Anime DVD/BD Sales in Japan: Discussion

[AbZeroNow]

BD and DVD sales numbers for June 18 to June 24 from MAL via Oricon.
Blu-ray
*1, 20,754 *20,754 Kokurikozaka Kara Special Edition
*2, 17,073 *17,073 Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon vol.7 Limited Edition
*3, *9,531 **9,531 Mobile Suit Gundam Seed HD Remaster Blu-ray Box vol.2 Limited Edition
*4, *7,052 **7,052 Top wo Nerae! 2 Blu-ray Box
*5, *6,254 **6,254 Haiyore! Nyaruko-san vol.1 Limited Edition
*6, *5,727 **5,727 Kokurikozaka Kara Standard Edition
*7, *5,168 **5,168 Saki: Achiga-hen - Episode of Side-A vol.1
*8, *3,894 113,651 Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn vol.5
*9, *3,712 **3,712 Eureka Seven AO vol.1 Limited Edition
10, *2,605 **2,605 Black★Rock Shooter Blu-ray Box Limited Edition
11, *2,319 **2,319 Rinne no Lagrange vol.4 Limited Edition
12, *2,196 **2,196 Last Exile: Ginyoku no Fam vol.6
13, *1,855 **1,855 Chihayafuru vol.7

DVD
*1, 27,660 *,*27,660 Kokurikozaka Kara Standard Edition
*2, 22,948 *,*22,948 Kokurikozaka Kara Special Edition
*3, *4,581 *,**4,581 New Prince of Tennis vol.2
*4, *3,201 *,*57,487 Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn vol.5
*5, *2,661 *,**2,661 Tales of Symphonia: Sekai Tougou Hen vol.2 Limited Edition
*6, *1,318 *,**1,318 Hiiro no Kakera vol.1
*7, *1,256 *,**1,256 Haiyore! Nyaruko-san vol.1 Limited Edition
*8, *1,103 *,**1,103 Smile Precure! vol.1
*9, **,957 *,***,957 Cardfight!! Vanguard vol.11
10, **,865 1,140,657 My Neighbor Totoro
11, **,749 *,***,749 Black★Rock Shooter DVD Box Limited Edition
12, **,735 *,***,735 Major Yume no Butai Hen Collector's Box
13, **, 722 *,***,722 Major Kessen! Nihon Daihyo Sen Hen Collector's Box
14, **,600 *,***,600 Nintama Rantarou 19th Series vol.2
15, **,582 *,***,582 Chihayafuru vol.7
16, **,510 *,**9,907 Uchuu Senkan Yamato 2199 vol.1
17, **,486 *,***,486 Mobile Suit Gundam AGE vol.5
18, **,426 *,***,426 Eureka Seven AO vol.1
19, **,411 *,***,411 Saki: Achiga-hen - Episode of Side-A vol.1
20, **,407 *,***,407 Doki Doki Densetsu: Mahoujin Guru Guru DVD Box
21, **,380 *,***,380 SKET Dance vol.11


Somehow I imagine that Horizon II will continue the great sales numbers of the first season of Horizon. Supposedly, it is already doing well in pre-orders.

Stalker really overestimated Nyaruko. A total of 7,510(6,254 BD + 1, 256 DVD) is good of course, but it really it looking like Fate/Zero and possibly Hyouka are the only ones that will be over 10k.

I am surprised that Saki: Achiga Hen(5,168 + 411= 5,579) did better than Eureka Seven:AO (3, 712 + 426=4, 138). 5k for Achiga-hen is pretty solid though.

Hiiro no Kakera bombing with 1,318 isn't a surprise, but at least its numbers aren't Kill Me Baby terrible.

It somehow doesn't surprise me that Black Rock Shooter's BD Box only did 2k.

It's kinda sad to see one of the best(in quality) anime seasons in a while looking like its sales are overall lackluster.

[mangamuscle]

Excuse me if this is thougth of as out of topic, but I am curious, is there some equivalent tracking for animes classified as Hentai? Most of them have subpar animation quality (when you compare them to anime shown on TV) but I am curious of the level of disc sales required to do low-budget animations.

[Malkuth]

Same here. I am really curious about their sales.

On the main topic, damn! nothing watchable broke the 10k mark

[cyth]

There are Getchu (retailer) sales charts, but no concrete numbers. Link

[Malkuth]

Originally Posted by cyth

There are Getchu (retailer) sales charts, but no concrete numbers. Link

The problem is that getchu ranks only its own sales. I am more interested in the size of the market.

[SeijiSensei]

If the figures I found for this posting are to be believed, the Japanese market for porn is huge and many times the size of the market for mainstream works. 2,500 new porn releases per month generating total revenues of 400-500 billion yen, or five to six times the revenues from mainstream titles (87 bn yen in 2010). And the industry is reportedly in a slump!

These figures include live-action works, of course, so I don't know if the same kind of relationship holds true for animated porn or not. This article reports an average per-episode budget for live-action works of one million yen. I'd bet animated works are much more expensive than that even given the dirt wages animators are paid. Most of those 2,500 JAV products each month probably consist of a guy, a girl, and a hand-held camera or two. Maybe two guys and two girls. You'd have to think creating hentai anime would cost more than that. There's apparently a growing contingent of young office ladies who pick up a bit of extra spending money by appearing in the occasional JAV film on the weekends.

[Malkuth]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

If the figures I found for this posting are to be believed, the Japanese market for porn is huge and many times the size of the market for mainstream works. 2,500 new porn releases per month generating total revenues of 400-500 billion yen, or five to six times the revenues from mainstream titles (87 bn yen in 2010). And the industry is reportedly in a slump!

These figures include live-action works, of course, so I don't know if the same kind of relationship holds true for animated porn or not. This article reports an average per-episode budget for live-action works of one million yen. I'd bet animated works are much more expensive than that even given the dirt wages animators are paid. Most of those 2,500 JAV products each month probably consist of a guy, a girl, and a hand-held camera or two. Maybe two guys and two girls. You'd have to think creating hentai anime would cost more than that. There's apparently a growing contingent of young office ladies who pick up a bit of extra spending money by appearing in the occasional JAV film on the weekends.

The original article to my understanding is from a tabloid, so like Sun and Bild it is some exaggerated crap loosely based on reality.

As for the cost of an anime, let's see 20 minutes X 1440 frames/min -> 30k in between frames per episode not counting the convenient repetition that is used during sex scenes Now considering the quality of those in between frames in an average hentai production it also means less than a work hour for the complete thing, and given that most credits for them are Korean or Chinese 1$ per work hour sounds to me a lot. Now what this over-generalization means is that to produce all the visuals for one episode it costs less than $30,000 (max $300,000 for top quality), and the studio needs to sell 600-1000 DVDs to cut even.

For an average quality live action, producing 3 hours of "action" need about 2-3 times more amount of unedited footage. In Germany a studio was paying male actors 100 euros per workday, and I guess female ones are getting 10 times that considering the prices for their next best alternative's prices. So again only the visuals cost about a third of the animated ones.

[Last Sinner]

Those sales of On Poppy Hill and much lower than I wanted to see...This is the movie that made Miyazaki Sr. and Jr. finally make up and overcome their differences. Was that released late in the week or something, I'd have thought it would have reached 100k easily at the very least.

Any thoughts on what will sell big in the upcoming season? Sword Art Online and Horizon S2 seem to be the most likely ones. If Muv-Luv is adapted properly, it should too.

[totoum]

I know there's a discount but Natsuiro Kiseki ended up doing a lot better than the amazon preorders were predicting,go sphere!

Sad to see that i indeed looks like Nazo no Kanojo X didn't do well,darn you japan!

[Last Sinner]

Originally Posted by totoum

Sad to see that i indeed looks like Nazo no Kanojo X didn't do well,darn you japan!

Urabe isn't the type of character that was popular with them. I was told of a lot of internet hate about her on various other sections of the net. Its sales weren't terrible but not good either. If it broke even and stimulated more manga sales to a fair degree, it was worth it.

[winhlp32]

From MAL:

Temporal Blu-ray + DVD Sales Rankings for Spring 2012 (the first volumes)
*1, 7,834 Hyouka
*2, 7,510 Haiyore! Nyaruko-san
*3, 7,309 AKB0048
*4, 5,579 Saki: Achiga-hen - Episode of Side-A
*5, 4,698 Natsuiro Kiseki
*6, 4,138 Eureka Seven AO
*7, 3,499 Jormungand
*8, 3,302 Sengoku Collection
*9, 3,192 Kore wa Zombie Desu ka? of the Dead
10, 2,248 Acchi Kocchi
11, 2,180 Hiiro no Kakera
12, 2,156 Tsuritama
13, 1,206 Queen's Blade: Rebellion
14, *,882 Kimi to Boku. 2
15, *,612 Zetman


Natsuiro Kiseki season 2 please.

[0utf0xZer0]

Originally Posted by totoum

I know there's a discount but Natsuiro Kiseki ended up doing a lot better than the amazon preorders were predicting,go sphere!

Sad to see that i indeed looks like Nazo no Kanojo X didn't do well,darn you japan!

Nazo no Kanojo X is one of this week's releases. Numbers for it aren't out yet.

[totoum]

Originally Posted by 0utf0xZer0

Nazo no Kanojo X is one of this week's releases. Numbers for it aren't out yet.

Whoa,you're right,I had it coming out last week,sorry about that!

[Last Sinner]

So Kuroko's Baksetball V1 pre-orders have reached 11.3k on stalker's predictions. Even with a margin of error, this seems to put it past any series in April that isn't Fate/Zero in the sales department. Production I.G. certainly needed this. But this still seems to be a somewhat unexpected number. There's plenty of series based on mangas selling around the 200k mark that don't do well in anime. Any ideas why this one has?

And any idea why Sword Art Online pre-orders are only showing DVD numbers and no BDs yet?

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by Last Sinner

And any idea why Sword Art Online pre-orders are only showing DVD numbers and no BDs yet?

Because of the on-going dispute between Amazon and Aniplex, the BDs aren't available on Amazon (and that's where all the points come from).

[Last Sinner]

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

Because of the on-going dispute between Amazon and Aniplex, the BDs aren't available on Amazon (and that's where all the points come from).

Had a feeling that was the case. So this one is going to be an unknown quantity until release time?

[truehappiness]

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

Because of the on-going dispute between Amazon and Aniplex, the BDs aren't available on Amazon (and that's where all the points come from).

They're not available on Amazon? I just added the first volume to my cart using this link.

http://amzn.to/MDeUsr

However, it is a bit strange that the Blu-ray does not show up on any bestseller charts at all. The page also appears to be a bit buggy since it says "Sign up to see when this product is available!" at times and other times you can preorder it.

Is it because this is the limited edition Blu-ray and not the regular edition or something? Though looking at the regular edition vs. limited edition DVDs, the regular edition is not performing well at all.

[ultimatemegax]

Originally Posted by truehappiness

They're not available on Amazon? I just added the first volume to my cart using this link.

http://amzn.to/MDeUsr

However, it is a bit strange that the Blu-ray does not show up on any bestseller charts at all. The page also appears to be a bit buggy since it says "Sign up to see when this product is available!" at times and other times you can preorder it.

Is it because this is the limited edition Blu-ray and not the regular edition or something? Though looking at the regular edition vs. limited edition DVDs, the regular edition is not performing well at all.

Aniplex and Amazon have had a dispute going on since March that literally just appears to have been ended today. Regular editions never sell very well outside of certain circumstances (lack of production, very cheap price for normal people, etc). Thus LEs are usually the ones that are announced by Oricon every week.

[truehappiness]

I think the Japanese just have a huge affinity for LEs. REs never do that well in the music CD charts either if you look at Soundscan along with Oricon.

And I see... guess it was just a matter of time before it ended?

[Westlo]

Originally Posted by Last Sinner

So Kuroko's Baksetball V1 pre-orders have reached 11.3k on stalker's predictions. Even with a margin of error, this seems to put it past any series in April that isn't Fate/Zero in the sales department. Production I.G. certainly needed this. But this still seems to be a somewhat unexpected number. There's plenty of series based on mangas selling around the 200k mark that don't do well in anime. Any ideas why this one has?

Like Gintama and Ao no Exorcist (JUMP SQUARE) it has a massive Fujoshi following, shows like them 3 and Tiger and Bunny are such big sellers due in large part to that fanbase really adding to the numbers. Also Kuroko is more of a 400k manga now... seems to have surpassed Toriko even though that's the new JUMP golden child...