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The Anime Economy - Part 2: Shiny Discs


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Annf



Joined: 20 Feb 2009
Posts: 578
PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2012 3:56 pm Reply with quote
smapdi wrote:
Megumi Hayashibara's first 3" single, Yakusoku da yo.

What?

google google...

Well I'll be... This is what I get for only paying attention to Starchild...
Now I need to track down a copy of that.
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dewlwieldthedarpachief



Joined: 04 Jan 2007
Posts: 751
Location: Canada
PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2012 4:00 pm Reply with quote
jsevakis(article) wrote:
That's not a lot of discs! The prices are so high that if you only sell a few thousand discs per volume, you can pretty much break even on the whole show. With that in mind, each sale becomes critically important to that production's profitability. This also explains why Japanese producers are so leery of anything that might allow Japanese fans to import a much cheaper American disc.


jsevakis wrote:
Those are done mostly for local audiences, though the Gundam Unicorn experiment has changed a lot of people's thinking lately. A couple hundred extra units sold to foreigners at Japanese prices are sounding mighty good these days. I don't think anybody would argue that hurts a potential US release much, and depending on what Viz does with Tiger and Bunny, we'll soon have proof.


Do you think this trend of importation will lead to companies shrugging-off reverse-importation fears? I wonder if the damage a crippled extra-national release does is in fact more costly than preserving the local status-quo.
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Annf



Joined: 20 Feb 2009
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2012 4:14 pm Reply with quote
RyanSaotome wrote:
At the same time, a release for 400 bucks would only need to sell 300 copies here (which Fate/Zero for example should easily pass) to make that same amount of money... and that also eliminates the reverse importation.

Maybe they can release a cheaper set like 3-4 years down the line when reverse importation is no longer a worry, though.

Yeah that's what I'd expect to see, going that route. Cheap versions may start coming out later than they do now, but probably won't go away entirely because there's still extra money to be extracted that way.
They do eventual cheap(er) releases of shows in Japan, too, after all. Like Bandai's "Emotion: The Best" line.
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BigOnAnime
Encyclopedia Editor


Joined: 01 Jul 2010
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2012 4:56 pm Reply with quote
I am amazed. The Manabi line (2,900) truly is ridiculously low. Nearly 8,000 copies for 6 volumes for a show that costs $150,000 per episode, and they just break even from that. Holy crap.
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RyanSaotome



Joined: 29 Mar 2011
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2012 5:01 pm Reply with quote
ShanaFan852 wrote:
I am amazed. The Manabi line (2,900) truly is ridiculously low. Nearly 8,000 copies for 6 volumes for a show that costs $150,000 per episode, and they just break even from that. Holy crap.


Thats not counting merchandise sales... and the Manabi line only counts first week sales. A manabi line show currently may go up to 5k in lifetime sales.

Thats not to say the Manabi line isn't low, but 4-5k first week may be a more accurate representation of the break even line.
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samuelp
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Joined: 25 Nov 2007
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2012 5:15 pm Reply with quote
Also, keep in mind that sometimes the goal of an anime isn't to make money in and of itself.

So many anime lately are for promoting the sales of manga or games or other original work.

Heck, take a show like Fairy Tail. It's run for 100+ episodes and the average DVD sales are... <1000 per volume. (they don't even release it on blu ray). Plus the DVDs are cheap (comparatively).

Is there a ton of merchandise? Some, sure, but not a ton.
Instead, there's video games, and there's the original manga itself, and a lot could be said for the anime driving up the sales of the manga from 10th place to 4-5th place.

Many of the anime based on visual novels are there as advertisements for the visual novel series... Shows like Itsuka Tenma are really just advertisements for the light novels. I highly doubt they ever planned on breaking even on just the anime alone.

You can tell if you know what percentage of the initial investment came from which company: If it's the publishing company that puts in the most money, they're probably looking to make most profit from boosting sales of the original manga and not from the anime itself.

The whole concept of "a show with budget X needs to sell this many copies to be a success" is flawed in most cases, because a lot of anime isn't created to just sell a ton of DVDs anymore.
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Divineking



Joined: 03 Jul 2010
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2012 5:24 pm Reply with quote
Looking over again, something else that kind of amazes me is how little copies the R1 side of things techincally has to sell to make back what they spend on that initial guarantee. If it;s true that the average license cost these days isn't more than a couple ten thousand or so, in some cases they wouldn't even have to sell 1000 copies to make that back...though on the negative side of things it might just indicate how low R1 sales are these days.h Of course when you factor in the cost of dubbing I'd imagine they'd be spending around the same amount spent on the license if not more to dub it, so that's probably not that accurate a number either.
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Annf



Joined: 20 Feb 2009
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2012 5:35 pm Reply with quote
samuelp wrote:
Also, keep in mind that sometimes the goal of an anime isn't to make money in and of itself.

<...> take a show like Fairy Tail. It's run for 100+ episodes and the average DVD sales are... <1000 per volume. (they don't even release it on blu ray). Plus the DVDs are cheap (comparatively).

Is there a ton of merchandise? Some, sure, but not a ton.
Instead, there's video games, and there's the original manga itself, and a lot could be said for the anime driving up the sales of the manga from 10th place to 4-5th place.

Fairy Tale is a daytime kids show though, so not the topic of part 2. My understanding is those also get income from more traditional third-party sponsors (McDonalds, Kellogs, etc.)

samuelp wrote:
Many of the anime based on visual novels are there as advertisements for the visual novel series... Shows like Itsuka Tenma are really just advertisements for the light novels. I highly doubt they ever planned on breaking even on just the anime alone.

The whole concept of "a show with budget X needs to sell this many copies to be a success" is flawed in most cases, because a lot of anime isn't created to just sell a ton of DVDs anymore.

This has become a popular thing for people to post on the internet lately, but as plausible as it sounds, it's suffering from [Citation needed].

samuelp wrote:
You can tell if you know what percentage of the initial investment came from which company: If it's the publishing company that puts in the most money, they're probably looking to make most profit from boosting sales of the original manga and not from the anime itself.

Are we able to get that info?

In any case, it wouldn't apply to original anime that aren't based on anything (e.g. Guilty Crown), and if it were to become the primary way shows are financed, would mean a future of only short 12-episode teaser series (the diminishing returns of additional seasons would be prohibitive) and no original anime ever, so I hope that doesn't become the main way of doing things. (Although a hybrid system where the first sesason is funded by the publisher but additional seasons of successful shows are funded by other members could develop I suppose. Still wouldn't bode well for original anime.)
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Megiddo



Joined: 24 Aug 2005
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2012 5:38 pm Reply with quote
samuelp wrote:
Also, keep in mind that sometimes the goal of an anime isn't to make money in and of itself...

Heck, take a show like Fairy Tail. It's run for 100+ episodes and the average DVD sales are... <1000 per volume. (they don't even release it on blu ray).

Right, but Fairy Tail isn't a late-night anime. It's a kids show that airs on Saturday mornings. What I like about this article is that Justin just skipped over those, because, like you said, the DVD/BD sales don't really matter nearly as much due to all the other factors that pertain to kids shows.

Maybe something more akin to what you were talking about would be Chihayafuru. The anime was basically made to promote more sales of the manga. Which is why its anime sales don't matter all that much in the long run in terms of breaking even. However, I'm pretty sure it does matter when it comes to the possibilities of a sequel or OVA or something. I think a major reason that Nodame Cantabile got 2 sequels isn't just because it was breaking records for late-night TV ratings, but also because it was selling a lot (for josei anime anyway) of DVDs.
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Mr. sickVisionz



Joined: 28 Oct 2007
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2012 6:03 pm Reply with quote
Interesting reads. Nice articles.
TitanXL wrote:
I wonder if the loss of Japanese reverse importing is greater than any licensing fee being paid today. I wonder if it would actually be beneficial for the R1 market to die off in the long run?
[/devilsadvocate]

I wouldn't mind this only if it meant that most JP release came with English subs, after 1-3 years most series got a BD-Box set, and after like 3 or 4 years most shows got an Emotion or Rondo Robe style release of 13 episode sets, priced around $50-$90 release.
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Charred Knight



Joined: 29 Sep 2008
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2012 6:06 pm Reply with quote
jsevakis wrote:
TitanXL wrote:
I wonder if the loss of Japanese reverse importing is greater than any licensing fee being paid today. I wonder if it would actually be beneficial for the R1 market to die off in the long run?

Sadly, you are not the first person to ponder this. On the flip side, it pretty much ensures that anime will never be anything but mega-niche in the U.S., since the Japanese companies are already notoriously bad at marketing to Americans.


It's not so much that the Japanese are bad at marketing to Americans as it is that they only know how to market to a certain type of person. I honestly think that anime has become like the American comic industry, something that will probably never recover to what it once was. DC and Marvel can continually put out great children comics (which they have) but they are still going to sell badly because comics have attracted the stigma of being for adult males only.

With anime I don't really see why anyone outside of the niche it carved for itself would care about it. Sure every once in a while you get something like Tiger and Bunny with crossover appeal but that happens like once a year at most. The days of having Cowboy Beebop and Trigun air at the exact same time are long over.

Every once in a while some Japanese exec will show up at some con and make some claim that they want anime to be this big hit in America, and they want all Americans to enjoy it then they are going to go back to Japan and make the exact same show that they have made for the past 7 years, put it out subtitled only for 70 bucks for two episodes, and then forget that show ever existed.


Last edited by Charred Knight on Wed Mar 07, 2012 6:16 pm; edited 3 times in total
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Hectotane



Joined: 14 Jan 2011
Posts: 16
PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2012 6:08 pm Reply with quote
I hardly come around here and say anything anymore. But this needs to be emphasized:

How many more shiny discs do you actually THINK you're going to sell, beyond hardcore "collectors," when everything is basically all the same?

Is the animu industry so scared of losing money that they can only do anime within certain pigeon-holes? i.e.:

* the girls only animu
* the otaku-pandering fanservicy animu where the shounen(-tachi) herein are either useless, dead, non-existent, or worse
* the fujoshi-pandering anime that will never be touched by English dubbers unless it's Ouran HS Host Club (even though the shoujo gets more respect than the shounen in an otaku-pandering animu, heaven forbid)
* the anime "for kids"
* the "other" which is basically the same "pigeon-holes" done "differently" (using different art styles or being deconstructive; your Tatami Galaxy and Madoka Magica respectively)

I said it a millions times: gives us a reason to buy (anime) again.

Don't just grab something (because of some deals you made) and throw it out, say some stupid stuff, and act stupid to gain attention.

THINK.

Think long and hard. Encourage anime creators back in Japan to think as well. Be creative. Use your imagination. Quit getting mad everytime something from Ghibli breaks records and you're trying to stall using re-cap episodes.


Instead of creating some fanservicy animu where the male lead is either some useless herbivore who's voiced by a woman or isn't there; feature him as a useful omnivore who's voiced by a guy, can defeat the lot of strong women, won't take mess from any tsundere, and is still attractive and nice enough to pass as normal.

Marvel and Madhouse had combined and made some anime I plan on buying. DON'T go "support the industry" and then expect people to put money into mean-spirited garbage like HS DxD, Zombie Deathcar, Guilty Crown, and Baka 2 Test.
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omoikane



Joined: 03 Oct 2005
Posts: 494
PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2012 6:08 pm Reply with quote
ShanaFan852 wrote:
I am amazed. The Manabi line (2,900) truly is ridiculously low. Nearly 8,000 copies for 6 volumes for a show that costs $150,000 per episode, and they just break even from that. Holy crap.


It's a lot more complicated than that.

I think one thing people might be mislead if they take this info in isolation is that the production committee investors are the ones paying. Different companies invest for different reasons, and that money goes into the pot for different reasons. A HUGE reason that most late night anime are manga (and increasingly, light novel) adaptations is because late night anime can drastically improve the sales of the source material (in fact some ANN article cited an example of this from SQEX IIRC). So one main investor in the committee, the book publisher, already achieve part of its goal in that way, or has already written off part of the investment as pre-allocated marketing money, whatever accounting they choose to use.

So it isn't like one company is bankrolling the whole thing, and what is profitable vary depending on which company in the committee you're talking about.

And let's not get into how the committee members get their money back, that's probably just as complex if not more so.
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Lord Geo



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2012 6:14 pm Reply with quote
I didn't know that the high R2 DVD prices come from the rental store days... You do learn something new everyday, afterall.

Anyway, the disparity between the net revenue pie shares of Japanese DVDs & North American DVDs is simply insane. It makes me wonder how different that pie chart would look for companies that offer the chance for people to buy their releases directly from them and not from a retailer. Look at Right Stuf, for example; though you can buy their Nozomi releases from other retailers, I wouldn't be surprised if most of their sales come from their own online store. I highly doubt that TRSI is asking for their retailer's share from Nozomi, since they're essentially the same company, so Right Stuf probably gets more net revenue on their releases than a company like FUNimation or Sentai, who rely solely on retailers to buy their products and sell them to consumers. This would also explain why companies like ADV, Bandai, & Media Blasters opened their own online stores at one point or another; buying from the company directly lets them have more of the potential profit.

I will also admit that I took too much of an advantage of those bargain sales, buying up titles that I would later not care about and then selling off. Now I still buy partially for collection's sake, but it's been reduced to stuff that I do want to watch one day because it interests me, not simply because it sounds cool and is super cheap.
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Megiddo



Joined: 24 Aug 2005
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2012 6:15 pm Reply with quote
Hectotane wrote:
DON'T go "support the industry" and then expect people to put money into mean-spirited garbage like HS DxD, Zombie Deathcar, Guilty Crown, and Baka 2 Test.

But people are buying mean-spirited garbage like HS DxD, Zombie Deathcar (to a lesser extent), Guilty Crown, and Baka Test 2.

Because that's what otaku want to see.
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