Quote:
Originally Posted by aohige
I was specificly talking about series where majority of their profit comes from non-DVD sales.
I was not, at all, from the beginning, talking about anime in general.
ONLY about these large franchise, where DVD sales did not reflect its total popularity.
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I'm quite aware that you're just talking about the mass-merchandise franchises - the merchandising of more niche shows is generally too insignificant to be much of an issue. However, I'll reiterate the difficulty of correlating popularity with the success of these secondary products. I'm not denying that these figures aren't useful, only that they don't necessarily speak to the popularity of a show. This holds regardless of whether most of a franchise's revenues are generated through merchandising.
Quote:
Originally Posted by aohige
Again, you're neglecting the "popularity of children" completely, and focusing only on otaku fanbase.
Which is totally fine if we're talking about majority of anime, but I was not talking about those in the first place.
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I don't care as much about the popularity of a show with children for a couple of reasons: First, children tend to move very quickly from one "in" thing to another, so short-term popularity doesn't necessarily mean a whole lot aside from immediate sales. Second, it's hard to tell how popular a work is based on secondary sales. For example, look at a franchise like Hello Kitty; it's a perennial favorite in terms of merchandising, but it's animated versions have enjoyed nowhere near the same kind of lasting popularity.
In this situation, the best way to gauge the popularity of a show to children is to look at the TV ratings within that demographic. After all, that's likely how they're going to be exposed to the show.