Anime Sales in Japan - 2013 (Released volumes)

[symbv]

Originally Posted by something

Still, GirlPan probably fits the category of "dark horse" better, compared to Madoka which was was highly anticipated, heavily marketed, had a creative "dream team", and hit the Top 10 on Amazon within 12 hours of solicitation. GirlPan on the other hand was estimated to sell average at best, and didn't even hit the top 100 for three weeks, top 10 after 5 weeks. Then all of a sudden now it's nearly 20k.

I agree GirlPan is definitely a Dark Horse while it is not so much the case for Madoka. What I want to stress is that if "surprise", as mentioned by Damius, is measured by how much the final sales exceeded the initial expectation before the season started, I would say Madoka definitely fits the bill. So I am more focused on the word "surprise" in Damius' post instead of looking for a "dark horse".

Besides, though it is true that GirlPan was expected to sell only average right at the beginning of the season, I am not sure Madoka was expected to do very well at similar stage either. The expectation may have been better than what fans expected of GirlPan perhaps but I also remember seeing quite a lot of skeptics predicting that it would flop when the season started (and Shaft indeed had quite a number of flops) and one reason often quoted is skepticism about such a motley and disparate team would really work well (which of course in hindsight we now call it a "dream team").

And I wonder how much of a Dark Horse T&B was. It would be nice if we can also compare the initial expectation of this show with its final performance. Unfortunately I did not pay that much attention to it until quite late so I do not know how much of a Dark Horse it is. I believe for that season the candidates for the TOP FOUR included Steins;Gate, Nichijou, Gintama, Hanasaku Iroha, Denpa Onna and Ano Hana though I suspect T&B is also considered a possible candidate but my memory is a bit vague here.

[symbv]

Originally Posted by meruruchan

Just noticed the same thing. Like... How is this even happening? Another restock?

I am speechless when I saw 2ch started talking about this. At first I thought it was some pranksters or trolls, but... but... how is it possible?!?! It is still out of stock in Amazon. Is it counting those who buy secondhand from resellers posted at Amazon? But are there that many people willing to pay almost double the listed price???

VERY PUZZLED.....

[catclan]

Not sure if you know already, so I'll post it anyway. OreShura Blu-Ray/DVD vol. 1 is including an application for an event ticket.

[symbv]

Found a convincing explanation from MAL about the mystery of GirlPan v1 getting to No.1 in Amazon but still out-of-stock:

Originally Posted by bippo

Maybe it was up for a few minutes and people just jumped in and ordered and went out of stock again? It was always like that on AKB and some Kpop albums at the music section.

EDIT: After 1.5 hour (0:00am to 1:30am Jan 16) at no.1 GirlPan v1 has now fallen back to no.2 and Yamato 2199 v5 has retaken the no.1 position as it has always been.

[symbv]

I find some data that seem to corroborate with the theory that the no.1 position of GirlPan v1 was because Amazon made available a small amount of restock for ordering and got sold out in a short time.

When GirlPan v1 jumped to no.1, all the other volumes of GirlPan also saw a big jump. This looks like some people were finally placing orders for all the volumes of the series once they managed to secure the first volume.

But this may also be wrong (or not the only factor) as it looks the official GirlPan twitter is urging people to place order for vol.2 now as the preorder cut-off date is near.

(the number before '/' is the position after the jump, the number after is where it was before the jump)
**1位/---位★(---,--- pt)[-,---予約]12/12/21ガールズ&パンツァー (初回限定生産) 1 [Blu-ray]更新停止
**7位/*13位★(*19,054 pt)[*,528予約] 13/02/22ガールズ & パンツァー 2 (初回限定版) [Blu-ray]
*30位/*43位★(*12,216 pt)[*,360予約] 13/03/22ガールズ&パンツァー 3 (初回限定版) [Blu-ray]
*44位/*61位★(*10,670 pt)[*,327予約] 13/04/24ガールズ&パンツァー (初回限定生産) 4 [Blu-ray]
*48位/*67位★(**9,972 pt)[*,301予約] 13/05/28ガールズ&パンツァー (初回限定生産) 5 [Blu-ray]
*60位/*77位★(**9,850 pt)[*,296予約] 13/06/21ガールズ&パンツァー (初回限定生産) 6 [Blu-ray]

[Damius]

Originally Posted by symbv

I agree GirlPan is definitely a Dark Horse while it is not so much the case for Madoka. What I want to stress is that if "surprise", as mentioned by Damius, is measured by how much the final sales exceeded the initial expectation before the season started, I would say Madoka definitely fits the bill. So I am more focused on the word "surprise" in Damius' post instead of looking for a "dark horse".

Well, "dark horse" would have been a better word to use for what I wanted to know.

[symbv]

^ In this case I am interested to learn how much of a Dark Horse T&B was, as I remember there were quite a large number of contenders for bestsellers in 2011 Spring for the season and I kind of remember T&B being mentioned quite often early on.

[something]

Originally Posted by niconico7272

**1位/---位 ★ (---,--- pt) [-,---予約] 12/12/21 ガールズ&パンツァー (初回限定生産) 1 [Blu-ray]更新停止

lol.

The explanation given earlier would have been my first guess too: a restock that buyers pounced on instantly. Even a modest number of orders can get you at the top of the rankings if it's compressed into a very short amount of time.

Nobody really knows exactly how Amazon calculates their rankings, but I'd bet some part of the algorithm takes "momentum" or "trending" into account, i.e. that 500 orders placed within a span of minutes will cause the system to rank it higher. We already know price is a factor, hence why any half-decent or even mediocre BD box tends to start off very high even if it ends up selling 2k units (and hence why Stalker gives reduced points to high priced items). So it's not necessarily a straight ranking of number of units sold.

Something similar to this has happened a number of times in the past when Amazon needed to cancel all outstanding orders of a title for one reason or another, and buyers all rushed to place new orders, concentrating orders in a short period of time.

It'll be fun to see what all this amounts to per Oricon, at any rate.

[hpulley4]

You can sign up for notification when things are available. You need to order fast when this happens. I paid ¥3000 to ship one tough to find book which seems silly but after losing it for weeks the previous time it surfaced while just spending a few minutes trying to find a few other books to fill the box and make the shipping cost more reasonable it was out of stock again...

Now I keep some stuff ready to order just in case

[something]

Originally Posted by symbv

^ In this case I am interested to learn how much of a Dark Horse T&B was, as I remember there were quite a large number of contenders for bestsellers in 2011 Spring for the season and I kind of remember T&B being mentioned quite often early on.

Well, it took Bandai Visual by surprise, at least. I think a severe lack of stock during release week (Mouretsu, T&B, Girlpan as recent examples) is one good way of determining whether a title exceeded expectations. This is a little different from 2ch pre-season sales estimates of course, but probably more telling overall.

Also, GirlPan down to #4 now. Unless another restock happens, I anticipate it'll drop fairly quickly over the next 24 hours. There's only so much a single (probably small) restock can do for a title. But this does imply even at 18.7k, GirlPan is still a good deal away from saturation.