Anime Sales in Japan - 2012

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NOTICE: This thread is now obsolete, see the new thread for 2013.
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Visual table of contents (as of initial thread creation)

Previous threads: 2010, 2011


This is the Anime Sales in Japan thread for 2012. Any and all useful or interesting information related to sales of anime in its home country is welcome here, but please provide a source for any data cited.

The purpose of this thread is to report on the weekly Oricon DVD and Blu-Ray sales data for anime home video releases, as well as the occasional related content (Vocaloid concerts, anime music video compilations, box office revenues, etc). Various other articles that shed some light on buying trends or the release models will also be posted. I'm interested in having the numbers because it's easy to say "X is super successful" or "Y probably sold poorly", but harder to back it up without concrete data and just as importantly, the sales of other shows as a comparison.

Table of Contents
Weekly Sales Data Archive - A list of all the posts and source data for the weekly charts.
Average Sales by Year (Total) - Lists, by year, of almost all non-children's anime released throughout the year, with their average sales
All-Time Best-Selling TV Anime - All anime that has sold over 10k aevrage uits per volume, generally the threshold where a show is considered a significant "hit".
Volume 1 Sales by Season - Per-season lists ranking sales of the first volume. First volume sales can be misleading, but most of the time they do provide a good ballpark estimate of how well a show is going to sell.
Miscellaneous Information - As the name implies, other interesting information should be posted as a reply to this post, if you want to be able to find it again easily.


Sales information release schedule
The sales reporting period for Oricon is one week, beginning Monday and ending Sunday.

Daily Top 20-30 DVDs, no numbers: Every day during release week (e.g., 1/03-1/09). Usually contains only a few anime, generally not warranting a post. Top 20 available on Oricon's public website though Top 30s go around from other sources. Note these lists are strictly for the day in question, and are not cumulative. They are tallied up to provide the weekly list.

Weekly Anime-only Top 30 DVDs, All-genre Top 20 BDs, with numbers: Each Tuesday after the release week in question (e.g. 1/11 for a 1/03-1/09 week) a preliminary DVD/BD list containing only the top 30 animation DVDs and top 20 BDs (all genre) or top 10 animation BDs is released. These are called the "Anime 30/10 Lists" in subject lines. There will always be 30 anime releases in the DVD list (minus non-anime animation like Disney) and at least 10 anime releases in the BD list.

Weekly Top 100 DVD/Top 50 BD with numbers: Thursday after release week (e.g. 1/14) usually brings the full list for that week. These are the sources for the "Full / Translated" updates. Often posted by Thursday afternoon (EST). Generally the DVD 100 adds few or no new entries beyond the Anime DVD 30 on Tuesday, but the BD 50 can often add a considerable amount of information to the BD list in a heavy week. These are called the "Full / Translated List" in subject lines.


Historical changes in Oricon coverage
DVD Weekly Ranking
　2002/10/07： Top 100
　2003/07/07： Top 300
Blu-ray Weekly Ranking
　2008/07/07： Top 50
　2011/03/14： Top 100
(source) As mentioned above, we only get the 100 and 50 lists posted online, but Oricon does count sales for anything up to 300 and 100.


Useful websites
Amazon Ranking Stalker website (Japanese only)
Anime DVD/BD Sales Wiki (Japanese only)
Kerotube Anisong CD Sales Wiki (Japanese only)
List of retailers reporting to Oricon (Japanese only)


Other notes
- All dates are displayed in yyyy mm dd format (with either slashes or dashes) or mm dd where no year is provided. I try to be consistent with this.

- Sometimes the data I post will differ slightly from what you might see on other English-language sites like MAL or AnimeSuki. This is either because they/I made a mistake or they/I used an extra source the other didn't. The most common difference is that I will accept estimates of DVD sales where I feel comfortable that an estimate ±100 units can be made. The most common source is from Oricon lists of DVDs ranking outside the top 100. Usually a couple "guideposts" will be present in the data, releases that ranked with a definite number and position. By taking the guideposts above and below a given release, sometimes an estimate can be obtained.

- Provided there's something to post, this thread will usually be updated every Tuesday and Thursday.