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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TwinBahamut" data-source="post: 3766094" data-attributes="member: 32536">I think the reason is that, for the most part, Japanese stuff is better than equivalent American stuff right now.I mean, look at comics. The American comics industry has been stuck in the rut of a single genre, focusing on the same characters, for decades. There are only three superheroes who deserve any level of popular recognition (Batman, Superman, and Spiderman), and every other superhero is extraneous. And these superheroes have remained in narrative limbo (with stories that have no hope of coming to a happy conclusion) for decades. The only people who care about the rest are the die-hard superhero fans. They are stories that, for a modern reader, have no beginning and no end. Also, there is a distinct lack of new authorial invention.Japanese manga, on the other hand, has a diversity of genres and new creative talent, constantly creating new kinds of stories and new interesting characters. It is a lot less monolithic, and far more closely resembles the Pulp era of American fiction, with lots of companies producing lots of cheap material very quickly. And, just as the Pulps gave us interesting things like John Carter on Mars, manga is creating new interesting material that appeals to wide audiences. I guess it is proof that a thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters is more likely to produce gold than following old formulas. The fact that the author/artists of Japanese manga still maintain ultimate control of the copyright of their works, and full control over the future of their works (if an author gives up on a project, it is dead, and the company can't revive it with a new author), might also play a part in this.Anime succeeds primarily because it borrows from manga, and other countries arn't even making an attempt worth mentioning to match the anime industry's output and quality. Didn't Disney abandon its 2D animation section in recent years?Japanese videogames are dominant primarily because the American videogame industry bombed in 1983 or so, and the Japanese company Nintendo seized the opportunity to gain dominance. America has been struggling to keep up ever since. It is not very different from how France, Italy, and Germany used to dominate film, but have not since WW1 destroyed their film industries, and have been struggling to keep up with the US ever since.Also, as a whole, it is not just Japan which is dominating culture. Korean works are becoming ever more important, even in Japan itself. Works inspired by anime and manga, but purely original to the West, such as ever more popular American Webcomics, are also becoming really influential.As a whole, I think you have it backwards. It isn't that anime and Final Fantasy sell well because people want Japanese culture, it is that people want Japanese culture because of anime and Final Fantasy.Does that explain it?</blockquote>

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