Quote:
Originally Posted by relentlessflame
It's a price model based on the fact that, unlike regular live-action TV series that air on general TV in prime-time or day-time hours, these shows do not make any money during the TV airing (it's often an expense), and so they depend entirely on merchandise sales from within a very small niche community to cover their costs. Late-night Anime are infomericials that are trying to sell their own merchandise. Given that renting anime is also an option for most people within Japan, the people who feel driven to collect are a rather small subset of an already small audience. (Keep in mind that "cartoons for grown-ups" are not generally respected in Japan any more than they are anywhere else in the world.)
With your other example, the show has already aired on TV and recovered all of its costs through advertising and other means. Whatever money they make from the DVDs/Blu-Rays is just gravy, so they can afford to price it cheaply in order to appeal to as many people as possible. It's a marketing strategy based on mass appeal, rather than one based on appealing to a hyper-niche community. If you try to compare "hour-to-hour", niche products like anime will always fail.
Edit: See also what Triple_R said above -- indeed, it's memorabilia, not driven by any practical use or need. I rarely watch the Japanese Blu-Rays I collect; that's not why I buy them.
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That said, it's still an industry that generates considerable revenue for Japan. 4th most profitable commodity for Japan I believe, while manga is 3rd. It's a weird paradox where Japan resents otaku for spending so much on the fandom and being that way - yet Japan needs them to spend that much. The costing is based a fair bit on realistic sales of a niche market that isn't exactly reverred within Japan and balancing that against the production and marketing costs - which are considerable even for lower budget series. When your average budget costing to produce an episode is $120k, it isn't cheap. (An official figure from a 2007 interview from someone that worked in the industry and wrote a book on it)
Let's say a series was 12 episodes and that the average budget for each episode was that 120k. To produce the episodes alone, that would be $1.44 million. Add in some marketing and overheads costs - say it would prop it up to 2 million. (Arbitrary figure here for some simple math that isn't too far from actual prices) Say the series sold 5k copies aka the Manabi line and that each volume contained 3 episodes, so 4 volumes. How much would the DVDs need to cost to return a profit? Over 100 dollars since 100 dollars per volume is the break even number for 5k sales. Perhaps that explains why a DVD costs so much there? It's hard to make a profit in that industry from the anime itself. Although if the volumes contained 2 episodes, that price becomes 67 dollars for break even, so charging 90 dollars and getting those 5k sales gets you a 33% profit. Welcome to why volumes contained only 2 episodes for so long.
The other thing worth mentioning is that one may ask why Japan doesn't order DVDs/BDs from outside of Japan. There's a reason for that - the raws the licensers outside of Japan are sent are lower quality so that the Japanese version is the superior version - may not be such a big difference on BD but on DVD there certainly is. That's one reason they pay more than us - they get the better version in a lot of cases. I learnt this from a mate who is in the DVD industry and has delved into this. He also mentioned the subtle differences in frame rates between Japan and other countries also prevent optimum performance due to synchronisation issues. So to prevent reverse importing and the purchase of 'affordable versions', the quality of what we can purchase is considerably less in a lot of cases.
As mentioned above, bragging rights is a big part of it. Why do people buy the more expensive brands of clothing, accessories or makeup even if they aren't the best, or spend incredible amounts to go overseas to a live event? It's the idea you've got something most others haven't and that it is endearing to you. Aka massaging one's ego and image - to feel good and to make others envy you. Basic human behaviour that is part of all aspects of life.
EDIT: relentlessflame, seems I finished typing this a mere minute after you said your post with 'Let's cut the discussion here'. So I'll end mine.