SJW fatigue: Why anime & manga are conquering the West
"For a long time, Hollywood and the American comic book industry have been seen as international media behemoths. It used to be that they never even faced any serious competition. But lately, they seem to be losing that grasp. The last decade of film and comics has seen a sharp decline in quality...
If you’re looking for American comics, there’s mainly only two publishers producing them – Marvel and DC, which account for about 80% of the comic book market. Both companies have been around since the 1930s and have grown into giant corporations that completely dominate the industry. With numerous wildly successful superhero series, both companies have also ventured into other forms of media and have proven to be extremely successful. But while pumping out numerous films, TV shows, games etc, it seems their core product – comics – has seen a dramatic dip in quality, readership, and profitability. New issues are predominantly received as stale, repetitive, outdated, and overwhelmingly hyper-politicized. Many fans and veterans of the industry feel that modern comic book writers have seemingly abandoned the basics of what made the medium successful in the first place – creative and engaging storylines, memorable, unique, and relatable characters, and stunning artwork. Instead, new releases focus on the same old superhero tropes, infused with heavy-handed political messaging and offering little to no variety.
Chuck Dixon, known for his extensive work on Marvel’s ‘Punisher’ and DC’s ‘Batman’ comics in the 1990s and early 2000s, thinks it’s no surprise that manga is “wiping the floor” with American comics.
“It’s not hard to see. The artwork is attractive. It’s different. It’s engaging. It’s interesting. It’s varied. So there’s a lot of reasons to like manga. And not a whole lot of reasons to like what’s out now,” he said in response to a fan question on YouTube. “Because what’s out now, for the Big Two [Marvel and DC], is, for the most part, poorly crafted. There’s a few exceptions, but for the most part, it’s poorly crafted, poorly conceived, there’s an obvious political agenda to everything, and there’s no variety.”
“It’s superheroes, superheroes, superheroes. And they are all avatars for the writer’s political agenda. And they’re kind of tiresome. They’re not particularly well-drawn. They’re not particularly well-realized.”
However, criticism isn’t something that the American comic book giants seem to appreciate these days, and most gripes with modern comics are often disregarded as coming from hateful bigots who don’t know better. As a result, longtime comic book fans have become alienated from their beloved franchises and turn elsewhere for fulfilling entertainment, leading many to manga...
The stories are generally told in a straightforward linear fashion, allowing readers to jump into a new series fairly easily and follow it from beginning to end. In Western comics, it’s a bit more complicated, as many of the characters have been around for decades and have gone through numerous major overhauls and re-boots and have been featured in numerous side stories, spin-offs, crossovers, and other ‘non-canon’ works, which can be confusing for newcomers.
Perhaps the biggest difference from American comics, most of which are published by DC and Marvel and typically focus on superheroes, is that manga is produced by countless artists (known as mangaka) and released by numerous publishers ranging from huge conglomerates to small independent print houses. This results in a wide variety of visual styles, but, more importantly, provides works in literally every genre, subgenre, and subject matter imaginable.
Of course, there’s a lot of series about people with superhuman abilities, but there’s also an endless amount of manga exploring genres such as comedy, drama, horror, sci-fi, romance, erotica, fantasy, etc. There are also numerous series about things like fishing, hunting, golf, racing, ballet, gaming, music, sports, science, psychology, business, law, politics, crime, war, biographies, history… the list goes on.
Additionally, mangaka tend to explore other cultures, religions, countries, and time periods in their works, oftentimes providing a unique spin on them, further expanding the possibilities for creative and intriguing stories.
The benefits of such a diverse and creative environment in the manga industry naturally spill over into animation...
One of the underlying reasons for such creative freedom is that Japanese artists tend to face significantly less regulation compared to their US counterparts. While mangaka are not really limited in what/who they can or cannot write about, for US comics, that’s not really the case. Since the 1950s and until fairly recently, American comic book publishers have had to adhere to the Comics Code Authority – a self-imposed set of guidelines created amid a public concern that some content could be corrupting or traumatizing to young readers. This code ended up wiping out numerous genres in American comics and severely neutered those that survived. Today though, most publishers have abandoned the code, but now they face another, arguably more aggressive, form of informal censorship – social justice activists.
While DC and Marvel comics certainly feature a diverse cast of characters and places, in recent years, the creative freedom to explore certain topics has become severely limited by having to contend with activists and their campaigns against things like ‘cultural appropriation’ – which suggests that drawing inspiration from other cultures is oppressive against minorities. Portraying certain groups and ideas in the ‘wrong’ light, or not praising others enough, has also become a trigger for some vocal far-left activists, who immediately respond with demands for retractions, apologies and cancellations.
Not only has the American comic book industry been increasingly watching its creative step because of these groups, but some of the activists have actually joined its ranks, resulting in what many old-school fans see as one of the biggest reasons Western movies and comics are failing – overbearing ‘woke’ progressive politics.
Fiction has always explored politics or had some sort of political subtext or context, and comics and manga are no exception. There are certainly political themes and subtext in Japanese manga, but that doesn’t seem to have a detrimental effect. For the most part, when politics are included, it’s done rather subtly or in a way that doesn’t detract from the story, allowing readers to easily ignore it. Additionally, the types of political messages present in manga are just as varied as the topics the medium covers. The reason is that Japanese artists don’t tend to face any social or legal repercussions for expressing any political position, so there’s really nothing stopping them from just saying what they think...
Essentially, it’s not that manga and anime don’t have politics in them, it’s that the works explore political themes, and tastefully integrate them into the worlds, instead of blatantly preaching political talking points to the readers/viewers. The political subtext remains just that – subtext. The messages (where they are present) don’t detract from the world and story, but instead, add a layer to them and give audiences food for thought, as most artists seem to prefer letting their stories speak for themselves, and avoid moral grandstanding over the readers.
Modern American comics, on the other hand, are displaying much less subtlety and moderation in their political messaging. A lot of the comics coming out of the US today overtly place politics at the forefront of their stories and use new or long-established characters as nothing but vehicles to deliver political talking points.
While some claim that there is just as much politics in manga as there is in comics, the key difference is subtlety. Take for example the notoriously ill-received ‘New Warriors’ by Marvel. Dubbed by many as ‘The Social Justice League’, the announcement of the new series saw overwhelming backlash and eye-rolls, as the characters were perceived as the literal embodiment of woke culture, and the character names only reinforced the notion, with heroes such as ‘Snowflake’ – Marvel’s first nonbinary character – and ‘Safespace’, who uses pink forcefields to shield himself from harm.
In fact, Marvel has launched an entire series specifically dedicated to delivering modern socio-political issues to its readers titled ‘Marvel’s Voices’. One of the issues features Spider-Man and Spider-Girl taking part in a pro-immigrant rally and learning about the term ‘Latinx’ – a word which progressive white liberals use as a more inclusive way to refer to people, rather than the gendered terms ‘Latino’or ‘Latina’. In reality, most Hispanics have never even heard of the term, while many consider the term offensive, and only 3% use it to refer to themselves, but the comic doesn’t seem to acknowledge that fact, instead promoting the term as a ‘more inclusive’ one.
Additionally, both Marvel and DC have been open in their hate towards former US President Donald Trump, as both publishers have released comics featuring a parody of Trump, portraying him as a central villain for the heroes to take down.
Given that Trump gained nearly half the vote in the 2020 election, it’s clear that there are many who still support him and will take issue with such portrayals. Politics in Western comics have essentially become unavoidable, and the messages come exclusively from the progressive left, leading a large portion of the audience to become alienated and ditch American comics altogether...
As audiences grow more frustrated with every major release, the producers of these adaptations continue to boast about their works being progressive and ‘diverse’ – which is generally achieved with token gestures like race- and gender-swapping fan-favorite characters from the source material.
For example, Netflix’s tendency to race-swap characters has become a meme unto itself, especially when it comes to red-haired women, for some reason. Just take the latest ‘Witcher’ adaptation, where the fan-favorite blue-eyed and red-haired Triss Merigold is portrayed by an actress that couldn’t be any further from those descriptions, which are found in the books and games...
Everytime Hollywood announces yet another remake or adaptation, audience expectations seem to be so low, that many just choose to ignore watching the doomed-to-be-bad remake altogether and go watch/read the original instead.
Japanese manga and anime aren’t the only ones
stealing the attention of Western audiences. Korean films have also been
gradually growing in popularity around the world. ‘Parasite’ took an
Oscar, ‘Squid Game’ became one of the most-watched Netflix shows ever
and zombie flicks like ‘Train to Busan’ have proven that Korean
filmmakers can go toe-to-toe with their American counterparts in genres
that have traditionally been Hollywood staples.
What makes Korean films so special? Simply the fact that the stories are creative, well written, well-acted, well shot, and most importantly – feel authentic, without the need to be preachy or shoving political propaganda down its viewers’ throats. Sure, most of the Korean films mentioned above have quite the political and social subtext, but the characters and plot take precedence, and the films can be enjoyed without delving into South Korean politics.
Hollywood and the American comics industry, however, don’t seem to have caught on to what they’re doing wrong yet. Instead of taking a page out of the Eastern entertainment industry’s playbook, many Western creators instead choose to either double down on their failing practices or criticize Eastern creators. ‘Power Girl’ co-creator Gerry Conway even called to have mangaka ‘taken to task’ for their supposedly rampant sexism and misogyny.
The author griped about Western artists being “deservedly taken to task regularly for outrageously sexist treatment of women” while Japanese authors were supposedly free to include over-sexalized women in their works without facing criticism. While the author seems to ignore the never-ending complaints and boycotts Western activists lodge against mangaka and their readers, his perspective once again highlights the difference between West and East. The Western perspective that sexualized drawings of women are inherently ‘sexist’ and ‘misogynistic’ fails to consider that many of the artists drawing them are women themselves (and enjoy drawing them that way), and that audiences tend to prefer attractively illustrated and written characters rather than asexual chunks of political propaganda. And perhaps in part, that’s yet another reason more audiences are drawn to manga and anime rather than the Western ‘politically correct’ productions.
Obviously, all these studios want money, but it seems that most of the
directors, writers, and executives are either out of touch with their
viewers/readers, or honestly believe that social justice warriors on
Twitter are a viable core audience. In either case, instead of changing
course and adapting to the wants of their broader audience, they seem to
prefer churning out remakes and reboots while doubling down on woke
messaging. Criticism and bad viewer ratings, meanwhile, often get
brushed off as coming from people of ‘unacceptable’ political or social
persuasion, be it sexism, racism, or any of the multitude of other -isms
and -phobias on offer."
Clearly Chuck Dixon doesn't know what he's talking about and is ignorant that comics have always been woke and political.
