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[Frumple]

... yes, I know who the major is.

he's not wearing a white dress

[Leafsnail]

The latest weeks manga sales:

That's interesting, I guess it's because comics are generally regarded as a thing for boys in the west.  Kindof implies that the issue is less manga being fucked up and more the US demand for manga being fucked up

[i2amroy]

... yes, I know who the major is.

he's not wearing a white dress

Sorry, with the combination of the quality levels in that video it's difficult to tell if you are just using weird terms to describe things or what. Seconds 36 and 37 in that video are composed of the Major from Hellsing and Tsuruya from one of the Haruhi Suzumiya shows (specifically the episode about the culture festival). Both are wearing long white garments that drape around them, so which one fits the description of "zog the thing in the white dress" is up to your choice.

[Frumple]

... a dress is a dress. Major's wearing a long/trench coat over a uniform, not... not a dress.

But yeah, guess it's the haruhi one. Would explain why I had no clue where it came from. Thanks.

[i2amroy]

... a dress is a dress. Major's wearing a long/trench coat over a uniform, not... not a dress.

When you are looking at two fast-moving seconds of a fairly low quality video, and your description consists of the words "zog" (a nonsense word), "the thing" (a very vague one), and "the white dress" (a fairly broad category of clothing), it's not that much of a stretch to assume you were using "white dress" as a catch-all term for "a long white flowing garment that covers the majority of the persons body". Heck, at those quality levels it wasn't until I figured out that it was the major that I even realized what he was wearing; at first it certainly looked like a big white robe to me instead of a trench coat.

That said you're welcome, Google FTW!

[Reelya]

Also, every series is either sci-fi or fantasy and there are no real-world series.

Doesn't JoJo take place in the real world?

I mean "real" as in literally real mundane world; Earth as we know it, no magic or robots or anything. The majority of the top 10 manga in Japan fit this description, whereas you rarely see those on the charts in America except for the occasional harem one, which also don't tend to chart well in Japan. These differences outline how different the comics markets are in Japan/America, even when you restrict the thing under examination to Japanese comics.

To break it down, in the last week we have records for, out of the top 10 best selling manga in Japan:

one was about a Tennis player (action, sports)
one was about a soccer team (action, sports)
one was about teenaged classical pianists (drama, romance, but very depressing)
one was about an historical aide to Alexander the Great (historical drama, war)
one was about an artist from the city who has a breakdown and moves to a remote village (slice of life comedy)
one was about a girl who works with small children, (slice of life, romance)
... the other 4/10 had some amount of supernatural or sci-fi component, yet none of them were harems.

Whereas every manga on the american top 10 can be summed up with some combo of boobs/robots/magic/explosions. and half of them are literally magical harems, the exact opposite of the high-scoring mangas in Japan.

[i2amroy]

I'd probably be willing to say that in a sense that same feeling extends to other forms of entertainment as well. If you take a look of the top-grossing films from 2005-2014 (not looking at 2015 since it's not done yet), of those 90 films there are only two slice of life films (Hitch and Mamma Mia!), and 15 other films (17 with the previous two added in) that don't involve highly advanced technology or supernatural elements. Of those 15 about 11 of them involve technology that, while currently possible, is borderline science-fiction (Batman, Mission Impossible, etc.). The other 5 were either James Bond or street racing films.

That means that if we look at percentages for the most popular films of the last 9 years:
2.2% - Slice of Life
6.6% - Normal world (Counts SoL)
12.2% - Normal world with borderline sci-fi (usually spy or non-powered superhero flicks)
81.1% - Have Fantasy or Sci-fi elements

As we can see by far the vast majority of our top films fall into the last category.

[Flying Dice]

The latest weeks manga sales:

That's interesting, I guess it's because comics are generally regarded as a thing for boys in the west.  Kindof implies that the issue is less manga being fucked up and more the US demand for manga being fucked up

It's not just US tastes in manga, either. The underlying trend is one of severe escapism. Even harem shows are fundamentally about that, rather than fanservice; the latter is superficial, but the heart of why those things are popular is because it is exceptionally simple for readers/viewers to substitute themselves for the bland lead in their daydreams. Take Mahouka as an exceptionally fitting example: the MC is a perfect escapist shell. Live-action films tend to trend much more exclusively to the sci-fi/fantasy action I'd guess almost solely because mainstream US culture is remarkably prudish and such things also appeal to people who just want to spend an hour or two watching flashy effects.

That's the real fucking tragedy, though, how SF was heading in some interesting directions but was mostly suborned into the sort of mindless dross that at best shoots for middle-class middle-brow amateur philosophy and hamfisted social commentary at its most complex. The manga ratings are somewhat easier to forgive, given how much of the potential audience is children/teens and manchildren.

[majikero]

There's also the fact that most of the "heavy" mangas have strong cultural undertones meaning that outside cultures would have trouble understanding the little cultural tidbits.

[Frumple]

People talking about escapist media is always the weirdest thing to me. It's, like. I tend to enjoy it to a fair degree -- I read sci-fi/fantasy stuff almost exclusively, due to the flat fact that things without it is generally either boring or superfluous* to me -- but the concept of putting yourself in a character's place, just. I've never really been able to grok it. Even first person stuff hasn't clicked like that for me. I enjoy reading the stuff because it has amusing scenarios with characters scurrying about in them, but to actually put myself in a character's position is just... ugh. Zero appeal, almost zero comprehension.

Personal attachment to characters in the whole escapist sense is just weird to me. More power to folks that enjoy that, but it's basically an entirely alien mindset. Can't really get the whole substitute self for <character> thing. It's more interesting watching them suffer.

*If I want the real world, I will look outside, y'know? Day to day drama bullshit or history fulfills just about anything real-world media can give me, costs less, and has potential benefits.

Also, with fantasy/sci-fi, you can provide whatever scenario or character interaction you wanted to with a real-world setting, but with added giant robots. Or whatever. That's just an automatic categorical improvement, y'know? The thing, but more and/or better.

[Reelya]

There's also the fact that most of the "heavy" mangas have strong cultural undertones meaning that outside cultures would have trouble understanding the little cultural tidbits.

That's a good point, however the top selling manga in Japan are not best desribed as "heavy" mangas with lots of dense cultural details. One exception this week was Hoozuki no Reitetsu - a comedy about a demon who is a bureaucrat in hell who must deal with a lot of incoming dead people and disputes between demons. It's humor is reliant on you being very familiar with Japanese folklore.

The real-world mangas that are popular - (this week) ones about tennis, soccer, babysitting, moving to the country, classical pianists, and the life of Alexander the Great, are actually less reliant on knowing Japanese culture than ones like Naruto and Bleach.

Also, with fantasy/sci-fi, you can provide whatever scenario or character interaction you wanted to with a real-world setting, but with added giant robots.

I might have agreed with that when I was a kid, but not now. Adding things to a series automatically means there are some stories you can no longer tell. An addition is also a new constraint. Also, you get robot deflation when robots are in everything. "robot everything" would be cool for a few minutes though until the novelty wore off. But you'd also be spreading your usable robot-tropes amongst ever more series, which means each series would either have to come up with stupider and stupider ways to use their robots, or they'd all become predictable and use the robots in the same cliched ways in each series. See how "guy meets magical/space girls" has devolved. It was fun way back in Ah My Goddess or Tenchi Muyo, but because it's been done so much it's now almost unbearable. If things devolved to the point that you were watching Beverly Hills Robot High, but it sucked just as much as regular Beverly Hills, would this be an improvement?

[Frumple]

Adding things to a series automatically means there are some stories you can no longer tell. An addition is also a new constraint.

I can agree with that conceptually, but... practically, I've never actually seen it. Yeah, some excessively specific things like a story told in a particular city in a particular timeframe is impossible, but anything about the stories that can be told in that scenario except historical trivia can be told in a more interesting backdrop, too. Magic or robots or sci-fi shenanigans only add constraints compared to a more mundane setting if the writer wants them to. The stories about power and lives lived and loves lost and etc., etc., etc. are still entirely there, and with the possibility of new interactions added on. Giant robot's the exact same sort of constraint a tank is, or a knight, or a noble, or a police officer, or etc., etc., etc. Except more interesting because giant robot :V

E: I guess if I had to have a pithy quote for it, I'd say that Shakespeare is still Shakespeare regardless as to if Horatio is throwing around hadokens or not.

"robot everything" would be cool for a few minutes though until the novelty wore off.

This, however, is definitely a personal idiosyncrasy because that... basically never happens for me. The novelty stays. I've been reading fantasy for decades and the novelty's still there for me. Same for sci-fi, same for shonen, same for games of all sorts... I'm the sort of person that re-reads most their library over the course of a decade, and it's still as good the fifth time as it was the first. Admittedly part of that is because I do a fairly good job of rotating and spacing stuff out so I'm not actually embroiled in the exact same thing for months on end, but still. Everything giant robot is a proposition that has no down sides for me, heh. Won't until I can go outside and poke one with a stick, really.

E: And to your edit, honestly... yeah. Yeah, Beverly Hills Robot High would be an improvement over Beverly Hills, even if the quality was otherwise identical :V

Still would probably not watch either, but if I had to choose a poison it would be the one with boob missiles.

[i2amroy]

"robot everything" would be cool for a few minutes though until the novelty wore off.

This, however, is definitely a personal idiosyncrasy because that... basically never happens for me. The novelty stays. I've been reading fantasy for decades and the novelty's still there for me. Same for sci-fi, same for shonen, same for games of all sorts... I'm the sort of person that re-reads most their library over the course of a decade, and it's still as good the fifth time as it was the first. Admittedly part of that is because I do a fairly good job of rotating and spacing stuff out so I'm not actually embroiled in the exact same thing for months on end, but still. Everything giant robot is a proposition that has no down sides for me, heh. Won't until I can go outside and poke one with a stick, really.

I'm pretty much the same in my reading habits (though I'm not the biggest fan of giant robots ). My library is one that I've been steadily growing for years now, because I never really give away a book, and I've got enough now that even if I read through an entire book every 2 days I could still go for at least a couple of years before I had to repeat anything. As such I can sometimes go for several years before I feel like rereading an old series, and it's definitely still a fun thing IMO.

As for escapement, I generally don't visualize myself in the shoes of the character. I have visualized being part of a world before, but never in the shoes of a character. If I feel like engaging in a bout of escapism how the characters are written has literally no impact on the decision I make, it's how well the world building is done. On the whole though often a reason for visualizing about a world isn't necessarily to escape, but rather because I can think of tons of awesome things that a given magic/technology system could accomplish that the characters never bother to do because plot reasons. It's fun to think about what you could do with the combined abilities to change thing's weight and the ability to telekinetically push/pull things in a world, despite the fact that the current characters never seem smart enough to do any of it.

[Spehss _]

Finished episode 5 of Plastic Memories. Now on episode 6. There's 13 episodes total, 9 released so far on Crunchyroll.

This series is an emotional rollercoaster. From happy science-fiction rom-com to science-fiction tragedy to science-fiction rom-com with foreshadowing of tragedy and it's kinda like Fuuka all over again but with less rock bands and 18-wheelers and more androids and killer dysfunctional robots.

[Hawkfrost]

People talking about escapist media is always the weirdest thing to me. It's, like. I tend to enjoy it to a fair degree -- I read sci-fi/fantasy stuff almost exclusively, due to the flat fact that things without it is generally either boring or superfluous* to me -- but the concept of putting yourself in a character's place, just. I've never really been able to grok it. Even first person stuff hasn't clicked like that for me. I enjoy reading the stuff because it has amusing scenarios with characters scurrying about in them, but to actually put myself in a character's position is just... ugh. Zero appeal, almost zero comprehension.

Personal attachment to characters in the whole escapist sense is just weird to me. More power to folks that enjoy that, but it's basically an entirely alien mindset. Can't really get the whole substitute self for <character> thing. It's more interesting watching them suffer.

*If I want the real world, I will look outside, y'know? Day to day drama bullshit or history fulfills just about anything real-world media can give me, costs less, and has potential benefits.

I've argued the same thing before, I don't really get it either.
I don't watch anime because I want to pretend to be someone else, I do it because I want to be told a story. I want to see interesting tales about other people.
The amount of people who actually try to mentally pretend to be fictional characters are probably pretty small, though.