rising. Now not enough? Marvel Rivals seems to be doing well, just as you mention. And as you mention people are doing their jobs of learning with the promotion Marvel has released to dive further. Now it’s up the the culture itself.
@@thetachi5except that when they were doing the niche stuff they half assed it and didn’t have the decency to actually give their vfx team enough time
I wonder if Marvel and DC would be doing better sales wise if they started doing what Shonen Jump does and release single issues for many diferrent series in anthology collections.
Sure, you'll pick up the book because you want to read the most recent venom issue, but to get the bang for your buck you might as well read the rest and get curious about the madness hapenning in the Fantastic Four issue you got and might go out of your way to read more. It would be better in book advertising than what they currently do, plus it would reduce the tax on fans of multiple series.
I asked that in my interviews and everyone agreed that anthology books would be amazing!
@@ComicDrake Understandable from those in Japan used to the format.
I was just wondering if the format would also work well here in the west, as you pointed out the lack of universally strong public transport limits the power of print media. Plus it feels like there's much more of a culture of collecting here in the west, so the idea of owning a bunch of anthologies that might not include you favourites could be seen as a net negative.
More of idle curiosity then something I think there's a genuine answer to (not without market research) but thanks for the reply anyway!
@@ComicDrake I think it could be a good idea to do anthology books based on team-affiliation. like all the monthly x-men books in one anthology or the ongoing avengers book along with each of their respective solo books.
@@PokeJoshNYThey already did do that for the X-Men during the Krakoa era where a trade would release with all the different series issues that released that month together.
Marvel HAS done that throughout the years in different ways.
- Marvel Comics Presents which featured short stories of different characters.
- A-Force Presents which were trades with issues from different female characters with each volume having their next issue.
- During Krakoa all the X-Men titles were compiled together every month in the Dawn of X / Reign of X / Fall of X trades in the right reading order
None of em stick mainly I think because of the high price and availability outside comic stores.
One thing I find interesting is that Japanese also call refer to manga as comics (コミック), which makes this strict dichotomy imposed by fans even more silly.
Yeah it can be argued that Japanese comics are historically and stylistically different in many ways compared to ones made in America, but that can be said a lot of entertainment mediums made in other countries.
It's interesting, because the notion of "taking what you can get as long as it's entertaining" also shapes a lot of the early anime & manga scene!
Nowadays people generally stick to what they know they'll like thanks in part to how readily available Japanese media is, but back in the day you'd take whatever you could get, usually either through your local Blockbuster or On Demand. The amount of people I know who'd never give shoujo a shot in the modern day but will readily admit Ouran High School Host Club and DNAngel were their goats alongside DBZ and Tenchi growing up is staggering.
So about this whole "I don't read comics because I don't want to start in the middle of something and the continuity is too complicated". I noticed no one actually provides any examples of this in their attempts to start reading comics. That is, if they're even making the attempt to begin with and not just repeating some meme they heard on the internet.
One of the big comic book fans and reviewers, Linkara, has stated that his first comic was the Technis Imperative, a massive crossover story featuring multiple teams from different books, yet that's what got him into comics. He didn't know anything about anyone involved in that story, yet it didn't matter to him because the story was good.
Every comic is someone's first. Not everyone starts at Issue 1. Dragonball fans should be especially aware of this because they don't start with the original Dragonball, they started with Z
I'll say I had this experience: I started reading Young Avengers issue 1. The problem is, I didn't know about the "Volume" system in comic books, so even though I picked up #1, I had picked up Volume 2, and was very confused by everything happening in the story without the context that it was a continuation.
Similarly, I tried to pick up an issue #1 for a new popular series. I couldn't. It's either soldout or selling for 3x the original price. You have to order it in advance, meaning if you aren't already a comic book nerd and you want to buy the book, you have to hope for a second printing or wait months for a TPB to come out to read the completed series.
Some series are better at this than others. I hit a wall reading "Champions" because they had just come off of a huge event and without that context I was left floundering. But I picked up issue #16 of Birds of Prey (2024) and it hooked me right away. But not everyone wants to wade through all the bullshit when other forms of media aren't quite so hostile to newbies.
That’s an international thing though. In Japan, the entirety of “Z” is just part of the original Dragon Ball. So if you really liked Dragon Ball Z and only wanted to read it, you would be starting at Dragon Ball issue 194. And if you did, it would be kind of hard to keep up with no knowledge of the previous issues.
@@rainyfriday6175 It's called Z in Japan as well. Z is referred to as the anime adaptation of the second half of Dragonball. Even internationally, the manga is still just called Dragonball at that point
Not that people care because all they care about are the power levels and transformations. They don't want to actually learn Goku's origins or even know that he was bitter rivals with Krillin, Piccolo and Tien.
@ But this is about comics and manga. And in English, there is a distinct Z manga.
@ It's never been localized as Z in English. It's still called Dragonball
Yes, because just like how we have overdone tropes here with our comics, they got an unholy number of trope stories releasing like every other week (80-something isekai or OP dudes with swords). Everyone craves something new and different; American comics provide that. We have a bias because the only manga volumes that get translated are the ones that sell (and even then, half the isekai slop still manages to get over here)
Thank you for touching on this topic, because being in a world where Japanese entertainment has reached different parts of the planet, we wonder how many things from outside Japan have come to that country
I like that comics can be written by different writers with the same characters. Appreciate manga because it is just one person‘s vision through and through
My soul does 100 backflips whenever a RUclipsr I like brings up Tokusatsu
It's true that you don't need to know all the continuity to enjoy a new comic book (in fact, sometimes knowing the continuity can make reading the current installments much LESS enjoyable, but that's a story for another time), but even if you're the type of nerd who absolutely HAS to know everything about a character before reading their comic, there are tons of wiki articles, websites, RUclips videos, etc. where you can learn about that character - everything from a quick overview to a hyper-detailed biography. Or, y'know, you could literally pick up a new issue and read the little blurb at the beginning that explains the character.
There's also the certain vibe to guessing what happened in previous issues.
Reminds me of how most of anime i watched as a kid i first saw not from first episode.
@@KeyleeTamirian Yeah, there is a little bit of magic in that. That's why the first Star Wars movie is Episode 4.
Manga and western comics both have their own unique trends and tropes, both contain amazing stories and art. Consuming both manga and western comics is a real treat, and trying to gatekeep comic medium consumption is such a weird concept to me. Genuinely, if you lover super hero comics, there’s a ton of manga for you, and if you’re a fantasy manga fan, there’s a ton of western comics for you as well! (Etc etc for whatever genres you like!) if you like manga and are curious about western comics, u highly recommend the first run of Gwenpool “The Unbelievable Gwenpool” (2016), illustrated by Gurihiru!
The idea that a good public transport system can lead to an increase in print media is something I really want to study
I expect comics to blow up more with marvel rivals coming out on the scene and bringing mass appeal. The game features Chinese and Japanese Dub as well as the English VA has the cast of voices that have been doing the characters for years like Yuri lowenthal,James Arnold Taylor and Steve Blum. Hopefully the movies and shows will be competent enough and can capitalize on the new found hype right now.
But it seems like MCU is missing a major antagonist since the real life drama that happened with Kang the conqueror. But I’m excited for daredevil and hopefully we might even see Tom holland reprise his Spider-Man role one day in a project worthy of having him comeback. It seems like they don’t have any lynchpin actors, storylines or characters at the moment. Here’s hoping they can do better.
Maybe with marvel rivals universe comics
Unless they throw the chance out the window with really boring runs
Nah, even the most succesfull movie frenchse of all time in its heydays could not stop the impolsion of the american comic book industry.
The little quiet comic space is so cute! And I don't say that very often.
I mean my number one reason is "I don't want to get invested into a story that doesn't have an ending point and eventually will have drastic changes because writers and artists completely change and editorial staff gets silly ideas" x'D I read manga in the same "Eh, let's go to middle of it and see what its like" tactic
(I do still read individual western superhero stories, just not interested in starting to collect issues. Because again, there is no guarantee I will like the next story since I like consistent quality in my serialized stories.)
This was super interesting ! Thank you so much! Coming from Germany I recognised myself in some of the hurdles the Japanese fans were talking about. But the most surprising thing for me was that they aren't afraid to start a series in the middle of an ongoing plot. I hesitated to get into comics precisely because I found it hard to start in the middle of the action. It's also cool that Donald Duck inspired Manga! Donald Duck was my entry into comics too (together with the French Astérix). These books were bigger than superhero comics when I was a kid. I think the main reason is that they sell them almost exclusively in collected paperback pocket books. Makes it easier for grocery stores to stock them because the stories inside are finished plots and don't depend on a monthly series.
One thing I have to bring up is that the 1967 Fantastic Four cartoon was dubbed into Japanese as Space Ninja Golmes, with all the characters' names being changed and some very weird dialogue. It has become a meme in Japan, particularly Doctor Doom (who is called Doctor Devil) and his extremely thick Nagoya dialect. To this day some Japanese people still call the Fantastic 4 cast by their Space Ninja Golmes names and reference the show any time the franchise is brought up.
I haven't seen the whole vid yet but It would be worth mentioning that Manga and Anime used to actually take western inspiration pretty often, a prime example being of Monkey Punch Lupin the third.
Many Japanese animators have even worked on Western properties. Honestly, fans need to stop going at wars with each other cause it's never been about one over the other imo
There's a manga that i read called Colorless where when i was reading it I was like this feels a little different than other mangas that I have read and felt like it had a western comic influence in it. And then in one of the authors interviews he confirmed that he was a fan on western super heroes and how western comics did have some influence on the writing of it
Also very good video and enjoy led seeing how the comic industry is in Japan
The dude reading DD going from Frank Miller to Brian Michael Bendis run is on such a mood, this is a man true man on culture.
I enjoy both manga and western comics (mostly DC and Marvel), but here in Spain, manga is also more popular. I dont have many friends who enjoy western comics, but they do like manga, and to the ones that show interest in getting into comics, they dont really know where to start, and even if i can provide them with recommendations or reading guides, most are overwhelmed by the amount of it, or have preconcive notions of comics that drives them away of them. As a cosplayer, many of my friends(who also are) move looking into fandoms and character designs, and they've told me that comics look very inaccesible and not very appealing for their age group. I really think that marketing and adaptations that encourage consumers to get into comics are really important and Marvel and DC are lacking in that deparment right now (although, Marvel Rivals for example i think is a step in the right direction for getting people interested in less known characters like Lin Lie)
Peach Momoko rocks
Same for Gurihiru who are currently working on an OEL Manga reboot of Osamu Tezuka's Unico series for Scholastic. The art duo are massive fans of Tezuka's works!
It’s like art and mediums are fluid and not a box to be checked off
Personally, I've never been bothered by jumping into the middle of a comic or manga storyline either. It might be because as a kid we didn't really have the money to follow full runs, so figuring out what was going on through context clues was a must. I was usually limited to picking a handful of comics from the bargain bin. The rare time I'd get most a full story was when omnibus collection style books would go on sale.
Love em all, more people should talk about eu comics
all i can ask for between american comics, manga, and french/european bande dessinée is mutual equal existence, there is no perfection in life
Another reason the take that manga is better than comics because it's a singular story doesn't sit right is because the fan bases actively does what comics do just on their own. The entire reason AUs and Fanfics exist is because fans want to see the characters they love doing different and more than just the things they do in their stories.
Great video! I love both Manga and American comics, and consume both on a weekly basis. Going to the local comic shop on Wednesday is a super important part of my week. I have real sense of community there. A couple of thoughts on the topic:
1. I tell people all the time to just pick up a book and see if they like it. You can learn more about continuity later. But I have trouble following my own advice, and I personally don't like jumping into the middle of a story. I tend to wait for a new writer to start on a book, or pick up a solo title after an event, so I at least have a somewhat solid jumping on point.
2. I think in recent years, a big part of the lean toward Manga in the west is driven by economics. $9.99 can buy you a Tankoban with 160ish pages of story. That same 9.99 may barely buy you 2 issues of an American comic that are 32-36 pages, possibly with ads. And that's if you're buying the regular cover, and not one of the variants, which often cost a dollar more.
3. In addition to the economics, there is usually a high consistency between the manga and their anime adaptations. Fans will love an anime, and then jump in the manga because they don't want to wait for a new season. Marvel and DC haven't always done a stellar job of lining up their comic initiatives with their live action line-ups. You can go back and read the story lines that inspired part of the movies, but the ongoing comics are often pretty different to what people are seeing on screen, so when they pop into the shop and say "I really liked this movie and want to try the comics..." The new, in-stock comics aren't always what they're after. And if its older stuff, it may or not be in stock, so they leave a little discouraged and empty handed. They may or may not order it later, but it does dampen enthusiasm a bit.
There definitely can be an appeal to western comics in Japan just as there is an appeal to manga in the states. It’s happened before, specifically during the 90s to early 2000s and there was confirmed interest from 2015 to 2019 with the Bio manga Skull-face Bookseller Honda-san, where the main character was in charge of the foreign comics and art books. You can even see some western design influences in early Digimon as there have been some staff statements saying western comics influenced the design choices. As long as a medium is entertaining it can find a market.
To be fair when I was a little kid buying comics
I didn't always start at 1 or at the beginning of the series
I was also happy to just read my favorite hero, even if the story didn't complete
I dont know what happened in age or culture that made me want to just get collected series or something.
I think I just might go to a comic shop and grab some random comics and discover something I wouldn't normally grab
Thank you!
Same here. When I was a kid, my first comics were Superman, Captain America and the Punisher. In particular, it was Action Comics 683 and Captain America 404, both of which are in the hundredth issues already. I just picked them up because I thought the covers were cool.
@LMRKRN3 Ah, I miss finding a new hero just cause they cover got me.
Can't believe they say dont judge a book by its cover, lol
Yes Marvel is some how connected to the Super sentai universe. I’ve known this for years and it still blows my mind
8:31 bro is in heaven
"I like a girl that can kick my ass"
in general i think Japanese are influenced by the ideas brought forth by American comics but not the artform itself. many people that enjoy comics in Japan are mostly aspiring mangaka or people that interested in visual arts and graphics. they are attracted to the ideas but for the artform itself Japanese prefer their stylized style rather than realistic drawings of comics.
maybe explore Korea next, manwha (korean comics) industries are on the rise and they are the perfect marriage between stylized Japanese manga and realistic American comics. maybe you will find many interesting insights and opinions from korean fans and artist.
0:25 laughs in T-Mobile
Ive been living in Japan for a few years now. My friend Tetsuo is a sucker for anything time travel (not multiverse stuff) and I recently showed him Flash Point Paradox the movie and then he got hooked (His English is decent enough to understand but I would fill in some gaps with my own translation after we paused the movie) Just wait till he finds out Reverse Flash is alive in that " Suicide Squad hell to pay " movie from 2016. lmao
I will say that Marvel Rivals is very well received here, especially Jeff the land shark simply because Japan has a Kawaii culture.
And about the Japanese language learning community.... No other community is quite like it thanks to anime unfortunately. And what I mean is, for a community that has so many " experts " it's crazy how little of them actually ever get to the point of speaking it. Granted, it's a very hard language, slightly harder than Chinese. Imo (I took 2 years of Chinese in high school)
“Manga is better than comics.”
“What comics?”
“I don’t know. I don’t read them. They’re too complicated.”
The public perception
Manga: “each Manga is it’s own continuity in it’s own universe”
Comics: “it’s either a comic that’s part of the Marvel Comic Universe or part of the DC Comic Universe, both universes probably have continuities going all the way back since their first released issues
In short, the public thinks that DC and Marvel comics is like if One Piece was split between multiple different Manga and you had to read all of them to understand the story
Despite it being a misconception
I also noticed people never bring up the fact that manga or cheaper and come out weekly and thanks to the work schedule it's a real double edged sword
yep. i can give them Saga and they won't try it
and also dc marvel like to produce something weird like starfire daughter
in manga bad manga just got cancelled or even not published
why people like talking about bad comics because we love comic and want cpmic to be better
@@flashtheshapeshafter yeah, it is definitely not healthy for the mangaka.
A lot of the issue can also be chalked up to visual language theory as well. Essentially Japanese Visual Language and American Visual language are mutually intelligible syntaxes that add a ton of meaning from timing cues to eye draw creating motions that suggest feelings. The problem is that while they are mutually intelligible, they aren't the same and if you attempt to read either using exclusively the syntax of the other a lot of meaning is lost that makes the panel to panel reading experience more in depth and enjoyable.
Some cool, lesser known asian characters to get into are Armor in Marvel, she's a mutant.
For DC there's Lady Shiva, a villainess, and the world's greatest martial artist.
I love both Comics and Manga and drake is right Without Comics Manga wouldn't exist. Both comics and manga should be respected none is definitively superior yes in certain things one is better than the other but overall both are amazing.
Ameircan super hero comics are failing for a reason. Low quality. Like the telegraph to be replaced with their newer counter part
@@hailgiratinathetruegod7564 that's not true at all they are all there to read they are not replaced but are of different eras and universes and comics are not failing at all I don't know what world your living in but that is not true.
My issue with comics is purely how convoluted the sequence of consuming them is. Not that I think you need to know every series down to the beginning in the 60s, just that it's hard to even look up the current version of the series going on at the time and if it's even interesting. In addition to how authors just seem to come in and completely change everything that was going on previously, cutting off the connection to the series entirely. I prefer manga which is just far more accessible and consistent in how you read it.
It also helps that anime and manga have a symbiotic relationship a lot of the time where the anime or manga will both provide interest in the manga to see more of the story.
Whereas with comics it's not the same. Cartoons and movies most times contain their own version of the story where it's not even necessary to engage with the source comics at all. Which is why superheroes have become such cultural icons despite comics remaining a super niche medium. The DCAU and 90s cartoons as well as games were my entree to DC and marvel. I probably would not even know them if the comics just existed as they are.
With all that being said however, I did get into the "white knight" batman comic series, just because I happened to come across it's premise and I liked that Harley was a huge and significant part of the story since she's my favorite DC character.
Sounds like you should read indie
Comic are mostly consistent if you not reading dc or marvel
@animeboy200p2 i wouldn't know the first thing about comics besides that honestly. Or where to actually find them tbh.
@@MrInuhanyou123 Amazon, bookstores like Barnes and Noble, or a comic shop (if one is near you). They have plenty of comics from Image comics, dark horse, boom studios, dynamite, mad cave, and tons of other publishers.those publishers have thousands of comics that work just like Manga does.
I would love a deep dive into other countries' comic book cultures, here in Italy there's a great coomic book scene both with our original series like Zero Calcare, RatMan, Dylan Dog and some illustrators going across the ocean to work for Marvel and DC like Gabriele Dell'Otto Marco Checchetto, Sara Pichelli
I'm sure many other countries have a thriving coomic book scene that's worth exploring
I met up with friends of the channel, Danielle Di Niculo and Simone Di Meo at Tokyo Comic Con and they told me ALL about Bonelli comics and the Italian comic industry!
I've been trying to get my hands on English translations of those books because I'd love to travel to Italy and do a similar video over there.
@ComicDrake by far the biggest comic con-like event where you could do something like this in Italy is Lucca Comics (usually in October/November).
As far as translations go, I'm afraid there's not much, I know Dylan Dog and Diabolik have been translated, more recently Zero Calcare thanks to the two Netflix series. You're probably better off writing to the artists and asking them directly, most of them are quite friendly and usually interact through social media with people.
@@scottpesenti5158 Yep! If I ever make the video, it will be around a trip to Lucca like how this one was sound Tokyo Comic Con
You know about Mexican comics! It would be awesome to see you some classics (Fantomas, El Santo, Kalimán, Karmatron) as well as some more modern stuff, which is less superhero-oriented but pretty cool and underrated.
Si, me voy a mudar a Mexico este ano!
Can vouch for the "just jump in" thing. I've approached several comics and manga like that. For example, I started reading One Piece at around 950-something, Demon Slayer I read the most recent chapters for around the time the first season wrapped (it was on the last arc) and so on. Even my first Manga, Dragon Ball, I got into with the fucking Buu arc. And I can't even begin to list all the Superhero comics I've done the same for. (latest I did was the Chip Zdarsky Spider-Man story where he revealed his identity to JJJ, and I just read from there.) I think people are a little too stuck in that "no spoilers" mindset, to the point that it hurts their inclination to just try out more diverse stuff that may or may not be to their taste because the most convenient way to do so at that moment, is in the middle of the story somewhere.
As long as the story is entertaining, it's everybody's first Comic/Manga
5:02 I don’t like being called out like this 😭
This may have been one of my favorite videos by you Drake, seeing their perspectives on not just the industry but on things like diversity shows how important things like that are.
Another thing to add about the Marvel and Toei collaboration is part of it is Denziman and to an extent, Sun Vulcan with one of its villains with Queen Hedrian.
This was a great video! Your interview subjects gave such thoughtful and illuminating answers. I will say one advantage of japan's focus on print media is the variety of storytelling that can be supported. As you mentioned, there are tons of solo western comics artists making long running series in all sorts of genres, but the big two companies are still both superhero focused so any variety within the confines of that superhero template is always naturally constricted. Japan has much the same saturation issue with shonen jump's very similar storytelling style being by far THE most popular thing on the market, but the market as a whole is so large that it still has space to support a vast ecosystem of different genres and demographics. In the west, a romance comic like Heartstopper is seen as a huge success for getting a live action tv show adaptation, while in Japan, similar comics might get a live action drama, an audio drama, AND an anime, and they are far from the most popular stories. Even with Jump's focus on action, it's gag comedy titles often get just as much attention, alongside similar titles from other magazines. So for fans of comics outside the superhero genre, manga is clearly leagues ahead in the sheer volume of diverse offerings, but I think the rise in webcomics and independent publishing over here in the west has been a great boon to spreading comics to wider audiences who might not be drawn in by superhero stories
My issue with Marvel and DC comics isn't about the lack of defined start and end point, but that there is no real stakes. Deaths aren't actually deaths. Most relationships rarely last. Things get reset too often to feel like things really matter.
I agree but I think this is more of a modern problem especially with the reboots dc seems to reboot every 10 years and it's make me not even wanna get into it 😭
@@snippysilver8357 modern problem or not, I has made me not add certain titles into my pullbox. So it has some impact I think
Marvel never rebooted tho
@@anaveragegamer359 true but when it comes to alot of there more popular characters spider man x men and even the hulk they tend to bring them back to a starting point ex never letting peter and mj stay together
@@snippysilver8357 exactly. they didn't formally reboot, but the way they handled it essentially acts like a reboot
That dude who dove into daredevils history after reading zdarskys run is dope. I love hearing stuff like that. Imagine being able to read Millers DD for the 1st time again
I GOTTA GO TO A MUSCLE GIRL BAR
That was an excellent video. What amazing exchange between US and Japan comics and animation
Ive been wondering this since marvel vs capcom. Also the people that say Manga is better than american comics usually mean better than marvel/dc, I rather read The Sandman and Saga over Berserk and Vinland Saga.
Well it's a damn good thing there are more manga than just Berserk or Vinland Saga.
Each medium has plenty of short-run high quality books.
Let's not forget that all these people who argue that manga is better then comics have not read a single western comic in their life or are not up to date with recent comics and don't get me started on the angry rage bait youtube channels out their aswell
And only think DC and marvel make comics
@@Sparksparky1 That's a lot of broad assumptions to just state as fact.
@BananaBanditos theirs a reason why I also said not up to date aswell which drake pretty much pointed out when discussing how the Japanese don't care when they start reading and for some reason westernera do
also theirs been alot of ragebait channels over the years criticising marvel for the silliest of reasons I'm not saying criticism of marvel is invalid by the way it's just alot of it is pretty dumb
I tried going to Blister when I was in Japan last year but they were closed on the day I had time to go to Akihabara :( so I'm actually grateful for this video because I never got to see the inside of it and I also was hoping to see what Western Comic Culture was like in Japan. This video is pretty much exactly what I was looking for, thank you.
If ever I doubted that Drake is a hetero man, we now have muscle girl slap bar footage as evidence 😂
The perfect anti-weeb video. I like manga and anime, but I get so exhausted with people who act like it's superior when it's literally the same. Same issues. Same topics. Same abundance of genres. Even the same damn artstyles.
Videos like this will probably never break that stigma, but it's so nice to be reminded that there are still sane people left. Thanks for the upload.
A few years ago I was working on a manga adaptation of the game Honkai Impact 3rd. The way I wrote the scripts were influenced by both manga and comics. For instance, some panel layouts were inspired by the likes of J.H. Williams III and Bruno Redondo. I also used more monologues and cinematic panel compositions as seen in comics. However, for action and fight scenes, I went all manga with large panels, exaggerated perspective and minimal dialogue.
You have no idea how long I’ve been wondering what Japanese people think of our comics. So seeing this video made me click without hesitation.
Based on the info presented here, it would seem as though our comics are not nearly as prevalent in their culture, even though their comics (manga) seem to be becoming a large staple of western fandom
Japan Is definitely a Physical Media Heaven, I am happy, I can still buy CD's of animes i like
Physical Media forever!!!!!!!!
more like technology backwardness. Most of them still using fax machines and still using cash everywhere
@Sonicman4155
Glory to long lasting entertainment
Honestly I think part of the reason why there is this misconception about “comics being more complicated than manga” is because the comic industry is mainly dominated by DC and Marvel, both who focus on the concept of “multiple superheroes living in one universe”.
This causes people to have the misconception that reading any single issue would be the equivalent of picking up chapter 825 of One Piece but that chapter only focused on Chopper, so you need all previous 691 Chopper focused chapters and all 825 Luffy focused chapters to understand what has happened, what is currently happening and what Chopper’s character and motivations are like going forward.
You should have covered Spider-Man : Octopus Girl during this vid, the vigilantes duo had done so much research on american comics it’s insane
Horikoshi (The author of the main My Hero Academia Manga) himself is a big American Comics and it clearly shows in his work.
Agreed, would have mentioned Deadpool Samurai as well, even the fact it had an actual crossover with MHA
3:30 Blister used to be in Shibuya when I lived in Japan in 2006/07. I still can't wrap my head around it having moved to Akihabara, even if, I suppose the center of tech/games and anime/manga fandom is a better fit than the center of music and fashion. Fun to still see them use the same orange cupboards as makeshift shelves.
KEEP. THE. THRONE. PLEASE.
Hell yeah Drake went to the Muscle Girl Bar
Comics vs Manga are always ridiculous, especially this one horrible weebish relative I have no regrets cutting all ties with. It's baffling that people watch and read My Hero Acidemia thinking it is The Boys type of anti-superhero story.
Comics have a big advertisement problem but DC specifically is trying atleast, there's comic ads during wrestling shows like AEW and they've gotten into the habbit of adding comic recs at the end of movie trailers. Usually they're advertising really well known stuff like Flashpoint and Kingdom Come but hey, its something.
I think hating on western comics while loving magna or vice versa is just childish honestly
I agree. Some people out there are just childish unfortunately.