Monkey D. Luffy?

You'd have to have it be able to recognize characters and actions in an image, too. And recognize when something is or might be a pun — we do it somehow. And so on, and so forth — big challenges, definitely. But I don't think they're insurmountable. You could start with just having it read a kindergarten-level story…

The executives are not lobbying on the artists' behalf, at least not in the US. They are lobbying on their own behalf.

So... let's try to imagine an ideal manga-selling site/app. Integrated recommendations, search, tags, anything to make it easier for a curious person to find something and spend money on it. Something to highlight new stuff, to ensure they get a decent shot at success, maybe even weighting recommendations to the new…

One of my old bookmarks was for a page that showed a proton, 1000 pixels wide, then 50,000,000 pixels of empty space (8.22 miles on my current monitor), then one pixel that represented an electron. The page has been taken down since; pity.

Is there a way to quantify when an anthology format (including, say, music albums) works and when it doesn't? I'd guess it's affected by cost of acquiring information; if it's easy to get recommendations, there's less incentive to buy an anthology. Distribution costs probably play into it as well, and maybe even the…

"What's manga?"

"Twelve?"

The promote button doesn't seem to be working. Nevertheless, I like data.

The thing that strikes me most about Dragon Ball, when compared to One Piece, is that Toriyama was clearly making it up as he went, without planning more than a few volumes ahead at most. He wasn't even trying to pretend otherwise.

If you cut your profit-per-volume in half, it doesn't always double sales.

Copyright infringement is not theft. Please don't conflate them.

I suspect One Piece's version of the taking-forever-to-get-anywhere problem is mainly a product of the author's habits, not the editors'. IIRC, Oda's actually had to work harder at compressing his storylines over the past couple of sagas because it was taking so long to get through his story plan. (Granted, the pacing…

They can't help the law.

I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a machine within the next decade that could take all relevant context into account and produce a translation with actual skill — maybe even style. I mean, we've got Watson now. AI research progresses fast.

I don't think there was actually a greater variety of actors in the '90s.

You know what still amuses me? If you look closely, you can see that English anime dubbers generally try harder to match lip-flaps than the Japanese recording. I'm pretty sure it's a higher priority in general here, because of different philosophies about what's important in a cartoon — and part of that is that unlike…

I keep seeing "scanlation" and wondering why on Earth anyone would use it. Seriously, why take out that S?

And weekly, which is connected.

Ahem.