Yeah, I was going to mention my spanish neighbors but then it slipped my mind.
Hell, anime has its share of popularity here in Portugal, but its a tiny market.
Its a pity about the small population number portugal has that makes it harder for a proper localisation there when a game fens have a mutlimillion company behind it. If you have a bigger population Im sure the market for anime there would be asi big as in Spain and France.
We have quite an interest in jrpgs, but a lot of people are put off by the lack of localization. Both anime/comics and videogames are definitely "growing" here, and it's easy to see thanks to the many new "exhibitions" (not sure what the right word is) that are popping up recently.
Sadly, the lack of translation really does exclude a big part of the population; while young people study it at school, most don't really take it too seriously and probably wouldn't be able to play games or read a book. This also exclude many of the "older" people: for example there's a lot of games that (I think) my parents might enjoy, thanks to a fun gameplay or an intriguing story, but as they don't know English, they'll never even be able to try them.
It's still very common to see comments like "If it has no translation/subtitles I won't buy it", which I found a bit sad, but at the same time understandable.
More than sad, I see it really understandable, they dont know english, so in an rpg thats going to make them not play it in its fullest. I was lucky enough to go to an english school since I was small, so learning english was a normal process for me. But the majority of the population of European countries didn't have that luck.
Of course it a problem of our education systems for not having proper english classes, but thats a huge thing we need to change, and is far more sad for this publishers not even trying to localise a good market for them (when even indies with smaller teams and no publisher are getting european localisations out of the door). We are not in the 90's anymore, and what atlus is doing is cheap as hell.
Also if I pay for a game full price I want that game at least on my language, as I have paid more for it being european, at least give me that in exchange. If they dont want to localise it or do a proper physical release, what the can do is put it downloadable at a cheaper price, as its untouched from the american versions.
I think we already touched everything about this topic, so is better to change subject and talk about Persona things and the new trailer lol