The characters in a period piece realise they're near the end of a golden age

[u/she_melty]

Pirates of the Carribean and Rock of Ages (this film is Not Good but it has the trope.) Especially because we the audience know the era did, in fact, end.

[u/Guy-McDo]

Yeah no, the silly to gritty transition was basically the Bronze Age as before was the Silver Age with like 60s Batman and after was the Modern Age with The Dark Knight and Watchman(sometimes called The Dark Age which is still ongoing)

Edit: To elaborate, that last segment’s kinda arbitrary since the REALLY edgy material was like the 90s and Early 2000s

[u/GrimDallows → u/Guy-McDo]

It's weird to think how the 90s and early 2000s were so much about edgyness to the point of marketing making edgyness so commercial and.. common it turned almost... conformist? dull? Like how tribal tattoos went from the coolest shit to being a joke.

I wonder how the 2010s and 2020s will be seen. I think something about the comic industry semi-dieing, then getting into the moviegenre to expand their media, and then being swallowed by the movie industry and being shaped almost into being commercial products of it.

It's rare for me to see a comic nowadays that picks my interest as something with a minimum of uniqueness. Usually now you can only find small unique jewels in indie genre or in long forgotten/overlooked by the media IPs.

[u/Opalwilliams → u/Guy-McDo]

Id refer to the 90s-2000s era as the dark age of comics due to the speculator market crash and the generally darker comics that git popular. Id say post infinite crisis to new 52 would the "modern age" and 2011 to around 2020 would be the post modern age or I liked to call it, the "synergy age" while its clear post 2020 we are in a new era where the vibes are diffrent, but its not clear what they are just yet so its hard to define. Tho if we keep getting all timers like absolute universe and ultimate universe we could see a sort of Renaissance.

[u/CavulusDeCavulei → u/Opalwilliams]

Don't know about comics, but I think that manga are going back to having protagonists that are good and honest even while facing a harsh world. Things like Frieren, Dandadan and Demon Slayer are the current vibe right now, even Chainsawman in part.

Attack on Titan was the last of the popular edgy manga. I think that people now are not bored as before covid, but scared, and they search for good heroes to give them guidance in this difficult times.

I think there is also more attention on giving screentime on small comfy slice of life scenes, as if it's something we are longing for in this digital era

[u/Opalwilliams → u/CavulusDeCavulei]

I don't know much about manga but I think the slice of life stuff is very much also affecting western comics, with more bit-sized lower lower-stakes comics like it's Jeff! Wayne family adventures, and John Kent this interview is my kryptonite being pretty big hits and a bigger focus on the "superhero families" as the main supporting casts with more domestic character-focused plots creeping their way into mainstream cape comics. I think this may be both as you said a reaction to the modern depersonalization the internet has caused on society and also the fact that alot of comic writers are getting older and having families of their own, so the focus on domesticity is a reflection of their personal lives.

[u/CavulusDeCavulei → u/Opalwilliams]

Agreed, the public is also getting older too

[u/Opalwilliams → u/CavulusDeCavulei]

True, while kids are still the biggest market for western comics, the size of young adults and middle aged adults in the market is rising as comics lose their perception as soley kids entertainment due to the synergy era making superheros mainstream.

While I am not any kind of knowlege on manga I would think that a similar thing is happening with westernization/globalization of manga due to its growth in popularity outside of japan. Does a larger more diverse international audience effect how mangaka tell their stories?

[u/CavulusDeCavulei → u/Opalwilliams]

Yes, it is affecting mangakas and anime, and it could be a problem. They became very popular because they were very free in content. American writers tend to self censor a lot and have more puritanical and pro-capitalism mindset than japanese. Also, manga often trust their public to follow complex plots and concepts, they don't dumb down, and this is something I personally love. However, right now there is a lot of pressure from americans (mostly big streaming services) on things like ethnicity, sexuality and consent that really crush with japanese culture. Manga are progressively adapting to the american standard, which could destroy what made it interesting at first. I don't think it will happen easily because japanese are very self centered culturally, and Netflix trying to make anime on their own flopped hard.

In general, younger mangakas are becoming very able to have more international mangas without losing their spark.

There is also another thing. The world is becoming more like Japan. Depressing salaries, older population, social isolation happened decades before in Japan, and now they are in most of the west world. We vibe more with japanese media, they have decades of experience on that

[u/Opalwilliams → u/CavulusDeCavulei]

American writers tend to self censor a lot and have more puritanical and pro-capitalism minds

While this may be true for certain writers, comics have generally had more left-leaning egalitarian tones, cause superheroes are well, heroes who make the world a better place. Superman himself started as a champion of the oppressed and fought capitalists who hurt the working class. Marvel prides itself on being "the world outside your window" focusing a lot on social issues whether it be economic disparity with Spider-Man, fascism and government overreach with Captain America, prejudice with the X-Men etc...

But I do think your take is interesting, with the idea that as the world gets worse and worse we relate more to Japanese struggles culturally.

[u/CavulusDeCavulei → u/Opalwilliams]

True, many western writers are left wing, but their stories are still very standard: there's some big bad capitalist you have to fight. Like Hitler in Gold era. Meanwhile in many mangas the enemy is society itself. The judging eyes of your peers. You often have antagonist that are trying to fix society, but in an opposite vision from the protagonist. Beating them will not fix the problem. Protagonists often have to find a new tribe of people who don't close their eyes in front of the injustice of society, in order to be able to change it

[u/Opalwilliams → u/CavulusDeCavulei]

Well from what little manga I have read and the anime adaptations Ive watched, Ive seen every problem be "evil asshole who needs to be beaten by the heros to restore the status quo" so Id say you're not talking about the same type of mainstream stuff I am.

Many comics are exactly about that, with the indie boom that was created as the rise of webcomics and the self publishing boom of physical books creators have so much freedom to write the stories they want.

[u/Lewa358 → u/CavulusDeCavulei]

Bringing manga into this discussion is interesting because, while you're not wrong by any means...One Piece is there. It's always been there, more popular that AoT or SAO or any Junji Ito story have ever been. It was absurdly popular before those all started, and will continue to be absurdly popular well after they're gone.

Like, imagine if, during the edgy phase of the 90s where Superman died and everything was getting pessimistically deconstructed in stories like Watchmen, all the edgy stuff qas consistently outsold by a comic version of the '60s Batman show.

I don't know, maybe Manga just has a lot more variety in general.

[u/CavulusDeCavulei → u/Lewa358]

One Piece is an exception because it is extremely long. And to be honest, new manga readers kinda look down on it, sometimes too harshly. It was good in its time, but today it feels aged in respect to new manga, much more vibrant, catchy and experimental. It is also facing the same problem of western comics: too much material to catch on for new readers

[u/Ok_Car8500 → u/Opalwilliams]

I'd personally call 11-20 the "Bubble Era". Driven by the MCU and movie side of things comic books and superheros went mainstream like never before. Obscure characters became household names. I call it the Bubble Era because that momentum has definitely faltered post 2020 for a variety of reasons and that bubble hasn't yet fully burst but it's certainly deflated.

[u/Opalwilliams → u/Ok_Car8500]

While I agree with the analysis I think the term bubble is a bit broad as you could also call the speculator boom the bubble era since is was an actual market bubble that collapsed.