Anime Sales in Japan - 2012

[something]

Originally Posted by hpulley4

You say amazon.co.jp never part ships preorders but they did again.

The holidays are different, they do more partials then. My December item order (placed late November) had some in-stock items, so just now they released the third shipment from it with the bulk of the BDs. All that's left is Hyouka.

I'm not saying they never partial ship you, or that they don't partial ship you more than other people (sounds like they do), or even that they never partial ship me, but there was a clear change in their rules a little ways back and many people who post here have had the same exact experience of partial shipments being curtained drastically compared to how it used to be. Previously they wouldn't hold anything for more than a day - everything went out on release date or slightly before, even if it was shipped by itself and had other items in the order that came out later. That simply doesn't happen anymore for most of us. I'm sure that when I place my January order (need to do that soon), they'll hold everything until the end of the month when the bulk of the anime releases hit. This is their usual procedure for my orders.

[Nico87]

Where do you live, HP? I'm in Norway and they always ship items as soon as they're in stock, whereas the guy I buy anime through (who lives in Japan) always receive whole orders.

[something]

Just FYI, it doesn't seem like we'll see any more DVDs in the full list this weekend. Psycho-Pass was apparently 97th, so unless one of the others is 98-100...

GirlPan is 171th so that's definitely not happening. Yuru Yuri♪♪ was supposedly 116th (damn, close).

We need a DVD >100 list ASAP.

[hpulley4]

Originally Posted by Nico87

Where do you live, HP? I'm in Norway and they always ship items as soon as they're in stock, whereas the guy I buy anime through (who lives in Japan) always receive whole orders.

I am in Canada, not sure if that helps. It costs them more to ship it split if I am not paying for the extra shipping but I am a stupidly good customer for them lately so perhaps they are trying to keep me happy. I dunno.

As I said in another thread I already have preorders in until June... But books and magazines often don't have order numbers until just a few weeks or a month at most before they ship for some reason. So I will have still more orders for the 3 magazines and 14 ongoing manga and novel series I read... I don't do much else but read and watch Japanese now and use it at work too. Only way to keep it sharp... But I may, just may, be buying too much right now, it is almost too much to keep up with. But once I get emotionally invested I have to keep reading, I must know how it ends... Abandoned stories are the worst.

[Damius]

Wow, my two imports this season are over 13k (Chuunibyou and GirlPan). That's awesome!! Now let's hope for all volumes to be over 10k!

[Yvese]

So glad to see Chuunibyou exceeding estimates! I hope it stays consistent like Hyouka.

[Se7enSabers]

So, no One Off volume 2 even during its first week ?

It's amazing to see how unpopular this show is....

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Originally Posted by Se7enSabers

So, no One Off volume 2 even during its first week ?
It's amazing to see how unpopular this show is....

If the first volume sold less than 3k, there's obviously no way it would rank when the threshold is about double. It may be in the full list this weekend.

[something]

The 2ch sales thread has started making note of their sales expectations again, this time for Winter '13.

43 respondents so far, but not everyone guessed for every show.

Key: Average (Median) - Title

13,216 (12,000) - Vividred Operation
11,470 (10,000) - Tamako Market
*9,670 (10,000) - Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai NEXT

*8,342 (*8,000) - Love Live
*6,577 (*6,000) - Puchimas -Petit Idolmaster-
*6,577 (*5,000) - Maoyuu Maou Yuusha
*5,420 (*5,000) - Ore no Kanojo to Osananajimi ga Shuraba Sugiru
*5,179 (*5,000) - Senran Kagura
*4,751 (*5,000) - Sasami-san@Ganbaranai
*3,937 (*4,000) - Minami-ke Tadaima
*3,502 (*4,000) - AKB0048 next stage
*2,850 (*3,000) - D.C. III ~Da Capo III~
*2,806 (*3,000) - Mondaiji-tachi ga Isekai Kuru Sou Desu yo?
*2,720 (*3,000) - gdgdFairys season 2

*3,337 (*2,500) - Amnesia
*2,221 (*2,000) - Hakkenden
*2,183 (*2,000) - Chihayafuru season 2
*2,182 (*2,000) - GJ-bu
*2,160 (*2,000) - Yama no Susume
*2,065 (*1,500) - Cuticle Tantei Inaba
*1,707 (*1,500) - Zettai Karen Children The Unlimited -Hyoubu Kyousuke-
*1,816 (*1,500) - Seitokai no Ichizon Lv. 2 (Fall on Nico, Winter TV broadcast)
*1,435 (*1,100) - Kotoura-san
**,926 (*1,000) - Mangirl!
*1,537 (*1,000) - Bakumatsu Gijiden Roman
*1,224 (*1,000) - Senyuu.
*1,265 (**,800) - Haitai Nanafa
**,764 (**,500) - Ai Mai Mii


Ranked by median estimate. I feel like they're being a bit more conservative in their guesses than they were in the the fall. Hetalia isn't included for whatever reason.

Everyone seems to agree that Vividred is the leader, with only 6 people putting it below 10k, and most of those 8-9k.

Tamako Market is expected to continue in the 9-15k range of Hyouka and Chuunibyou, although I wonder if more recent guesses might start to revise that upward after Chuunibyou beat expectations by a fair amount. I still think 10k is a fair place to start expectations though.

Haganai Next is getting pretty safe bets in the season one range. I agree with that.

Love Live looks like it's in what I'd call the dark horse position, as some others here were thinking.

Neither of the long title light novel adaptations (OreShura and Mondaiji) are being projected for huge sales either, perhaps assuming Haganai has that locked down for now.

I think they're hedging their bets on Sasami-san by putting it a bit below Denpa Onna range rather than a bomb or a big hit.

And almost nobody seems to think Minami-ke will recapture the glory of its first season, with guesses being closer to the sequels. Nobody made a 5-figure guess, just one said 9k.

[symbv]

Originally Posted by superdry

Huh. While I didn't read all the novels the anime adapted, I knew enough about them to know that overall, the big picture, the anime was pretty faithful to the novels. The more specific stuff you mentioned I probably wouldn't have caught, but I can totally see fans notice them.

I also own the novels in two languages (Japanese and its official Chinese translation) and read them too. And note that I never said that fans complained about the adaptation being unfaithful on the overall picture. I only said that certain adaptation choice and elements picked are often the issues mentioned by fans in Japan as reasons that they could not love the series more.

Originally Posted by superdry

I thought it was the author helping advise the script since the season 1 scriptwriter is back on-board.

The author is officially credited with the role of Series Composition in the 2nd season and while that season 1 scriptwriter (Urahata) is also credited with Series Composition for the 2nd season, it is broadly understood that the author Hirasaka is going to get involved heavily in the scriptwriting more than mere advising. In fact Hirasaka said in an interview that while he involved very little in 1st season, in the 2nd season he got so involved that he is not sure if he can do the same if a 3rd season is made.

To everybody: Again I want to stress that the "mistakes" I used in my original post is from the point of view of the people in the anime production side, not any mistake you or I perceive from the anime. Given the very high popularity of the light novels, there was a general feeling that the anime should have done better. The question then is: What was done wrong that hamper its popularity and sales? What could be better done in a 2nd season to make sure it can sell as much as the popularity of the LNs suggest? The heavy involvement of the author seems to be one response to these questions.