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Comment by PaulHoule | Hacker News Reader

My understanding is that Davis quit drawing the strip pretty early on and has other people drawing it ever since.

Something I think a lot of people don't realize is that Japan has a much healthier media ecosystem in many respects. Like we just don't get new comic strips here and haven't in decades whereas in Japan they get new 4-koma like Bocci the Rock and The Demon Girl Next Door all the time and these get anime and video games and merchandise and make tons of money.

Our media industry has to realize that it doesn't just have a cyclical problem but that it is stuck recycling the same old properties over and over again as it shrinks. It's got to give a chance to some new blood.

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Japan will certainly drive a property into the ground (Dragonball, Naruto) though at least they keep coming up with new/inventive stories to go along with it. I'd also say Japanese media isn't without it's tropes that it repeats ad nauseam if they are successful once.

But comparatively the US and most of the rest of the world is in a media dark age. The US seems to only manage to invent a new good property every decade or so. Everything else is rehashing existing ideas.

I really would like to know what Japan does differently to nurture new properties. It clearly works. It seems South Korea and China are also doing pretty well in that aspect.

the publishers seem to have more interest in trying new writers and ideas and letting them sink or swim, basically. Like the same weekly magazine that publishers one piece might let your little idea get in there too, and if readers seem to like it they'll open up spots for you in the schedule, or it can die as a one shot or get cancelled after a few chapters.

Lots of new interesting stuff comes out and dies or doesn't survive, but it means they do have some constant incubation. The American version of this for comics is basically letting new writers try their hand at a big existing property to see if they're any good, but that means the new ideas are "fun spin on batman" or etc. (And of course the indie scene exists in both to different extents, but the publishers for non DC/Marvel stuff in the US are anemic.)

I hear scholastic is genuinely good, but they have a very specific audience ofc.

Hilariously, Dragonball is a rehashing of a far older folktale.

Which one?

‘journey to the west’ [https://collider.com/dragon-ball-journey-to-the-west/], about 400 years old.

Another Chinese classic is The Romance of the Three Kingdoms and I think that might be one of the oldest character-rich media franchises of all times. Drawings of Cao Cao and other characters have been identifiable for hundreds of years. They are still making video games (Dynasty Warriors) and TV shows based on it.

Some viewers will remember growing up with the TV series Monkey, whose bizarre images and stories of Pigsy and the titular flying Monkey I shall never forget.

Monkey Magic theme song anyone? https://youtu.be/wddJnq-D3XM?si=J2xAgXoygreTD73w

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_(TV_series)

Rehashing and inspired by are different things.

There are certain elements of Journey to the West found in DB but not even Goku is similar to Wukong. Yes, monkey-like features, extending stick, perhaps a couple of early characters but everything else is not even close. So I don't think it's fair to say that is a rehash.

Judging from the initial portion of the anime Dragonball pivoted gradually from a loose adaptation of Journey to the West (with Goku as the protagonist among funny versions of traditional characters) to a more original and specific setting and plot (with Goku as the most important of many Saiyan and martial artists).

The very beginning was. Most japanese comics are designed to be serialized for a long time, and are built to change direction if needed: Getting serialized is difficult, and low enough reader scores get you kicked out of the magazines, so it's common for a story to be built to swerve. Early Dragon Ball is a light thing like Dr Slump but a little more some fighting, but anything related to the old folk tale was dead and gone by, say, the second time there's a martial arts tournament. Most of what most people think about regarding dragon ball is past the moment where we randomly learn, through the power of retconning, that our main character was an alien all along, and people of his race are invading earth. Not quite the kind of thing from Journey to the West

I hardly ever watch those anime which go on forever like Bleach.

When I go out as

https://mastodon.social/@UP8/116484198935085911

I find 20% or so people in the general population in my town recognize who I am right away because they watched either Naruto or Demon Slayer and those are both in my queue so I can understand better what they know about me.

... but it is hard because there is Slayers and Futari Wa Precure and many many anime that have a few 12 epsiode seasons in my queue. And a lot of that is in the "so bad it's good category". One of my guilty pleasures is

https://w1.backstabbedinabackwaterdungeon.xyz/chapters/1/

which gets really good over time because the crazy overpowered protagonist and his Level 9999 friends almost meet their match and I never would have discovered the light novel and manga if I hadn't been willing to watch a truly atrocious J.C. Staff anime. Only in Japan can some ordinary person write a web novel, get a contract for a light novel, get a manga made, then get an anime, video games, etc. The "media mix" strategy lets their industry market test content with low risk and the anime doesn't even have to be profitable on its own if it convinces 10,000 or so obsessive fans to shell out $150 to buy all the books of the light novel and another $150 to buy the books of the manga.

The cost structure of the US media industry is a lot worse and divides between super-expensive prestige content and a tier of slop. It's all a gatekeeping-industrial complex and no wonder people are pissed about DEI, "woke" and all that because it's a zero sum game. The industry would love to get another J. K. Rowlings and we've probably had 10 of them who never got greenlit because of low risk tolerance.

> crazy overpowered protagonist and his Level 9999 friends almost meet their match

Is this the origin of that trope? I've seen a couple of anime/manga that use the same story as a jump off point. Character that doesn't know their own strength kicked out of the party for being "weak" only for us to later find out they are one of the strongest/most powerful individuals in the world.

Nah, that one is too new. Turns out this guy's power is only useful at the very bottom of the most dangerous dungeon which has dense enough mana that he can summon people and items stronger than the surface world. It's marketed as a crazy revenge fantasy and it is that, but it would be unfair it to compare it to the really mean-spirited revenge stories that come out of Korean and China.

It’s healthy in that there is a lot of interesting stuff constantly going on, but the actual work conditions are incredibly unhealthy for a lot of those creators.

I guess, but I’d just say it’s moved to other distribution models because who reads newspapers now? Mostly people who want to read Family Circus reruns (okay, that’s uncharitable).

I can’t speak to other countries, but we have a very healthy ecosystem in webcomics. I back several on Patron, buy the compilations of others on Kickstarter, and otherwise grab new issues at my local comic book store or library.

Heh I never expect to see Demon Girl Next Door in public let alone in HN of all places. Seems like I'll have to see that backstabbed whatever too eventhough I never touched any work of that genre.

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