Quote:
Originally Posted by 4Tran
Strictly speaking, that isn't true at all; both the sales of a show's DVDs and it's ratings are direct reflections of how popular a show is. The difference is that they tell us different kinds of data: sales inidicates how many people felt the show was willing to purchase at (originally) around 5000 Yen per disc. With 1.2 million in sales, that makes Seed Destiny one of the best selling Gundam show all-time. Incidentally, this would have netted Bandai around 60,000,000,000 Yen in sales, which is a very hefty portion of the total Gundam revenue for those years.
While peripheral sales also gauge popularity, it does so much more indirectly. It's also indicative of the quality of the merchandise, the appeal of said merchandise to the fanbase, and how good the show is as a 30-minute commercial. This ties into the recent Gundam shows because the traditional merchandise (mostly toys) didn't appeal to the fanbase - instead, they tended to go for music and drama CDs and the like.
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I totally disagree.
What DVD sales gives us, is an idea of how popular the anime is
within a certain viewer base.
By that, I mean, DVD-buying adults.
All those franchise I mentioned are largely children's market, and they are NOT a DVD-buying consumer base.
A DVD of Pretty Cure may not sell as much as say, Suzumiya Haruhi.
But that only gives you an idea that Haruhi may be more popular among the older, DVD-buying otaku fanbase.
In other words, you don't see Haruhi sausage or Haruhi bubble gum or Haruhi toys being sold everywhere, like Pretty Cure.
These shows
main target audiences don't buy DVDs.
DVDs are very expensive in Japan, and
kids do not buy them. Period.
We're not like America, where DVDs are 20 bucks a pop.
What you're seeing, my friend, is a very foreign view of anime.
You're basing the market off what's popular from what
you can see.
However, Gundam, Dragon Ball, Pretty Cure, Digimon, etc....
These are much larger franchise that does NOT rely on anime fans consumers.
You may not see much of that if you live outside of Japan, but that is the
fact.
Again, I stress this.
DVD sales only gives you an indication of how popular that anime is "within adult anime fan base".
These rules do not, I repeat,
DO NOT apply to these aforementioned titles.