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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WayneLigon" data-source="post: 3339274" data-attributes="member: 3649">Anime's popularity has drastically increased over the last five-six years, mainly due to Cartoon Network and a few other channels.In 2002, Cartoon Network's Saturday Night block of anime was #1 across all cable channels for males 9-25 (which is also your prime ages that are going to be playing D&D). In 2005 Naruto and One Piece are #1 across all channels on Saturday nights for males 9-14 (Your up-and-coming gamers).TimeWarner's ratings statement for November 2005 contains the statement "...proved the on-going U.S. popularity of Japanese animation this November as each program earned significant double-digit delivery and ratings growth [+70%/+68% for Naruto - wl] among Cartoon Network’s target audience of tweens 9-14, according to Nielsen Media Research."This is the pool your next generation of gamers is coming from, guys. I spent some time at the Books-a-Million the other day, looking at the (western) graphic novel section. It's two shelves wide, top to bottom, in a free-standing aisle; maybe half of those shelves are full. Next to it is the manga section, which is at least six shelves wide, stocked to within an inch of it's life. I was there, oh, maybe twenty minutes or so, looking at the various new collected series and such, and glancing at some Eberron stuff. While I'm doing this on a Saturday afternoon, no-one else comes to look at the graphic novels. I notice a lot of people are hovering around the manga section, so I sit on one of the benches and I started counting. In 20-30 minutes, 33 kids, teens and adults (in, oh, roughly 50-30-20 proportion, just off the top of my head) looked at the manga section. Ten of those took one or more books off the shelf and presumably bought them. One guy is about 45-50 and looks like he just got down out of a deer stand; he picks up three manga titles and walks off with them. [By the way, seven people come and look at gaming material, two take books away; both of these are teens that are also picking up some manga].It used to be that you could only see anime at comic or gaming cons, or in badly-chopped-up Americanized afternoon slots. I think that the fact that I can now go into a Suncoast or Best Buy and find a wall of anime speaks for itself.</blockquote>

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