Forum - View topicINTEREST: Anime Studios' Success Calculated Based on 10 Years of Disc Sales
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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I feel sorry for Sunrise's 9th Studio being put as the worst, since it isn't a true reflection of what they've been doing. For instance, as people have already mentioned, their big franchise for the past few years has been Battle Spirits!, a series of shows designed to promote a trading card game to young boys. Including that franchise is disingenuous because selling discs was never the priority.
Studio 9 has done some interesting stuff over the years. Aikatsu! (another show that is just an advertisement for trading cards, this time to young girls), the excellent Good Luck Girl, the hilarious Daily Lives of High School Boys, the flawed but interesting Zegapain, the highbrow Gasaraki, the kind of weird Argentosoma, the ambitious Infinite Ryvius, and of course, the sales phenomenon that was Mobile Suit Gundam SEED*. Many of those shows aired before the cutoff for this list but they still speak of a studio that had some talent. So yeah, this list is an interesting exercise but it cannot be taken at face value. * If you're wondering about SEED Destiny, that was Studio 3. |
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SaitoHajime101
 Posts: 281 |
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I will just say, discs in Japan are really expensive for so few episodes a disc unlike in other countries. Discs aren't going to be the sales driver for most Studios, its more in merchandising like figures and posters.
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Eigengrau
 Posts: 104 Location: Belgium |
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Nonsense, even if anime as a whole were to end completely today, there is already more anime out there to explore (nearly a century's worth) than anyone could comfortably manage in 3 lifetimes. I've yet to see most of the super robot series of the seventies, I've only seen a couple of magical girl series, of all those Toei movies from the fifties or sixties, or most sports anime, or much of Tezuka's output, or stacks of obscure OVA, or...
Isn't there a lesson to be learned there? Instead of firing off dozens of shows per year in the hope that one of them hits the big time, isn't it better to actually focus on fewer projects, but make sure people actually want to watch them? Sure, you might say that putting all your eggs in a single basket (or only a few baskets) is bad strategy, but people will still buy it if it is an awfully attractive basket. You might also argue that KyoAni's works are too broad, but anime could do with an extra couple of broad, mainstream successes at the moment. After all, Mitsuru Adachi's works are broad too, and they managed to cross the line and attrack a large audience who wouldn't normally care much about anime (well... in Asia and Europe at least...). |
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enurtsol
 Posts: 14761 |
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Studios don't get a cut of those merch revenue unless the studio also holds the merchandise rights. If the studio is just work-for-hire as is common, the other members of the production committee who hold those merch rights will be the ones collecting merch money. So the studios don't get anything unless the other members of the production committee share some of the merch revenue with them. |
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configspace
Posts: 3717 |
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Absolute no one can recoup money just based on 3000+ units per volume sales alone. It takes almost 8000. Regarding Nichijou, especially since it has high quality animation albeit with simpler designs, it was quite costly and this was confirmed with: animenewsnetwork.com/interest/2011-10-01/animator-shunji-suzuki-confirms-nichijo-r-15-itsuten-low-sales
It often takes several years for most shows to recoup or turn a profit, hence the necessity for a production committee system since no single studio or creator can churn out numerous shows at a loss or in debt for so long. In any case, disc sales, although it can be very profitable for only a handful of hit shows, are not the only means of income. Merchandise (figures, towels, mugs, toys, whatever), cards, books, games, manga, LN and pachinko licensing and foreign licensing are also other revenue streams for the committee (again, it can take a very long time). There was a report that showed overall, pachinko licensing brought in a little bit more money than anime  Those male-oriented shows that bomb as most do, can make it up here along with other sources above.
Even popular shows like Naruto (avg about 1000 dvds/vol) and other long running shounen anime are also very poor disc sellers. If the studios don't own or share the production rights and they don't for the majority of shows, then whether they sell 0 discs or a million units per volume does not matter. They are paid the same amount regardless. So this list from Yaron is mostly irrelevant because of that. It would be more enlightening to look at total revenue (and profit if possible) from all sources for every title over several years.
Yes, that's the tradeoff: removal of risk to the studios but no long term reward. However you have to about the converse: how else will those studios get the work if they don't have investors willing to throw a lot of money at them? Commitee members willing to take the investment risk and hire the studios now want to reap potential returns in the future. |
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Rederoin
 Posts: 1427 Location: Europa |
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I agree with a lot of people that is a rather bad list, for reasons already mentioned. But a lot of studios getting hired to do the animating a big one.
But sales of anime do matter to us, since they increase the chances of it getting a sequel, most of the time for late night series. While its nice to see the sales of the orginal source increase, its also a known fact that the 2nd boost from the anime(for late nigth tv anime) will be way smaller. While the BD drop for anime will be small, most of the time, or even increase(Hidamari sketch comes to mind). While its really hard to use BD sales as a milestone for Original series. But for adaptions of ongoing Manga and LNs(not including those on haitus), its way easier. I acteally compiled some info on that, from series between 2008 and 2011(back in July 2014, only added Drrr and Working afterwards). Its based on how many anime series got sequals based on the sales tier they are in(tiers are arbitrary). Copy & pasted,
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VORTIA
 SubscriberPosts: 941 |
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Exactly. This is a very misleading and skewed table. If every studio produced nothing but original works and relied solely on the sales of said disks for income, then this table would still fail to account for how a mega-hit like Love Live or Attack on Titan could easily sweep away the losses of several failed series. The reality, however, is that most anime studios are paid by a production committee to produce an anime as an advertising vehicle for a manga, light novel, video game, or other merchandising. Disk sales are a secondary concern for these anime, as the real money is expect to be earned elsewhere, and the studio has likely secured an upfront payment to cover costs from the committee itself. Ergo, 3k disk sales, the so-called "Manabi Straight line" where an anime recoups it's production costs, isn't a particularly important metric for production committee adaptations rather than original works. Kyoto Animation and SHAFT's placement at the top of the list is a simple reflection of a business model that focuses more strongly on original works for which Blu-Ray sales are the primary money-maker. Both are undoubtedly successful studios, but it's not clear simply from this chart how much more successful they are than studios like A-1, Dogakobo and JC Staff that concentrate heavily on animating established properties. If anything, the most telling entries on this chart are those for PA Works & Gainax. For studios that concentrate heavily on original works, PA Works has a very marginal ratio of successful titles to failures, and for Gainax, which was once a giant of original anime production, having a worse ratio than Studio Gonzo, which went into bankruptcy and barely survived being delisted from the Tokyo stock exchange, is cause for substantial alarm. In short, the real takeaway from this table is that making original anime instead of adapting an established property for a production committee is a risky proposition, and the only companies that are consistently successful doing so are doing so largely by catering to the specific otaku-moe-fujoshi demographic. Hideaki Anno may think the future of anime looks bleak, but that's probably because successful anime today doesn't look anything like what he's accustomed to making, and his old partners at Gainax are going down the tubes. Anime's probably just fine, but it's moe that sustains the market, and anything else is going to require an external cash infusion. |
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HeeroTX
Posts: 2046 Location: Austin, TX |
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I would say it is trying to tell a certain story, and it does that well. The narrative being put forward by this data is that certain studios know how to be "stable" vs what other studios do. The Bandai point is totally valid, but for other "bottom" studios, unless they are also INTENTIONALLY being backed by a major conglomerate, they are gambling every day. The MAIN piece of info missing from the data is "total disc sales/profit". As noted, you can have two studios, which BOTH sell 10 titles: -One studio has all 10 titles sell 3,500 discs -One studio has 9 titles that only sell 1,000 discs, but 1 title that sells 100,000 discs Which studio is more "successful"? In this case, I'd say it depends on your definition of success (assuming 3000 is "break even" in this example, which granted, may not be true). One company sold 35,000 discs TOTAL, and doesn't have any "failures". The other studio has many "failures" but has more money because of how big its one "hit" is. One studio (theoretically) will always have work even though it will never be a huge success. The other company has the potential for a huge payday, but can be gone in a flash if it can't find enough hits. |
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Angel M Cazares
 Posts: 5424 Location: Iscandar |
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I am very late to the conversation, but I will just say that the cynic in me thinks that these tables are clearly in response to Anno's recent comments on the anime industry.
P.S. I am also a big Production I.G fan. |
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HitokiriShadow
 Posts: 6251 |
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I'm sorry, but you somehow accidentally typed "SHAFT" in there. You must have meant some other studio.
And it was always a dumb thing to do. That was roughly the number one show needed to hit, it never meant that was the case for everything else. And the show was from like 2003, whatever little use it might have had is horribly out of date. |
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Jackanapes
Posts: 119 |
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Actually the table it links was uploaded to Yara-On on May 23 before he ever made those comments on May 25 so they're completely unrelated. If anything it seems like ANN is the one trying to draw the link. |
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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Is it just Blu-Ray discs now? How much of the market does it take up compared to, say, DVD? |
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mangamuscle
Posts: 2658 Location: Mexico |
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The numbers are the sum of blu-ray and dvds sales. I am surprised to see people still buying dvd releases of new shows, but in a slow economy the shift ought to be slow also. |
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leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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I buy them occasionally because whether a show is in HD or not, I don't care, and DVDs are cheaper to buy and to rent. I buy Blu-Rays strictly for the bonus content.
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mangamuscle
Posts: 2658 Location: Mexico |
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I still think the little dirty secret of why we are getting so many new anime shows the year after sales plummeted (if we remove Frozen from 2014 anime sales, they plummeted hard) is that with the use of cgi the cost of making many (albeit not all) shows has plummeted. It makes sense for shows like saekano. where cgi can replace most of the hand drawn animation, even in action heavy shows this can be done (see etotama). But of course no studio will say out loud that they have reduced their animation costs because the unanimous fan response would be "then why you have not reduced the disc prices?". |
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