[BlueTankEngine]

You used the word humiliating, which I found so strong I had to check the numbers myself. They are every bit as shocking as you made it sound. Yet another area of Japanese culture that Korea/China has been able to just take minor steps to digitally modernize, and in turn exponentially improve it's globally mass-marketability. Korea did it in music, China (and to some extent Korea) has done it in gaming, and it really does seem like Korea/China have done it in comics. Thanks for the tip, info I've gained from the last few hours of reading due to your comment will hit the pages of at least a handful of my slide decks next year.

[YurgenJurgensen]

Looking at what has actually come out of that push for "global mass-marketability", which is to say a lot of huge money machines and not a lot of art, the worst thing that could result from this is Japanese publishers trying to replicate this, as basically none of the internationally successful Japanese auteur creators would have had their works greenlit if they'd had to pass some global mass-marketability criteria.

[BlueTankEngine]

Yeah I agree with you on all the way down to the very foundational fiber of my being. Luckily though Japanese publishers will at most just add webtoons on top of their current operations and that will be that. Jpop still more or less exactly the same as before YG and Hybe made Idols universal, Japanese games are for the most part still as unique as the were before Mihoyo and Smilegate changed the ARPG industry landscape. I sincerely believe that Shueisha, Kodansha, and the broader manga sphere will remain largely the same as we move in to the future.

I work in Media merchant banking (Investment Banking + Private Equity), so what webtoons will possibly allow me to do is show Western-raised or older generation generation capital holders another vector by which Asian literary media is a worthwhile investment. I'd walk a mile through broken glass to funnel 100 mil USD into the manga industry, but obviously the amount of opportunities that arise where I can attempt to push the needle in that direction is slim. Webtoons might be a viable vector in some cases where manga isnt financially, and I've seen enough relatively impressive webtoons to feel that money is better spent there than most other places.

[JohnBooty]

    basically none of the internationally successful 
    Japanese auteur creators would have had their works 
    greenlit if they'd had to pass some global 
    mass-marketability criteria

Agreed. Japan has produced a lot of properties with global appeal, but I can't think of any successful properties that were intentionally designed with the international market in mind.

The domestic Japanese manga scene is so competitive and so crowded... creators basically push themselves to within an inch of their lives trying to make it in that market, appealing to the home audience. Most don't succeed. The anime market is largely fueled by manga properties, so this is largely true for that industry as well.

The game market is somewhat similar, aside from the (absolutely enormous, but fairly singular) exception that is Nintendo.

I'm actually quite thankful for this. Despite much of it being readily available in a translated form for American audiences... maybe I'm fooling myself but it feels like Japanese pop culture has remained relatively undiluted.

[kibwen]

It's odd to suggest that Chinese games have eclipsed Japanese games in global mass-marketability. The complete and exhaustive list of games developed in China with global mass-market appeal: Genshin Impact. Meanwhile, in Japan's corner: gestures broadly at half the gaming industry. Are you including games like LoL or PUBG that were merely purchased by Chinese companies after becoming popular?

[nonbirithm]

I've had a somewhat similar feeling with the American-developed offshoot of Stable Diffusion by NovelAI suddenly granting everyone the ability to churn out hundreds of pieces of fanart of Japanese IPs with little effort. I also remember reading a Japanese tweet that spoke of the same sentiment related to foreign countries adapting parts of Japan's culture (Genshin Impact being one example).