AnimeSuki Forums

I was going to use "female-led" but I felt "female customer-based" is maybe more precise for what I'm talking about.

In any event, some things to consider:

1. Going by this post, and the ones after it, the three best-selling* TV anime shows were Yuri!!! on Ice, Osomatsu-san, and Love Live! Sunshine!!

So this means that Yuri!!! on Ice was a critical and a commercial darling in 2016 (Yuri!!! on Ice's success in various end-of-year anime awards is well noted). Yuri!!! on Ice has some strong yaoi/BL overtones that no doubt made it appealing to a female audience.

Osomatsu-san is a comedy show dominated by male characters. I know little about this show, but from what I've heard, it's probably popular with female viewers.

Love Live! Sunshine I know quite well. And one thing I've learned about the Love Live franchise in recent months is that it has a strong female fanbase. Love Live's popularity with male fans (particularly male anime fans that are also idol fans) is well-known, but my impression is that Love Live enjoys a lot of gender cross-over appeal, similar to K-On. Basically, many of the female characters of Love Live are very relatable to female viewers.

So the three-best selling TV anime shows of 2016 all have large female fanbases, and if you were to combine their three fanbases, I suspect you'd have a larger percentage of female fans than male fans.


2. Anime DVD/Blu-Ray sales have experienced some stark decline over the past year or so. This is something that 0utf0xZer0 has done well in chronicling. When an industry is facing tough economic times, it often will focus more heavily on a few relatively safe niche areas or brand name-loyal areas. I haven't studied it closely, but it seems to me that anime shows focused on fabulous guys (Uta Prince no Sama, Free!, Yuri!!! on Ice) are shows that are more evergreen than even KyoAni at its height. In other words, I'm not aware of a show like this that actually failed to sell well. It seems like any reasonably well-produced show aimed at the BL audience is a surefire megahit seller. Given that, I'm a little surprised we haven't yet seen a full-blown yaoi/BL explosion in their share of the total anime content.


3. Your Name recently beat out Spirited Away for the best-selling animated movie of all-time in Japan. I unfortunately haven't yet seen Your Name, but my impression from talking to people who have, is that it might be a little more female viewer-friendly than some of Shinkai's previous works. From what I've heard, the plot is pretty balanced between the male and female lead, and the romance is something that may well appeal to female viewers. If anybody wants to comment on this particular point, please put those Your Name comments in spoiler space.


So, based on all of the above, will the primary target demographic(s) of anime soon start shifting some? Will anime become more aimed at female viewers, and less focused on typically male-targeted genres (shounen, harem romcom, non-otome eroge adaptations, etc...)?

I'm curious to hear what the Knights of the RRRound Table have to say about this!


*Best-selling on DVDs/Blu-Rays.

Maybe what we're going to see is more of a balancing out than a complete shift? It may be that the anime market for shows with a primarily male target audience is currently over saturated while the market for shows with a primarily female oriented titles is under serviced.

Perhaps we'll also see more shows that appeal to both male and female audiences. I'm not quite as sure about Japan but I know in the west Code Geass seemed to be popular with both male and female viewers.

I'm with Darthtabby on this one: I think we aren't so much seeing a shift to a female-oriented business as much as witnessing a normalization of the offers to be more inclusive of both genres instead of the heavy male targeting that has been the norm for many years.