Anime Sales in Japan - 2010

[Draneor]

It was suggested last week that we create a thread for discussion of R2 sales, rather than spread it out across the R2, BD, and GA forums. The title is bland, but here it is.

Sales for the week of 04/19.

The middle of the month tends to be light on new releases. To the surprise of no one, Gundam UC sales are still going strong. For new shows, Katanagatari's 7380 looks to be the highest. Nodame Final did 3,539, which seems kind of low to me. Re-releases continue to sell well with ROD-THE COMPLETE (BD) at 4,703 and Gundam Seed Destiny at 8,709. Lastly, it looks like K-On!! motivated a few buyers to pick up the last couple DVDs of the first season. That's all that stuck out to me this week.

[something]

Maybe we can handle this with weekly subthreads when the yunakichi numbers are posted?

It's a shame we can't link to the nicely formatted and tallied up lists in English we all know about but have to pretend doesn't exist because even going to the forums of a torrent tracker site will turn us all into ruthless hooligans who beat up old women and steal cars, or something like that. Would be great if we could get an exemption for just that one thread. =/

It'd almost be worth recreating them but 1) it's not cool to copy/paste the posts in full and 2) taking the time to manually redo it when it already exists is just... dumb.

Anyway...
The lists for the "off" weeks (i.e. not the end of the month) are interesting because something selling only 200 discs can get onto the lists. That wouldn't get you anywhere near the top 30 BD at the end of the month.

Katanagatari's sales are pretty good. Better than I expected anyway. ...Actually, what did I expect?

Poor Asura Cryin' cant even break a thousand.

Totoro - 433 weeks on the list.

And yay for Drrr easily clearing 20k again with Vol. 2. The final average across all 13 vols should easily be in the high teens.

As for Nodame, isn't that about how the other two seasons did? Can't check the other list at the moment.

[Draneor]

Originally Posted by something

Maybe we can handle this with weekly subthreads when the yunakichi numbers are posted?

Fine with me. I also think ANN, annual reports, Oricon, press releases, and other sources should be fair game. Or if someone wants to go to 2ch directly that works too.

Originally Posted by something

As for Nodame, isn't that about how the other two seasons did? Can't check the other list at the moment.

The first season averaged ~8,700, but it does look like Paris did about that amount.

[bayoab]

Originally Posted by something

It's a shame we can't link to the nicely formatted and tallied up lists in English we all know about but have to pretend doesn't exist because even going to the forums of a torrent tracker site will turn us all into ruthless hooligans who beat up old women and steal cars, or something like that. Would be great if we could get an exemption for just that one thread. =/

It'd almost be worth recreating them but 1) it's not cool to copy/paste the posts in full and 2) taking the time to manually redo it when it already exists is just... dumb.

What you could do for differentiation is grab the week-by-week boxes which that thread doesn't list such as:

○サマーウォーズ　　 　 　 　 　 　 　 発売日：10.03.03
　　 　 　 初動　　 2週計　　 3週計　　 4週計　　  累計
DＶD　　*55,375　*73,322　*82,870　*89,506　*96,441（6週計）
BD　　　*54,218　*63,661　*67,403　*69,820　*72,252（6週計）
合算 　109,593　136,983　150,273　159,326　168,693

○ガンダムUC 【第1巻】 　 　 　 　 　 発売日：10.03.12
　　 　　 初動　　 2週計　　 3週計　　  4週計　　  累計
DＶD　　*29,724　*34,990　*36,922　*37,555　*45,141（5週計）
BD　　　*55,906　*61,764　*67,322　*68,098　*77,525（5週計）
合算 　*85,630　*96,754　104,244　105,653　122,666

Though it seems the formatting doesn't copy over perfectly. Had to tweak it a bit to get it to match the JP.

[Suwako Moriya]

Originally Posted by something

Maybe we can handle this with weekly subthreads when the yunakichi numbers are posted?

I support this idea. As it would help keep things organized. Especially if people remember to reply properly and we have consistency in terms of when the new sub thread gets started.

Originally Posted by something

It's a shame we can't link to the nicely formatted and tallied up lists in English we all know about but have to pretend doesn't exist

Ah, well. In my case, my ability to read Japanese is none-existent. So the more information in English the better for me. Yet in spite of not understanding Japanese, I still watch anime raw.

Regardless, it's nice to know that Geijutsuka managed an average of 4,754 according to one site. With the OVA doing about 5,418. I'd like to claim I contributed to the latter number, but I got the RE instead of the LE. And it seems those numbers are just for the LE.

*Checks sales for Hidamari Sketch X Hoshimittsu* Seems like the BD is ahead of the DVD. 4,941 vs 3,231. Although I'm not sure that can be considered a domination.

[something]

http://yunakiti.blog79.fc2.com/blog-entry-5061.html

I know we started on the week ending 4/19 but I guess the 4/12 list got amended? It says 付け (tsuke) which I think means "fixed" or updated in this context. Well, it adds a little info for some series that didn't make the 4/19 list.

(Geh, I couldn't figure out what そらおん was for a moment, then realized it's Sora-ON! Sigh, that meme really needs to die... it does both shows a disservice.)

Anyway, lots of the chatter is about Sora no Woto, which is up to 3,423 with the new figures. As one person put it:
"4,414 - Ladies versus Butlers
3,598 - Omamori Himati
3,423 - Sora no Woto
This is bad..."
(Okay, so "yabai" can mean like a hundred things but the sense here seems like one of the negative ones.)

And man, ain't that right. I like LadyBato (not so much OmaHima) and I know fanservice sells, but it's still sad to see. ;_; Though as others said, SoraWoto is "not a failure, but not a hit either", and even if the DVD sales are awful it could be around 4k discs moved all told. ::shrugs::

All I can hope is that that's "enough" to keep the "original anime" flame alive for Anime no Chikara. The lack of shows not based on something else is probably my only major gripe about anime as an art form. Well, I'm buying Sora no Woto and Angel Beats!, so I guess I'm doing what I can.

I can't quite tell if anything new was added to Hidamari Sketch x ☆☆☆'s numbers but the list comparing it to x365 shows that it's still a little behind on first volume sales, but overall it's pretty close. And at almost 8700 DVD+BD it's definitely a franchise with staying power.

Haruhi approaches 15k for the final volume, so it held up well throughout. The first volume of 2k9 was around 27k initially, before Amazon (and other stores?) started running a massive sale on it which has added 10k copies (haha jeeze) since then. I don't regret paying full price because the show deserves it, but knowing I could have had it for 999 yen if I waited stings slightly.

This does bring up the question of how many more sales Japan could make if they lowered prices. But there's that major balancing act of not training your customer to expect far lower prices. They won't want that core to stop paying 7k up front because they've come to expect bargain prices a few months later. Now Haruhi is a bit of a unique situation what with the divisive nature of the 2k9 eps and the unknown effect that had, but jeeze, ten thousand people suddenly show up when the price drops? That's ten million extra yen (more actually, it didn't drop to 999 yen immediately and I'm basing that entirely off Amazon's price), minus retailer cut. But again, Haruhi is a strange series and very hard to extrapolate to other situations.

Anyway, the other volumes have been consistently around 14-18k, I believe. I really really want to see what numbers Shoushitsu pulls in, especially if we finally get Haruhi on BD. C'mon Kadokawa.

Railgun's numbers seem updated a bit from the 4/19 list. It continues its dominance of 2010 releases with over 23k for Vol. 3 so far.

There's probably other new bits in there but I'm starting to get mixed up on 4/12 and 4/19 numbers as I look deeper so that's enough for now.

[Draneor]

Originally Posted by something

Haruhi approaches 15k for the final volume, so it held up well throughout.

Well for an average anime. Not well for Haruhi. The franchise took a noticeable hit due to a series of bad decisions by Kadokawa. But granted, a bad year for Haruhi still beats most. Since more volumes of the novel are coming out this year, it will be interesting to see if Kadokawa can restore it to its former glory or if this is a permanent decrease.

Speaking of Haruhi, page seven of Kadokawa's FY 2009 Annual Report uses Haruhi for an example of Kadokawa's business model. It will be interesting to see what the (English) FY 2010 report says once it is released in a couple months.

[something]

Originally Posted by Draneor

Well for an average anime. Not well for Haruhi.

It's certainly a big drop from the 2k6 eps, but there's no real way to know how much is attributed to people moving on over the years (FMA has seen something similar, or on a smaller scale, Nodame), as well as the lack of BD. Especially given that it's targeting exactly the audience who cares most about BD.

From initial reactions it sounds like Shoushitsu (which is what everyone was whining for all along) has already helped to temper the overinflated knee-jerk reactions E8 caused, so hopefully people are finally getting over it.

Not that I have any particular love for Kadokawa of course.

[Draneor]

Sales for the week of 04/19～04/25. Working did spectacularly well at 14,391 units. I'm curious to see how much it will drop off for the second volume, given it goes back to normal pricing.

[Fencedude]

It took me a while to figure out that "カールじいさん" which did 70,000 discs was Up!