Forum - View topicNEWS: Manga Sales in Japan Decline for Fifth Consecutive Year
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SharinganEye
 Posts: 402 Location: Les Etats-Unis d'Amérique |
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It's a case of time marching on.
People are all in a panic about the global market right now, but I'll personally lay the blame on declining readership among children. When I was in elementary school and up to a certain point in middle school I'd read and read and read. Weekly trips to the library was a common, habitual thing, and checking out even up to 10 books at a time was not unheard of. Now I can barely finish a single book in a span of 3 weeks, if I even get to open the cover. I forget to return books on time, and at most I'll check out 1 or 2 big name titles or reread old ones. That's only compounded by the fact that school/life eats up everything. Then there's the recurrent problem of same old same old for me as well. It's the same; it's only new because it's new. When I get into a series, I plow through it, and with a collectionist mindset, that series will be bought (be it a TV series, anime, or manga), I guarantee it. But the last good series I've read is Shin Angyo Onshi, and that has no signs of getting licensed any time soon. Once in a while I'll find some real gems, but they are far and few in between, and hard to sniff out. It's just hard having to sift through 20+ new titles of the season, keep up with all of them enough to make a decision on what to go with. |
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ichido reichan
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As soon as Berserk, Gantz, Grappler Baki, Blade of the immortal, Battle angel alita last order, Naruto, Knights of the Zodiac Garouden, Shamo and 20th century boys end their respective runs, Im outta here, I will quit this manga buying thing.
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Andrew Cunningham
 Posts: 443 Location: Seattle |
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These figures strike me as incredibly misleading, since the article doesn't even bother to clarify exactly what sales are down.
As I understand it, the sales of the anthologies have been dropping, but sales of the tankobon have been rising steadily, as more and more people just buy the books they like, or the books that people recommend. Originality is definitely a factor; the break out hits have been much more likely to have unusual concepts and distinctive art styles. But with all due respect to Matt Thorn, this has always been a problem. I don't think there has been any significant change in the amount of good manga or people's ability to find it. Feeling like there's nothing new and interesting out there tends to come down to age and sheer amount of stuff read. Even the most unoriginal stuff looks original if you haven't read the stuff its stealing from. I've heard any number of people claim manga was so much better when they were kids, but they only remember the good books, and they haven't really looked very hard to find the books that are good now. I think what we're seeing here is a shift in the market, and people panicking instead of figuring out how to exploit it. With information more wildly available, people are able to find books they like regardless of publisher or the magazine that book was serialized in. The brand loyalty, where people used to read Jump and only Jump and only buy Jump manga, is a thing of the past. Publishers can't bank on that any more. |
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CCSYueh
 Posts: 2707 Location: San Diego, CA |
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Knights of the Zodiac is almost over here, but there's lots of good stuff, GetBackers is still running in Japan or just ended if not because I was discouraged seeing the volume number of the latest volume in an import shop (approx 40. I forget exactly since I was immediately depressed we're only up to about 18 volumes here). One Piece rocks & that one's up in the 40's or so. So many title look like they'll still be running when I retire in a dozen yrs. Viz said InuYasha's going to run long after we're all dead. |
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Ktimene's Lover
 Posts: 2242 Location: Glendale, AZ (Proudly living in the desert) |
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The decline of manga sales and anime popularity is something of an interesting thing to consider. That is, because a factor could be that we're in a new century and it's popularity has changed since of the 80s and 90s which I think is the pinnacle of its popularity. With the rise of online scans/scanlations (I do read them but do the translations on them and ask people to contribute money to support the translators), manga is what is use to be anymore. And we shouldn't be concerned with just this. Other types of comics have risen/fallen. Perhaps another reason is because of the absence of more works or republishing of the following manga-ka alive or dead: Tezuka (duh!), Shotaro Ishinomori, Mitsuteru Yokoyama, Go Nagai, Leiji Matsumoto, Akira Toriyama, and Hiyao Miyazaki. Even though there are other great animators/manga-ka like Hideaki Anno, Mamoru Oishi, and Rumiko Takahashi, I chose these 5 because I feel they've done the greatest contribution to breathing life into the manga/anime world. Another would be all 5 have worked with, at, or had adaptations by Toei Animation. Toei I feel has contribute the greatest to the number of genres/categories and anime and thus the greatest of the leading anime studios. Wow, probably my lengthiest post so far here as well as the other online message boards I am or have been a member of. |
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ArielTsuki
Posts: 178 |
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I LOL'ed at the coincedence that I read an article about manga and doujinshi in Japan in this month's Wired Magazine (I suggest everyone to at least check it out). It seems that the biggest reason manga industry is on the decline mostly because Japanese kids don't read books anymore, they rather be entertained though their cells, which some manga bigwigs like Shueisha are trying to implement selling manga through cellphones, as someone mention, is becoming a steadily booming business. Plus the bigwigs hope that that and the doujin market (which shows that it actually help sales of a title to boost and the current trends that fans like), will help their sales through this shaky period.
I totally disagree. It's because they make a manga out fo everything manga is booming worldwide. The problem is that too manga rely on the same-o same-o without putting any effort or innovation in it. The complexity of a huge number of titles that dominated in the 70s and 80s gave way to pandering to the bases for a quick buck in the mid-90s and 00s. Granted there are plenty of titles out there to still satisfy in every genre for every person, but it seems that the titles that are prevelant is the ones that will make a quick buck for its base. But it matter with that Japanese kids don't seem to be interested in reading anymore and that the print format is slowly dying due the changing times. Plus it might have to do with the decreasing space left in Japan. Those anthologies can be HUGE and are made to be disposed of. Readers prolly take bypass the whole thing and just get the tankoubans to save space. And I don't think scanlations play a really significant part in this considering that the manga business is still booming in the States despite the growing number of scanlations. |
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babbo
Posts: 274 |
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same here ;.; I still check out the ten books but that doesn't mean I'll have the time to read them in a week and a half like I used to >.<;;
Again so true. There's also the worry of buying into longer titles that are guaranteed to practically never end or possibly fall into mediocrity as well. If I buy anything (which I rarely have the money to do so and generally just let my brother do so) it's either a good short title or it has to be something amazing, otherwise I just don't have the money to waste on stuff like bleach or the like. I would kill to literally get my hands on Shin Angyo Onshi in english o,o Mito (think that's his name, the Mahai Blacksmith) is such a badass old geezer ;D |
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fighterholic
Posts: 9193 |
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My initial thought is that things aren't what they used to be, plus there are the manga cafes, hotels, and illegal scanlations of manga. I can agree though that there hasn't been much originality these days, some people just try to copy Dragon Ball or Bleach or Naruto. These series (the latter two) themselves I think may be a bit overrated, and when people read into them instead of watching the anime they don't like it.
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babbo
Posts: 274 |
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The general consensus I've seen on scanslated manga is that it most likely doesn't noticeably affect the sale of manga; at least not anywhere near the scale that fansubs might hurt sales of dvds. The greater amount of people out there prefer to have something in their hands instead of having to sit in front of a computer screen. Quite a few of the people who read scanslations tend to read something only once or twice; the same thing could be done at a book store. And the possibility that a person might buy it because they read it at a book store is pretty much recreated when they read a scanslation anyways. I'm not out here to defend it but in the end I find it highly doubtful it's having a huge impact on sales. |
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