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[itisnotlogical]

Clearly popular things are trash with no redeeming value, that's why they're popular.

.... Wait.

[Putnam]

... you don't?

No, not at all. Nobody's going to rave about family guy or whatever, but give them a show about a boring-ass mary sue and his waifu squad in a video game world and SHIT SON TOO GOOD

[Orange Wizard]

I've heard folks raving about family guy and other shit shows quite a bit. Apparently anecdotal evidence is subjective.

[Flying Dice]

I've heard folks raving about family guy and other shit shows quite a bit. Apparently anecdotal evidence is subjective.

In my experience anecdotal evidence is objective and universally applicable.

[Execute/Dumbo.exe]

I destinctly recall hearing kids in my school talk about everything from Undertale to FNAF to Vannos gaming.

[Cruxador]

... you don't?

No, not at all. Nobody's going to rave about family guy or whatever, but give them a show about a boring-ass mary sue and his waifu squad in a video game world and SHIT SON TOO GOOD

I hear tons of people raving about fuller house or orange is the new black or game of thrones or the bachelor all the damn time.

[Reelya]

Also, "popular" doesn't necessarily mean "widely regarded as good". imdb's top 20 most popular TV shows includes Big Bang Theory, Supergirl and Fuller House. So I guess those are amongst the all-time best American TV shows for the same reason that Sword Art Online is one of the "best" anime? SAO was the 13th most-watched anime when this list was compiled, and The Big Bang Theory is the 12th most-watched TV show (IMDB). But if you look at actual ratings on the same sites, they're much lower rated: #564 for SAO on MAL, and #241 for Big Bang Theory on IMDB. These shows are comparable to that degree: widely watched, but they get a lot of flack for being shit. So, use ratings rather than popularity to choose what to watch: if you watch anime based on the highest ratings, you'd have to watch over 560 things before you even got down to SAO, which is on the high-end of ratings for a harem anime. So you'd basically never get to any show like this if you watched only well-regarded shows at a moderate pace, since more good things have come out in the mean time, such as One Punch Man and ERASED.

Now let's try a three-way challenge. nytimes manga best-sellers, American comic best-sellers, and the Japan manga best-sellers. My criteria are: top 10 with most recent numbers.

Spoiler: American comics top 10 (February) (click to show/hide)

Dark Knight III: The Master Race
Star Wars
Batman
Spider-Man
Deadpool Mercs For Money
Deadpool
Darth Vader
Power Man and Iron Fist
Amazing Spider-Man
Justice League

So, we have 8 super hero titles and two star wars titles. That's a crap assortment if you ask me: there's nothing here on offer if you don't like the superhero concept, and I'm not really fussed on reading Star Wars comics either. 0/10 things here I want to read.

Spoiler: nytimes Top 10 manga (feb 6-12) (click to show/hide)

Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
One-Punch Man Vol.5
One-Punch Man Vol.1
Tokyo Ghoul Vol.5
Tokyo Ghoul Vol.1
Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign Vol.8
Monster Musume: Everyday Life With Monster Girls Vol.8
Persona 4 Vol.1
Bleach Vol.66
10. Tokyo Ghoul Vol.2

Basically the same deal as the comics. It's a fairly shitty selection of manga, 9/10 are about superpowers or battles: so it's the same problem as the comics: almost nothing here I want to read (except One Punch Man). But who's fault is that? Japans? Or Americas? We can determine that by looking at the current top selling manga in Japan:

Spoiler: Japanese manga top 10 (Feb 7-13) (click to show/hide)

Haikyuu!!
Ansatsu Kyoushitsu
Shokugeki no Souma
Mahoutsukai no Yome
Bleach
Chihayafuru
Yowamushi Pedal
Prison School
Gintama
World Trigger

Well, there you go, hardly any of that involves superpowers or battles at all (unless you count real-world sports and cooking as battles). The only thing that unifies this list is that it's so diverse. 6/10 here that I'd actually read (Ansatsu Kyoushitsu, Shokugeki no Souma, Mahoutsukai no Yome, Chihayafuru, Yowamushi Pedal, Gintama). There's something missing from the Japanese top 50 ... and that's Monster Musume, the softcore porn manga that always tops the charts in America. It doesn't have a huge sales base in Japan like it does in the USA. Complaining about manga like that in the USA would be like a foreigner complaining that so many American films are porn, when that's all he watches. If you're filtering out and ignoring all the good stuff, and only importing the trash, that's not the fault of the creators.

[Antioch]

Peculiar that the same superheroes (in their new iterations) still top the charts even 60+ years after being introduced.

I still wonder if the Western comic market will ever see the diversification that the manga market has.

[Reelya]

I really think the lack of any comics aimed at girls/women in the USA (other than e.g. stuff for children) is one of the big issues. That prevents demographic diversification. In the USA comics are made for the pre-existing "comic book types", which are 15-30 year old males who like superhero action, and if we really want to get creative, then it stretches to graphic novels based on horror/sci-fi TV/films that are also aimed predominantly at 15-30 year old males.

British comics fare somewhat better in comparison: I like 2000AD a lot more than any Marvel or DC material. But still, that hardly moves outside the same demographic that I listed above.

[moondowner]

I really think the lack of any comics aimed at girls/women in the USA (other than e.g. stuff for children) is one of the big issues.

I live very far from USA (in Eastern Europe) so really can't comment, but I like Vertigo comics, especially some old ones (Sandman, Lucifer, Transmetropolitan) and wouldn't classify them as directed at one gender or the other that much.

[Reelya]

I really think the lack of any comics aimed at girls/women in the USA (other than e.g. stuff for children) is one of the big issues.

I live very far from USA (in Eastern Europe) so really can't comment, but I like Vertigo comics, especially some old ones (Sandman, Lucifer, Transmetropolitan) and wouldn't classify them as directed at one gender or the other that much.

Notably, one of the main things Vertigo did (they're part of DC comics) was to go over to England and recruit a lot of the guys who had been writing for 2000AD comics. the main writers of Vertigo were Neil Gaiman, Peter Milligan, Grant Morrison, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, all of whom got their big break through 2000AD comics. So this "edgier" trend in American comics is almost all due to the British influence.

[Antioch]

Ohw btw, if we are talking about Western comics/cartoons:

Go watch Rick and Morty if you haven't already.

You are hurting yourself if you don't.

[JoshuaFH]

For anyone that's watched Moshidora, the baseball anime about a highschool girl that manages a baseball team by reading a book called "Management" by Peter Drucker, which is actually about business management. The anime got me curious, and it turns out that both the author and the book are real. I went to my local library and picked up a copy, and it's this monolithic hardbacked green tome, and it honestly just *looks* like something that'd be monumentally boring... and I cracked it open, read a couple pages, and have to immediately concede that it's fucking great. I didn't think I'd be this pumped to learn about management, Mr. Drucker. Posthumous good job there, geeze.

[Flying Dice]

For anyone that's watched Moshidora, the baseball anime about a highschool girl that manages a baseball team by reading a book called "Management" by Peter Drucker, which is actually about business management. The anime got me curious, and it turns out that both the author and the book are real. I went to my local library and picked up a copy, and it's this monolithic hardbacked green tome, and it honestly just *looks* like something that'd be monumentally boring... and I cracked it open, read a couple pages, and have to immediately concede that it's fucking great. I didn't think I'd be this pumped to learn about management, Mr. Drucker. Posthumous good job there, geeze.

Somewhat appropriately, Drucker was the one who initially forecast Japan's economic rise, among a great many other things. He was basically the greatest mind in modern business.

[Neonivek]

Ohw btw, if we are talking about Western comics/cartoons:

Go watch Rick and Morty if you haven't already.

You are hurting yourself if you don't.

I dunno, I really disliked the early episodes... they were very rough and unfunny.