Okay, this is not really an "official" answer except in as far as I am current Warriors GM -- and even then it's not official. It's not really a topic that ever came up in play.
Anyway, this is one place where the DW Warriors' World diverges from the IST world. As I note in the Concordance
As for anime and manga, well, I'll have to do a little research on how the real world developed before I can give you a detailed answer, but I can tell you the following general trends, which grow more or less directly out of the Home Islands being substantially less enamoured of Western things: The art style is generally more realistic, with Western facial features being reserved for (and often exaggerated on) Western characters. Medieval and fantasy stories are almost never European in flavor; Heian Period seems to be preferred setting, with traditional magic systems replacing the general preference for Hermetic and Qabbalistic imagery you see in our world's anime and manga. Themes tend to be a bit more jingoistic, and there are more series that invoke the "golden" era of the militaristic, prewar 1920s. Non-Japanese are usually portrayed as barbarians, although not universally evil or hostile; however, in most series where they appear, friendly gaijin are subject to a Japanese version of "Stepin Fetchit" that reduces them to kowtowing yes-men lackeys to their Japanese superiors.
I'll think about it and see if I can't come up with a list of anime and manga that almost certainly wouldn't have appeared, or which appeared in a highly altered state. "Sakura Wars" probably has an all-Japanese cast; "Bubblegum Crisis" probably doesn't exist at all. The analogues to "Slayers" and "Lodoss Wars" take place in medieval Japan and are unrecognizable. "Ranma 1/2" is more or less unchanged, except Shampoo and the Amazons are far less sympathetically portrayed. Just to name a few off the top of my head.
-- Bob
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"Flan on!" -- The battlecry of the Human Dessert
Anyway, this is one place where the DW Warriors' World diverges from the IST world. As I note in the Concordance
Quote:More properly, there are superhero comics, but they're like detective comics, romance comics, war comics and the like -- a niche market, not the primary defining genre. Furthermore, Dr. Fredric Wertham never wrote his inflamatory polemic Seduction of the Innocent, and the whole line of events that depended on its existence never happened, leaving intact horror, true crime and whole host of other genres that were more or less forced out of existence in our timeline.
Well, in a world with real superheroes, superhero comics didn't quite make it past the 1930s. DC's Superman is a forgotten, dusty relic of the Great Depression, much like "Jack Armstrong, The All-American Boy".
As for anime and manga, well, I'll have to do a little research on how the real world developed before I can give you a detailed answer, but I can tell you the following general trends, which grow more or less directly out of the Home Islands being substantially less enamoured of Western things: The art style is generally more realistic, with Western facial features being reserved for (and often exaggerated on) Western characters. Medieval and fantasy stories are almost never European in flavor; Heian Period seems to be preferred setting, with traditional magic systems replacing the general preference for Hermetic and Qabbalistic imagery you see in our world's anime and manga. Themes tend to be a bit more jingoistic, and there are more series that invoke the "golden" era of the militaristic, prewar 1920s. Non-Japanese are usually portrayed as barbarians, although not universally evil or hostile; however, in most series where they appear, friendly gaijin are subject to a Japanese version of "Stepin Fetchit" that reduces them to kowtowing yes-men lackeys to their Japanese superiors.
I'll think about it and see if I can't come up with a list of anime and manga that almost certainly wouldn't have appeared, or which appeared in a highly altered state. "Sakura Wars" probably has an all-Japanese cast; "Bubblegum Crisis" probably doesn't exist at all. The analogues to "Slayers" and "Lodoss Wars" take place in medieval Japan and are unrecognizable. "Ranma 1/2" is more or less unchanged, except Shampoo and the Amazons are far less sympathetically portrayed. Just to name a few off the top of my head.
-- Bob
---------
"Flan on!" -- The battlecry of the Human Dessert