Forum - View topicAnswerman - How Can You Tell If An Anime Is Popular?
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joeydoa
Posts: 121 |
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Kemono Friends was released as stand alone units - each volume with two episodes along with an "extra" which in this case an official Kemono Friends guidebook (40 pages full color) with backstories, interviews etc in a nice slip cover case at around $37 (USD) a volume. |
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HanyouHime56
Posts: 3 |
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Speaking of Durarara!!, even though it's intent is not selling merchandise, there's a lot of it released in Japan and there is even more being released as tie ins to the anime series for Halloween even a year after it aired (though the manga and sequel novels are on going they are designed after the anime.) Merchandise sales probably play more of role than we think. Also Durarara!! had several promotional events, lotteries, and seiyuu events, which are probably another good gauge of a series popularity. Probably also if it spans across multiple media, it's a good sign of popularity.
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Samiamiam
Posts: 227 |
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Exactly. Thats about half the price of a normal BD with more content. |
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#861208
Posts: 423 |
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It's particularly frustrating for my favorite series - a 2D idol franchise that's been around for 4 1/2 years, just got an anime this past January, and has no mobile games (only an otome game and a Vita rhythm game). There's barely any fanart of it, but at the same time, there's tons of merchandise. It's getting pretty high billing at Animate Girls' Fest,
...... and of course, barely anyone outside of Japan notices it or cares, because it's based on material that hasn't been exported. .... I actually think that's a big problem... the amount of anime (especially bishounen-based/fujoshi-targeted anime) that fall flat outside of Japan because they rely so heavily on familiarity with pervious material that never gets exported - drama CDs and mobage, usually, but sometimes manga and novels. K: Return of Kings makes about no sense if you haven't read the prequel novels that were released between the first and second seasons. Judging by how little Viz seems to care about the series, I'm guessing it's not popular in North America, so that hurts the chances of the manga and novels getting licensed... but the manga and novels are necessary for the anime! Anime are rarely meant as stand-alone stories anymore, at least in the bishounen/fujoshi-targeted niche. I just.... really wish some of the other material would get licensed once in a while. (Tsukiuta, though.... Tsukiuta is better without the extra material. They have a penguin and a reindeer as pets in their dorm. And a demonic box of oranges. Yeah.)
This. Especially for fujoshi-targetted series (and yes, Durarara!! is a fujoshi show). The fujoshi anime market is such a specific thing, I really wish more things were exported... when I went to Japan, I was so surprised. The things you can get legally outside of Japan make up the smallest fraction of a tip of the iceberg... With Crunchyroll and things like that, a lot of times it really feels like the rest of the world has access to Japan's anime/otaku-media output, but we really don't... Last edited by #861208 on Fri Sep 29, 2017 3:24 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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H. Guderian
Posts: 1255 |
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To me popularity is just a thing to jab friends with. Sometimes we jab each other over which characters are best within a show. But if we're watching the trashiest trash of the year and having fun we could care less about what is most popular.
Now another thing you can use are the TV ratings! While this also isn't absolute, Sazae-san and Chibi Maruko-chan are a lot more popular than most of our odd otaku fare. Anyone who enjoys making comparisons will use all these sources and more, just for fun. Let me share a story, one fellow I know goes to cons and takes pictures of similar merchandise between rivals, and uses this to jab another friend all over which show is more popular. It isn't scientific, but hey, its fun if you're nice about it. |
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epicwizard
Posts: 420 Location: Ashburn, VA |
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I've been wondering about that, too. Thankfully, they show the number of ratings each episode gets. |
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EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
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That's not only funny, it pretty well wraps up the answer: As Oscar Wilde said, the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. Popular, by its very Greek root, means it's popular with the people--if we're including the fans  --and while sales and marketing can strategically "push" a title (coughnegima), if it's not connecting with the viewers, and striking a chord as something they want to talk, discuss, merchandise, fanart or doujin, it's not going to take root and hold after the marketers move on to something else.
Similarly, grass-roots fan word-of-mouth can elevate something unexpected out of nowhere, as with the Kemono example. The same can be said of anything, even movies, as we painfully saw last summer. |
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CatSword
 Posts: 1489 |
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This is actually a pretty smart method. It's how I learned that Granblue Fantasy: The Animation was amazingly popular over in Japan. (Of course, the DVD sales were great too, but I'd never even thought/expected the show to do those type of numbers until I saw the number of doujins.) |
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Koda89
 Posts: 278 |
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Pretty sure most of GBF's doujins came from fans of the mobile game not the anime. 
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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Another thing to consider is what your metric for a "popular" show is. Do you mean a show's profitability as a franchise? The healthiness of its fanbase? Its viewership? Its length? Its lastability? All of those are different in how you measure them. Different shows attract different people too. Something like Yo-kai Watch has a large viewership in Japan, a tiny viewership elsewhere, and relatively few core fans. Puella Magi Madoka Magica was a phenomenon in its own right but completely different in its viewership and its casual-core ratio. And then there's Cowboy Bebop, which is also undoubtedly quite popular, but more overseas than in Japan and, thanks to its run on Adult Swim, is pretty even between casual and core. Popularity doesn't even necessarily mean the people who made the show consider it a success. I can't read minds so I wouldn't know if there are any anime the consumers see as a success but the creators see as failures, however. (Theoretically, an anime with high viewership but struggling merchandise sales would be an example, though I can't think of any examples.) |
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Stuart Smith
 Posts: 1298 |
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It's a good measure for games as well. Games like those, as well as others like Fate, Granblue, Splatoon and Tales Of have a large number of doujinshi and are undenyably popular.
My go-to example of this is Chousoku Henkei Gyrozetter. That series got a large amount of doujinshi and art, but it was a kids show aimed to sell arcade machines and toys, and the arcade machines were utter failures, so it only lasted a year. Part of the dichonomy was that was the around the time kids were losing interest in mecha series, and only old farts like myself still think mecha is cool.
What do you consider a low amount? Searching for シンフォギア on Pixiv yields at least 11,000 results, which isn't bad. It also has a large number of doujinshi. -Stuart Smith |
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ultimatemegax
 Posts: 412 |
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Here's the public list of retailers that report their data to Oricon. You'll see Amazon.co.jp listed under ア. As you said though, they don't report shipments that are sent outside of Japan.
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Vaisaga
 Posts: 13224 |
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Putting aside massive hits like those, the amount of doujinshi a series has before getting an anime adaptation can indicate how popular it could be. Lots of artists are strictly anime fans, as such the anime is usually the first exposure to the property they get and you'll only see hentai pop up when the anime starts. But if a light novel or manga have stuff before the anime, then it'll explode even more. Haganai and Eromanga-sensei had a decent amount of doujinshi before their anime, and after those numbers skyrocketed. |
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Cutiebunny
 Posts: 1746 |
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But the fujoshi market outside of Japan, on the whole, is a small market when compared to the rest of the domestic US anime market. Something has to become a major hit, like Yuri on Ice, in order for US companies to take notice. They want to be assured that there is profit to made prior to licensing artwork for t-shirts, bags, and anything else they hope to make. Thanks to the various deputy services out there, pretty much everything is legally outside Japan. If you're not already using one, I'd recommend buying stuff on Yahoo Japan through these companies. Yes, you'll end up paying commission and shipping fees, but I prefer doing that than missing out on all the neat stuff out there. |
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Sakagami Tomoyo
 Posts: 940 Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia |
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Gods, I hate the Oricon figures. I am well and truly sick of people throwing them about and using them to claim that this show only selling this many copies is proof it's terrible, or that mediocre show selling lots means the industry's broken, or whatever.
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