For the harem thing you cut off the next part where I basically said all the points in your rebuttal:
Some shows stick to a template but still fill it with great writing and ideas. But usually if you're going to that much trouble, you could have thought up a more original premise anyway.
"Usually" just means more often than not. e.g. this could be interpreted as saying > 50% of harems aren't filled with "great writing and ideas" (a no brainer) or that >50% of shows
with great writing and ideas wouldn't settle for doing a harem (also a no brainer). I made that point that some do have "great writing and ideas" yet stick to a basic template (obviously implying the harem structure). So I can't see how you could cut that quote out and make a rebuttal which basically rehashes what I wrote.
I'd like to point out ONE's livelihood though
ONE writes webcomics however. He's not in the same boat as the guys with a weekly serialization in Shonen Jump. But what I was talking about there was not the idea of "side projects", it was the expectation that many people have that if someone keeps that one big main series going as long as possible, that there's something wrong with that or it's unusually/specifically a manga issue. My point about that was that it's basically asking someone to abandon the thing that pays their rent and puts food on the table, and that we wouldn't expect that of any other profession.
Yeah, the parallels with Western literature authors aren't as clear. But I'd say a big part of that is related to the medium of standalone novels (longer, bigger purchase), vs LN/Manga (shorter, serialized, cheaper, more frequent).
Probably a better comparison would be to Western comic authors who also produce for syndication/serialization. You don't really see those types of guys cancelling their main series and rebooting something completely new. It's more a case of "that guy who made the such-and-such comic for 45 years", then they hand the same characters over to the next guy. Consider Disney's Duck comics, with their multiple authors over the decades, or Garfield, or Peanuts. That's probably the kind of thing we should be comparing manga too, when deliberating on "how Japan treats it's comic authors".
If we're counting by raw number of series, of course they're not representative. It would make more sense to count by market share.
I think the amount of distinct volumes released per year should be the measure, rather than a sales count. e.g. if they release 1000 different manga volumes a year to pick from, whether or not they're all big sellers doesn't change the fact that the industry took the chance and published all those things.
e.g. for anime, it's the amount of episodes you have to pick from that measures industry diversity, not the viewer count for a particular show. e.g. if there were 5 shonens and 10 shoujo animes airing, yet 90% of viewers only watched the shonens, we couldn't really say that the
industry isn't giving shoujo a chance. Similar for manga, "market share" in terms of sales is not a good measure.
Seems like over the course of the discussion you came around to my point before I said anything. the industry anyway.
Well, no there was no change of point. The Excel Saga guy was brought up to support how those "Write only one manga forever" guys aren't really the typical manga author. People who go from series to series are
more common, but they're usually not making a great living off it, which is why the "mega saga" guys with the superhits can't be blamed for sticking with one thing.
e.g. Excel Saga was in a
monthly serialization. People who are published in monthlies either (1) have a day job and only do manga part time or (2) are successful and have time for side-projects, which includes coming up with new series ideas to make in your off-weeks. So they can launch a new series while still running their old one, they can scale up or down their commitment. Weekly serialization doesn't allow that sort of flexibility, you're full time employed doing the one series, and your entire income is therefore dependent on that one series.