A new survey has poured cold water on the idea that people are no longer reading manga, with some other surprising revelations along the way.
Comici, a manga app developer, interviewed 3000 people aged between 15 and 69 with the same set of questions. The findings can be summed up in five points: most people who don't read manga never read it in the first place, manga magazines are declining in popularity but not volumes or websites, most people find new manga through popularity rankings, teenagers are reading physical manga much more than 20 year olds, and young fans are more likely to be against the use of generative AI in manga production.
Given that Comici has a vested interest in presenting the manga industry in a good light, these results must be taken with a grain of salt, but they certainly do line up with a popular culture still dominated by manga and manga adaptations. The increasing preference for physical books over e-books among respondents aged between 10 and 19 may also be a consequence of the payment barriers for digital manga, as highlighted earlier this year.
