AHC: Third Pole for Comics/Animation/VG

So I think we can agree that from a global perspective, the pop culture economies of the US and Japan are really beyond compare (in terms of volume, multinational influence, etc),* especially if we’re talking specifically about the mediums of comics and animation, and even more so in video games.

Exempting English speaking ones (Canada, etc), which countries (or regions, eg Europe), with a Post WWII PoD, which countries stood a fair chance of seriously competing in this field?

Basically, they’d need to produce enough content to feed fans abroad in the same vein as manga/anime fans OTL. I imagine this discussion will look at a number of traditions, from Manhua and French Comics, to Eastern European animation, to artists in Latin America, and what have you, and that’s before even getting into World Video Game history. What I’m particularly interested in, for this thread, is what allowed these particular culture industries to become as big as they are in the US and Japan specifically, and what might have gone differently in other parts of the world to produce similar growth there.

So, thoughts?

*If you look at the most profitable media franchises going right now, they’re either Japanese or basically part of the wider Anglosphere (US, UK, NZ, etc) with America as the core.
 
The Franco-Belgain comic scene is still pretty big and until the advent of Japanese Manga could well hold its own with the US comic market. Their on y problem was that they promoted their graphic novels and their magazines as AN ALTERNATIVE to TV and film while Japan immediately turned their manga into anime and later the US flooded the whole world with movies from the Marvel Universe. An earlier focus on animation - let's say a French company making the Lucky Luke and Smurf series in the 1970's instead of Hanna Barbara picking them up in the 1980's - might be a good starting point.
 
Could India have potential?
An extensive mythology and history to draw from, and already having English as a lingua franca should help with international markets.
 
Could India have potential? An extensive mythology and history to draw from, and already having English as a lingua franca should help with international markets.
FWIG,* India didn't really have a comics industry and market of their own until the late 1960's, and literally didn't have any animated features until the 2000's; you'd have to move these (or, at the very least, the latter) up significantly to stand a chance.

*(on Wikipedia, so make of it what you will)
 
The Franco-Belgain comic scene is still pretty big and until the advent of Japanese Manga could well hold its own with the US comic market.
Still does, as far as I know, and it also seems that it is only now that it has started making inroads in the US comic market.

Their on y problem was that they promoted their graphic novels and their magazines as AN ALTERNATIVE to TV and film while Japan immediately turned their manga into anime and later the US flooded the whole world with movies from the Marvel Universe. An earlier focus on animation - let's say a French company making the Lucky Luke and Smurf series in the 1970's instead of Hanna Barbara picking them up in the 1980's - might be a good starting point.
Their OTHER problem is that French animation is generally not Sold! As! French! Animation! so people assume or consider them English-language/American.
(That people subsequently forget the amount of French comics and animation produced - and distributed/broadcast internationally - is arguably what leads to discusions like this.)
Example 1: Lucky Luke, the first series a collaboration between Hanna-Barbera, France 3, Gaumont Folm Company, Extrafilm Berlin and Morris, later ones by IDDH and Xilam.
Example 2: Totally Spies

Also, I'm not convinced British comics and animation should be lumped in with the US ones jsut because of the shared language.
Furthermore, I've been lead to believe Italy could have done better, and that leads us to the elephant in the room:
Who gets to claim Disney?
The animation is American, but the comics are mostly Italian-Scandinavian-Dutch these days and have been European for decades...
(And I believe Brazil has been doing it's own things with José Carioca for as long.)
 
Also, I'm not convinced British comics and animation should be lumped in with the US ones jsut because of the shared language.
I agree, British comics are very different to American comics (often darker or more realistic in tone and less superheroes instead SCFI, Thrillers and War Comics).

I would say Britain would have a pretty good chance being a third pole if it had been supported properly from 60s/70s onwards and there had been better management. Similar could be said of British Animation which had similar problems.

That being said I could see the French and French-Belgian comic/animation scenes doing well. I would be fine Jacques Tardi getting more recognition.
 
France. It already has Code Lyoko, Totally Spies, and Miraculous Ladybug. There also quite a bit a French animated movies on Netflix, like April and the Fantastic World, which was an alternate history that takes place in a Steampunk Paris. It wouldn't be hard to imagine it with a lot more. China can also become this, I recently watched Next Gen on Netflix, which was animated in China, and it was pretty good.

I think what it takes is you need a country with a large enough population to be able to monetarily sustain the works that are made, so that way they get enough funding to be of a high enough quality to be popular else where. I don't think it's a coincidence that the most pop culturally popular countries on an international scale are also the most populated rich countries. If Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, India, etc were highly developed, I don't imagine it would be hard for them to develop highly popular works in animation.

Animation and video games are expensive, so if nobody at home wants them, then they aren't being exported, although the internet changes this a bit.
 
Their OTHER problem is that French animation is generally not Sold! As! French! Animation! so people assume or consider them English-language/American. (That people subsequently forget the amount of French comics and animation produced - and distributed/broadcast internationally - is arguably what leads to discusions like this.)
France. It already has Code Lyoko, Totally Spies, and Miraculous Ladybug. There also quite a bit a French animated movies on Netflix, like April and the Fantastic World, which was an alternate history that takes place in a Steampunk Paris. It wouldn't be hard to imagine it with a lot more.
I think they actually would need a lot more to actually have a flooded market comparable to "Western" Animation or Anime; when you have something like 20 new French (or French language, if we're counting Belgium) animated television series a year being normal (as was the case for Japan in the 1970's and 80's, with far more today), then we can talk.

But I do agree that it looks like France would be the place to start. The only thing to add, once this was done, to also find a way to make them a more serious force in Video Games. Actually, when I looked up who the was making the most revenue in video games more generally, I found France's role, while not large enough to meet the OP, is also surprisingly doable; if they're gaming industry was just twice as big (still in relation to their GDP), France would be the leading "second tier" industry in the world, just behind the US, Japan, and China.

So if we all agree that French comics, animation, and video games is the best fit for the OP, the only challenge remaining is to imagine how they might have been a bigger factor.
 
Perhaps a surviving Weimar Germany, or a Germany where Hitler is assassinated or deposed in a coup and the military takes control, would become a much larger player in the global popular culture scene generally?
 
I think they actually would need a lot more to actually have a flooded market comparable to "Western" Animation or Anime; when you have something like 20 new French (or French language, if we're counting Belgium) animated television series a year being normal (as was the case for Japan in the 1970's and 80's, with far more today), then we can talk.
So... not quite there yet (2000s, 2010s), but you'll notice two things that'll mess up calcukations
- the number of multinational collaborations and the number of titles you wouldn't expect
to be French-produced. (The Garfield Show?! Peanuts?!)

(Unfortunately francophone Wikipedia does not appear to have equivalen category pages,
just one for French animated series, without listing by year or decade.)

So if we all agree that French comics, animation, and video games is the best fit for the OP, the only challenge remaining is to imagine how they might have been a bigger factor.
Something something the US comics market, presumably.

Although a change in the traditional Anglo-Francobelgian comics magazine format
(quick an inaccurate rough summary: Japanese publishing speed and content, American issue length)
would kill a lot of butterflies.
(Further example: Spirou magazine (Belgian) is published weekly, but is a fraction of the thickness
of a manga magazine, so most series get one 48-page collection per year. Hardcover and full colour,
mind you, but I still only get one new volume of Seuls per year.)
 
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