[echelon]

I feel like this behavior could have been predicted. I'm not going to say whether or not purchases of manga are bad, but to think students would consume high brow art and then to be disappointed is after the fact is pretty poor foresight.

Can we start to use the vast number of cultural experiments we've conducted to infer which will succeed in producing the desired outcomes? Can we start trying new experiments?

I'd like to see us give cash to students that do well in school or participate in sports, clubs, music, etc. (If the worry is that this primarily rewards students whose parents are wealthy, I'm not so sure. Wealthy kids might not be satisfied by the rewards.)

[swalls]

Are you implying this wasn't intentional? France (alongside Belgium) practically invented the comic industry, but in recent years I'd imagine that's been getting decimated by east Asian manga. If you want to inspire a generation to revitalise your comic industry, this doesn't seem like a bad way.

[WastingMyTime89]

> but in recent years I'd imagine that's been getting decimated by east Asian manga

France has been consuming manga for decades. It's the market with the most translations (more than in the US) and is by itself 40% of the European market. There were already some notable anime coproductions between France and Japan in the 80s.

Amusingly, like with comic books, the culture surrounding mangas in France is actually very different than in the US. As pretty much everyone has been exposed to anime as a child, there is far less of a stigma surrounding it and you can consume some without being seen as a weirdo.

If it hasn't killed BD yet, it probably never will. I wouldn't be surprised if it was actually growing the market.