Forum - View topicINTEREST: Toaru Majutsu no Index Producer: 26-Episode Anime Costs 300 Million Yen
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Spotlesseden
Posts: 3514 Location: earth |
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Index sold about 25-30k Bluray per vols, maybe 1-3k dvd per vol.
24eps = 8 Volumes. I don't know how much do they make per bluray/dvd. Don't get they have to pay the TV station to put anime on TV, they have to pay the author, vendors get some money too. Lets say they make $20 per bluray that's 500k per vol. 500k x 8 = 4 millions. |
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Mr. sickVisionz
 Posts: 2173 |
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If 26 is like $3.85M is it safe to assume that 13 is in the area of $1.925M?
I just did a quick browse of stuff and it doesn't seem like 26 episode series have double the volumes as a 13-episode one does. Ignoring artistic merits, why on earth would anyone greenlight a 26 episode series given that? It seems like it would be an uphill struggle off rip with the 1-2 punch of increased cost and fewer releases per episode. Even if you knew you had a major guaranteed hit on your hands, why not split it into two separate seasons with time between them so that you could release two 6 volumes sets rather than one 9 volume set? |
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samuelp
Industry Insider
Posts: 2231 Location: San Antonio, USA |
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No, it's not. The animation costs are doubled (or close), but the marketing costs and planning costs are not doubled. You only need 1 website, 1 marketing team, etc... Like everything, it's cheaper (per episode) the more episodes you make... I bet 13 episodes would cost more like 2.5-2.75 million. But again this varies a LOT based on where the show airs and how much marketing and animation budget there is. |
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Cecilthedarkknight_234
 Posts: 3820 Location: Louisville, KY |
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well i do know that each volume sells around 70-100us dollars so if index sold 240,000 copies per say that would be 100 us dollars times that would total around 21,600,000 million us dollars if i did the math right on blu ray alone .. i think index will be fine "this is a rough estimate I am not sure but eh then like you said add in cost to make them and this does not include dvd sales or limited edition sales. |
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maaya
Posts: 976 |
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That's what the sponsors are for, I suppose? Those who are always credited right after the opening and again at the end of the show. And that's why the sponsors also have quite a say concerning which anime gets produced and how. |
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enurtsol
 Posts: 14766 |
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$3,850,000 for 2 cours............ That's about $15,000 per episode........... No wonder the animators aren't paid a living wage.
For contrast, the GitS:SAC series had a budget around $10,000,000. And in North America, at the very least, an episode would cost $200,000 minimum.
Well, if the "production committees" are more willing to share the revenue, or the anime studios do not keep undercutting each other ("remember, the anime you watch is made by the lowest bidder"), or rather than paying for the timeslots they'd have commercial advertisers pay instead, and of course start a syndication........ For instance, The Simpsons is most expensive all around, from animation to voice actors, at least $5,000,000 per episode. But to help pay for it, a 30-sec ad cost ~$250,000 - and there's 9 minutes worth of ads ($250,000 x 18 = $4,500,000 per episode). The rates are even better on the web: TV broadcast ads during The Simpsons cost $20-$40 per thousand viewers; on the web, the rate jumps to $60; but before we all declare TV dead, remember that Hulu has only 37 secs of ads per "30-minute" show. And then there's syndication: each of the show's 506 episodes could get as much as $1.5 million each in syndication, totaling about $750 million. So there's a lot of money to pay for it - and these don't even yet include the home video and merchandise sales! |
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Megiddo
 Posts: 8360 Location: IL |
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The amount of math errors with simple addition/multiplication/division in this thread is really astounding.
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Ermat_46
Posts: 726 Location: Philippines |
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(1) Who's willing to share some of his/her profit? I don't know any. (2) Main purpose of producing late-night anime is for DVD/BR sales. They purchase time slot from TV Stations to advertise the DVDs. If they want to have ads sponsoring them instead, they'll be forced to make mainstream anime like Naruto/Bleach/<some>/etc. (3) There are too many anime studios. If each anime studios are desperate to have a project, then undercutting is inevitable. EDIT: Another related image I got from /a/, though I don't understand what all the arrows mean. 
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configspace
Posts: 3717 |
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It turns out to be actually higher than that for most, if not all now. The Manabi line is mostly a myth [*] since in reality it can't be such a "hard" or even common threshold; perhaps from some 2ch trolling which may or may not have a basis in truth. if it was based on some fact, I can see how it *may* have been true for some particular show a while ago where that figure itself may be accurate but not be complete i.e. studio costs, but not many other significant costs that the production committee has to deal with. Also, WRT to video disc sales, look at actual street price of ~6000 yen per volume (Index II vol 8 BD is currently ￥5,463) -- then take roughly half or at best 2/3 of that for net revenue, so now about ~3000 yen per volume. Furthermore consider what this animation director reported about Nichijou, R-15, Itsuten not breaking even from a meeting concerning sales of titles up to July:
who by the way, also goes on to say about Index:
Nichijou's first week sales in June was 3,544 / vol. Since that was only for its first week, we can round it up to at least 4,000 by end of July, a month later, which might be a bit conservative. Still, if he says that alone isn't even close then even if Nichijou's production values were higher, it still lends credence to the fact that most anime of ALL types have trouble breaking even, including whatever people like to bash It's the same reason why this Square-Enix producer can proudly claim "hey nothing we've worked on has lost money!" ... which is ironic considering anywhere else that's not normally an achievement 
However, I think people should also realize that anime video sales in Japan at least make up the minority of most sales. People buy a whole heck of a lot more figures, games, douinshi products and other merchandise related to the anime than the anime itself! It's the case for all but a handful of shows (e.g. all but the top 20 out of the ~150 or so anime shows every year) which makes sense to me, considering how expensive anime is compared to the affordability of the merchandise, hence the famous 2ch maxim: "anime is for rich people" 
[*] coming back to the mythical manabi line (which was originally quoted as 2,000 / vol (assuming 2 ep)).. that is still suspiciously low. Initially I didn't think about, since I figured, well animators are paid peanuts. Perhaps it might be true only if you factored the studio (i.e. animation) contract alone. However, even so, it turns out the total expenditure the producer committee have to deal with make the studio costs a minority of total cost. (Caveat: that's from below, which is translated from this METI 2003 report, which itself indicates the studio cost rising, though still smaller than others combined) For example in the above article, the Squeenix producer mentions the cost of the broadcast timeslot which late-night anime must pay themselves, unlike American tv shows which are financed by the broadcaster:
Furthermore there is really great info (via bayoab from ADTRW) that details all the production costs from METI with real shows, though some data is a bit old: http://bakudon.net/news/2008/02/27/financials-heaven-hell-reality-three-looks-at-the-business-of-animation-production-part-1-the-animation-industrys-circumstances-and-challenges http://bakudon.net/news/2008/02/27/financials-heaven-hell-reality-three-looks-at-the-business-of-animation-production-part-2-gundam-00-dvd-sales http://bakudon.net/news/2008/02/27/financials-heaven-hell-reality-three-looks-at-the-business-of-animation-production-part-3-an-examination-of-the-production-costs-of-bamboo-blade EDIT: just noticed Ermat's post. FYI it's one of the graphs from part 1 above, source 2003 METI report: http://www.meti.go.jp/policy/media_contents/downloadfiles/kobetsugenjyokadai/anime200306.pdf
I'll just quote aohige@ anime-suki:
Well, regardless of how you feel about other players, you'll notice companies like Dentsu on everything. Watch for Dentsu at the end of the Bleach and a ton of other OPs for example (before the "kono bangumi wa ..." sponsor jingle) Last edited by configspace on Wed Nov 30, 2011 6:25 am; edited 2 times in total |
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Megiddo
Posts: 8360 Location: IL |
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That quote was not referring to Index. Index II was a Fall show. |
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configspace
Posts: 3717 |
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The meeting concerned video sales. Index II's video sales started on 1/26/2011 for vol 1 to 8/24/2011 for vol 8. |
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 7580 Location: Wales |
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2-3 episodes per disc is common regardless of length. Examples from my collection: Lucky Star and Kiddy Grade were 12 volumes for 24 episodes. Dennou Coil and Gigantic Formula were 9 for 26. Manabi, Air and Uta Kata, all single cours series, were 6 volumes for the TV episodes with extra OVA discs.
The sponsors are often part of the production committee anyway... |
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jtstellar
Posts: 94 |
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lol.. simpsons don't get that much of a competition here.. in a place where economy is even stronger than japan, at least before the financial crisis hit.. if you wonder the state of competition in the industry of 2d arts in the united states, well.. just look around. comparing achievement levels in salary between a highly competitive market and a not-so-competitive one is comparing apples and oranges. language barrier insulates much of us' 2d works from foreign competition, considering wealth is held increasingly up the age ladder, and the older you are, the less likely you're going to obsess over anything non-english, influenced directly and proportionally by internet usage and internet advertising.
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Chrno2
 Posts: 6171 Location: USA |
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Wow, 3 mil? That's small but still quite a bit of money. I always wondered about what it costs to produce an animated series. I would love to see (read, hear) more lecture info of this type in the future.
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Megiddo
Posts: 8360 Location: IL |
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Yes, and January is not considered spring. And selling 18k copies of vol. 1 in January would mean that it would not be the topic of discussion for a magical girl show thought to might have problems selling in the spring. |
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