Which came first, the market or the product?

His Swankiness quotes, and comments on, an editorial that suggests that the blossoming market for Japanese manga and anime in this country are entirely fan-created: it’s not as if some bunch of suits sat down in a board room, conceived a product, and then proceeded to construct a sales strategy around that product. Interesting. I wonder, though, when did anime start to reach its current level of critical mass? Did the rise of manga and anime coincide with the rise of the Web? Just curious, ’cause I don’t know.

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