That's really a difficult, if not impossible question to answer. Volumes, countless pages have been written by so-called experts detailing the steps necessary to write a successful novel or screenplay, but in the end I think it mostly comes down to individual talent, creativity, inspiration, and maybe a little bit of luck. You can do everything right, your story can include all of the same ingredients that made previous ones an unparalleled success, and still fail utterly ("Macross II" is a case in point). Conversely, you can put together something that seems destined to fail, too strange and unexpected and unsuited to your target audience to possibly do well, and end up with a massive hit on your hands (none other than Hayao Miyazaki himself was certain that "Porco Rosso" would fail, and yet audiences loved it, and "Anime Insider" magazine has ranked it the second greatest anime of all time).
There's no one thing that guarantees success or failure in anime, or manga, or any type of media for that matter. There are certain formulaic approaches that might prove more successful than others (themes and plot devices that are guaranteed to appeal to a certain demographic, and there's no shortage of authors and directors who have made a career out of telling us formulaic stories and providing us with cliche characters; but this doesn't guarantee a good story), but in the final analysis it seems like it's usually the newer, more original, or untested ideas that are the most popular. Or at least the BEST. Of course there's always an element of danger here, since there's no guarantee that an original or untested idea WILL be popular—which is probably why Hollywood has been churning out so many sequels, stories based on successful TV shows and books, and variations on/remakes of previous works lately. But when they ARE a hit, they tend to be huge. So while people, as a general rule, seem perfectly willing to accept virtually anything that's tossed in their general direction, so long as it doesn't TOTALLY suck, the real success stories are usually the ones that bring something fresh or unexpected to the screen or page.
It depends on what you mean by popular and who you're audience is.
The stuff with the highest ratings or box office sales are family type things, like Ghibli and Doraemon, and stuff that appeals to primary school boys, like One Piece and Naruto. Conversely I suppose, the biggest home video sales seem to go to otaku bait shows, like K-ON and Bakemonogatari.
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That's really a difficult, if not impossible question to answer. Volumes, countless pages have been written by so-called experts detailing the steps necessary to write a successful novel or screenplay, but in the end I think it mostly comes down to individual talent, creativity, inspiration, and maybe a little bit of luck. You can do everything right, your story can include all of the same ingredients that made previous ones an unparalleled success, and still fail utterly ("Macross II" is a case in point). Conversely, you can put together something that seems destined to fail, too strange and unexpected and unsuited to your target audience to possibly do well, and end up with a massive hit on your hands (none other than Hayao Miyazaki himself was certain that "Porco Rosso" would fail, and yet audiences loved it, and "Anime Insider" magazine has ranked it the second greatest anime of all time).
There's no one thing that guarantees success or failure in anime, or manga, or any type of media for that matter. There are certain formulaic approaches that might prove more successful than others (themes and plot devices that are guaranteed to appeal to a certain demographic, and there's no shortage of authors and directors who have made a career out of telling us formulaic stories and providing us with cliche characters; but this doesn't guarantee a good story), but in the final analysis it seems like it's usually the newer, more original, or untested ideas that are the most popular. Or at least the BEST. Of course there's always an element of danger here, since there's no guarantee that an original or untested idea WILL be popular—which is probably why Hollywood has been churning out so many sequels, stories based on successful TV shows and books, and variations on/remakes of previous works lately. But when they ARE a hit, they tend to be huge. So while people, as a general rule, seem perfectly willing to accept virtually anything that's tossed in their general direction, so long as it doesn't TOTALLY suck, the real success stories are usually the ones that bring something fresh or unexpected to the screen or page.
It depends on what you mean by popular and who you're audience is.
The stuff with the highest ratings or box office sales are family type things, like Ghibli and Doraemon, and stuff that appeals to primary school boys, like One Piece and Naruto. Conversely I suppose, the biggest home video sales seem to go to otaku bait shows, like K-ON and Bakemonogatari.