[JohnBooty]

    basically none of the internationally successful 
    Japanese auteur creators would have had their works 
    greenlit if they'd had to pass some global 
    mass-marketability criteria

Agreed. Japan has produced a lot of properties with global appeal, but I can't think of any successful properties that were intentionally designed with the international market in mind.

The domestic Japanese manga scene is so competitive and so crowded... creators basically push themselves to within an inch of their lives trying to make it in that market, appealing to the home audience. Most don't succeed. The anime market is largely fueled by manga properties, so this is largely true for that industry as well.

The game market is somewhat similar, aside from the (absolutely enormous, but fairly singular) exception that is Nintendo.

I'm actually quite thankful for this. Despite much of it being readily available in a translated form for American audiences... maybe I'm fooling myself but it feels like Japanese pop culture has remained relatively undiluted.

[fomine3]

Sonic the Hedgehog seems to designed for international market and not much popular in Japan.

[JohnBooty]

That's a good one. He was specifically designed in large part to appeal to American audiences.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_the_Hedgehog_(character)...

As another HNer quipped, though: Sega's uneven stewardship of that franchise sometimes makes you wonder if there's any plan at all!

[YurgenJurgensen]

I'd question if Sonic the Hedgehog was 'designed' at all. The scattershot approach to media and branding they've taken over the decades feels largely reactive.

[JohnBooty]

His initial design has been pretty well chronicled: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_the_Hedgehog_(character)...

It has definitely been an uneven and chaotic ride compared to Nintendo's handling of the Mario franchise, though. Scattershot, indeed.

It's an interesting contrast in other ways too.

Mario is something close to a blank slate with no real personality. He's basically just a "seal of quality" - if it's a Mario game, you know it's a game that has received Nintendo's full attention to quality and is going to be accessible to all ages. You don't ever really "like" Mario. You like Mario games.

Whereas Sonic is an actual character, albeit one that has been developed in wildly inconsistent ways.

What's really baffling to me is the uneven quality of Sonic games. There have been some downright bad ones. You'd think Sega would have viewed him as their crown jewel. But there are a lot of times it felt like they were cranking out bad Sonic games just to stay afloat or something. It is almost impossible to think of Nintendo releasing bad Mario games.