Anime Sales in Japan - 2013 (Released volumes)

[symbv]

One correction to my post: I said Kotoura-san BD v1 has risen to above #100 in Amazon ranking after it was broadcast in Tokyo. In fact it was broadcast only by Nico Nico Douga (streaming site that people pay to watch new shows) and ATX (an anime cable channel) in the midnight between Friday and Saturday. Tokyo will broadcast Kotoura-san on Monday night.

[Fencedude]

Originally Posted by symbv

One correction to my post: I said Kotoura-san BD v1 has risen to above #100 in Amazon ranking after it was broadcast in Tokyo. In fact it was broadcast only by Nico Nico Douga (streaming site that people pay to watch new shows) and ATX (an anime cable channel) in the midnight between Friday and Saturday. Tokyo will broadcast Kotoura-san on Monday night.

100% positive that everyone here knows what Nico and AT-X are.

[symbv]

Originally Posted by Fencedude

100% positive that everyone here knows what Nico and AT-X are.

How can you be so sure??? There are lurkers around here and I don't think you know every single one of them, right? I remember reading newspapers like Financial Times or The Economist which are specialized in financial news, and I am impressed by how they do not take an elitist view towards their readers and assume their readers know everything about the finance world. They would not hesitate to write something like "Vanguard, a big mutual fund in America", for example, just to help any reader out there who may not happen to know something the finance-savvy type would surely consider elementary or common knowledge. While I won't add description or explanation for every term I write, particularly those which are commonly used here (like Amazon Stalker), I would still rather write a bit more for less often seen terms like AT-X just in case someone reading this forum does not know it, to save them from the trouble of having to google it themselves.

==

On another note, GirlPan v1 finally goes out of stock in Amazon JP again, and its ranking has now dropped down to #9.

[hpulley4]

Originally Posted by Fencedude

100% positive that everyone here knows what Nico and AT-X are.

You mean they aren't a big happy smile and an old motherboard?

[Nico87]

I'm famous, yo.

[Draneor]

Originally Posted by symbv

I remember reading newspapers like Financial Times or The Economist which are specialized in financial news, and I am impressed by how they do not take an elitist view towards their readers and assume their readers know everything about the finance world.

Assuming your reader has some level of background knowledge or is otherwise capable of googling it if they don't is elitist now?

[symbv]

Originally Posted by Draneor

Assuming your reader has some level of background knowledge or is otherwise capable of googling it if they don't is elitist now?

That is right if what you think is simply "background knowledge" is not that basic to other people (I will explain further below). And in particular if you want people NOT to write explanation for terms used just because you assume that every reader has the same level of knowledge as you do (which may be basic to you but not really to "everyone" reading it), I would call it definitely elitist. Take my example of Financial Times again. People who are savvy about finance may think it is basic to know Vanguard is a big mutual fund company in America (and perhaps some of them may even take the view that if they don't know this they should not be reading that newspaper in the first place, which to me is elitist), yet the editors there do not assume that. They also think that it is not helping their readers if they have to google each term that they read and not quite understand, so they add just a bit explanation about those terms. They have to consider the balance too: So they won't go to some extreme like explaining what is a municipal bond or LIBOR. I'd say I am taking the same approach here. I do not know why my extra considerations for the readers here should deserve a post claiming that it is "100% positive that everyone here knows" what those terms mean, implying the extra bits of information I wrote are not only unwanted and unnecessary but undesirable enough to need a reminder.

[hpulley4]

Are overall sales numbers available or even total sales by year for those we know about, that ranked? 2011 - 2012 looks like a drop in big hits but did the overall sales drop or not? Harder to tell just by looking. If I missed it in the tables, sorry, a pointer would be appreciated. Thanks.

[something]

Originally Posted by hpulley4

Are overall sales numbers available or even total sales by year for those we know about, that ranked? 2011 - 2012 looks like a drop in big hits but did the overall sales drop or not? Harder to tell just by looking. If I missed it in the tables, sorry, a pointer would be appreciated. Thanks.

We'd have to lay down some ground rules for what we're counting. Can't really do Jan 1-Dec 31, since some 2012 releases will still be ranking for a while. I'd also recommend excluding movies since they're very uneven. Lastly, I'm limited to the items I track, which is almost exclusively late night anime - but you probably want to focus on that subset anyway, since other markets are so different.

As for what dates to cover, I guess it would have to be similar to Oricon, so call it mid-December to mid-December. Cutting off at the 15th means GirlPan and Chuunibyou aren't included in 2012, which is what I was going for since their numbers aren't final yet.
2011: 3,463,185 units
2012: 3,412,398 units (-1.5%)

Virtually the same, then. But if you take another look, the difference and much more is entirely covered by Fate/Zero being a boxset only. That significantly lowers unit count numbers for 2012.
Fate/Zero box total: 52133 + 45804 = 97,937
Assume 6 singles each, subtract 20% to emulate drop-off: ~470,000

We might not have seen all 12 discs come out in 2012 though. he first might have been 12/2011 (probably latter half of the month), and the last might have been 12/2012 (ditto). Call it 10 discs then (I'd bet 11, but all it 10 anyway), or about 390k with 20% subtracted:
2012 (Fate/Zero singles estimate): ~3,800,000 (+9.7%)

There were no comparable releases in 2011 to adjust for.

But DVD animation-only Top 30 lists didn't kick in until a few months into 2011 (I think it was May?). It's hard to say how much this accounts for, however I find it very unlikely that late night anime moved ~350k units in the lost coverage between the less comprehensive DVD all-genre Top 100 and the DVD animation-only Top 30 with just ~4-5 months of charts. Some weeks that would have added literally zero late night sales. Maybe 10,000 at most in a week. I'd be surprised if it made up more than about a quarter of the gap, considering how DVD is plummeting for late night anime.

Another way to do this and avoid the Fate/Zero issue is to use total sales in yen.
2011: ¥24,133,418,127
2012: ¥28,957,037,394 (+20.0%)

Fate/Zero isn't much of an issue here so I'm not adjusting for it. Singles would have cost more per episode, but there also would have been a drop in average sales, so I guess it evens out, very roughly speaking. I guess maybe it helps 2012 a little if anything, since there's a big gap between the increase in units (w/fz estimate) and the increase in yen. That can reflect higher average MSRPs though.

All in all, if you specifically restrict to late night TV anime on DVD and BD as reported by Oricon, the industry saw a decent uptick. The true overall health of the industry would need to include many many more factors in the formula, of course. But this is one measure that doesn't look bad compared to last year, despite the number of 10k series being lower. It shows how important the solid mid-tier titles can be.

(Disclaimer: This assumes my data and math is correct, of course. By and large it should be.)

[hpulley4]

^^^ Thanks! Had a gut feeling that it had been an uptick year even without as many solid hits. Three so close to 10000 in 2012 as well.