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Forum - View topicFrom Light Novels to Anime/Manga Panel
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Help_me_Im_a_n00b
Posts: 34 |
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Wow, that's a steep turnaround. It could also be that former visual novel scenario writers are leaving en masse to the greener pastures of the light novel industry, where their prose can be appreciated more. That is partly why most visual novels nowadays are basic nukige meant as a digital container for a series of erotic illustrations and one or two choices which don't matter. For a linear story, artwork is painstaking to produce, and in the midst of rampant scanlations and piracy it would make sense to create a story with the cheapest elements -- text -- and just the bare minimum of drawings to show how the characters should look like and to highlight key events. Something to the effect of 50,000 words and 10 illustrations is something any moderately talented person can produce in a short time. As I am typing this there is a banner advertisement for manga-style motion comics -- I think the producers are starting to see how manga is saturated (like the collapse of manga industry in the US along with anime licensing) and this is an attempt to still be relevant in the world of ipads. Speaking speculatively, I think we could potentially see the return of NVL-style sound novels ala Tsukihime 2000, perhaps with a bit of motion comic influences. These would work great on tablets. I read in an old article was that the reason light novels had a hard time catching on in the west was that the Japanese-ness... i.e. the visual cues... just weren't there (Spice & Wolf western cover as an example). So either go full-on regular literature, or else create more anime illustrations if you really want to grab the exact demographic. |
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Chrno2
 Posts: 6172 Location: USA |
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I found this to be a very informative panel. Glad that I was able to make it. I was able to walk away with a better understanding on one of the processes that goes into marketing a popular story into all forms of media. Really worthwhile listen.
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enurtsol
 Posts: 14889 |
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Also, manga is more for mass consumption, while anime is more and more relegated to late-night Adult Swim-specific type of targeting. What's successful mainstream won't necessarily the type of people who'd seek out late-night programming. Manga and anime are diverging. |
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Jose Cruz
 Posts: 1798 Location: South America |
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I don't think your argumentation is valid. While it's true that manga is enormously popular in Japan it's also true that most manga titles are niche (which is true for everything: most book have niche audiences, most movies have niche audiences, and today, even in the US, TV series have niche audiences, etc). Mainstream manga is adapted into mainstream anime like One PIece and Dragonball. Niche manga is adapted into niche anime. I think that the relative popularity between manga and anime is similar in Japan (at least the proportion of sales of anime in terms of dvd/bluray is similar to the manga sales in terms of print media, both fluctuate around the same level of 30%). What's happening is that light novels are increasing in popularity. Though sales of light novels haven't reached the same relative popularity as the proportion of anime that was adapted from light novels. That's an interesting thing to consider. |
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enurtsol
Posts: 14889 |
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Nowadays, niche manga typically do not get adapted into anime. While current anime usually needs just thousands to few tens of thousands to be a success, manga still needs several tens of thousands to hundreds of thousand fans to be considered a success - successful enough to be adapted into anime. Manga cannot live on those few thousands of anime fans alone. (Meanwhile, successful shoujo/josei manga, which don't need to sell as much to be successful, tend to be turned into live-action instead.)
You'd be surprised; I think it's higher, probably as much as half. Definitely a lot of print media sold in Japan are manga tankoubon and mags - new ones every week or more; they're made and priced to be consumable then disposable. And anime make up a big portion of J-home videos only because Japanese aren't much of a home video collectors, save for anime buyers (big fish in small pond, so to speak) - they rent instead.
Furthermore, light novels are more in tune with the late-night tropes which, in current anime business, that's where it's at, that's where things are happening, that's where the hypes are swirling. Light novels don't need to reach equivalent to the same relative popularity of LN anime since the J-print media market is so much larger that a smaller portion of that market is already big for LNs. |
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