>>76984502It goes deeper than that actually.
Culturally, the youth that would normally be the primary demographic no longer grew up on anime the same way that kids of the 90s and early-00s did. There's no pokemania or DBZ equivalent for them, as most American anime is aired on Toonami, which is now an adult swim only programming block, meaning it won't reach anywhere near the number of kids that the old Saturday Morning Cartoons and Toonami afternoons' rampant anime dubs had. Likewise, there has been this move to all-digital and abandoning of physical media among them, which as you mentioned, comes more in the form of piracy when it comes to manga.
Things like Borders closing also . I imagine you and many you know likely would go to places like Borders and hole up in the manga section, reading a couple volumes then buying your favorite ones. That's a thing of the past now since going to a physical location to read this stuff when its all available on your phone or ipad or really anywhere is archaic now. Not to mention most brick and mortar book stores have gone out of business.
What used to be an obsession with shonen anime/manga has, ironically, been replaced by things like the MCU and general superhero genre media.
The current generation is one that's grown up on American superheroes and all-digital.
