Forum - View topicDisappointment in Cowboy Bebop?
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Spotlesseden
Posts: 3514 Location: earth |
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yeah, it could make a different. But for most anime the population almost never make any big different like eva, gundam unicorn, even the new series like k-on, madoka.... Anyway, my point was never about sales number. I don't even know how many dvds Cowboy Bebop sold in Japan. I just rarely see any Japanese list Cowboy Bebop on their top 10 anime list. Some people in 2ch list One Piece anime that don't even sell in dvd or bluray. |
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Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 23829 |
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Comparison of the US and Japan's population totals is pretty meaningless when trying to gauge relative popularity of any anime title. Obviously, the US has three times the general population. What is relevant is the size of the anime buying population in each country. For a country like the US, which has a very small anime buying community, to sell a million volumes of a non-Pokeman title is quite astounding. It means a title has reached outside the usual purchasing community.
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marie-antoinette
 Posts: 4136 Location: Ottawa, Canada |
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True and I don't think anyone is saying that it wasn't massively popular here. But the point I was trying to make is that saying it's massively popular because it sold 1 million in the US and that it ISN'T popular in Japan because it sold less than half of that is misleading because you aren't starting with the same number of people. I've always been under the impression that Japanese anime buyers are also small group, which is why the DVD prices there are so high (the fact that the Japanese bestselling DVD only sold $500 thousand units clearly supports this idea too, if US numbers get to the million mark). I could be wrong, of course, but to completely discount the difference in population numbers is nonsensical, at least not when you are using sales figures as evidence of popularity. |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23829 |
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I guess it's a personal thing whether you find general population numbers relevant in the context we are discussing here. I personally don't. Mainly because in this context, it tends to downplay the popularity of the title in the US (if that one million volumes figure is correct). It's one thing to say, hmm, there are 300+ million people in the US and a million volumes were sold. It's another thing to say, hmm, normally an anime title is lucky to sell 2,000 volumes in the US, this one sold a million. *shrug* |
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Divineking
 Posts: 1293 |
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Well this is just my opnion but I think liking something like Cowboy Bebop would kind of depend on what kind of anime fan you are.
If your for example the type who got into anime because it;s distinctly Japanese and are a huge fan of asian culture, something like Bebop wouldn;t really interest you since it;s almost unaplogetically western(not a bad thing of course. On the other and though if you got into anime mostly because you wanted to see more mature storytelling in cartoons rather than for the culture aspect then Bebop is most likely your up your alley. Obviously this isn't the case for everyone(and being on the latter of the two sides I can't speak for the other) but this seems to have been the case for fans I've seen that don't like Bebop. Especially since I;ve talked to someone who hates Bebop and yet likes Samurai Champloo despite the two shows having a very similar style and the same director. |
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marie-antoinette
Posts: 4136 Location: Ottawa, Canada |
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My problem with how the sales numbers were being used is that in my mind it seems as if it was being said that since Japan didn't sell one million, the anime was not as popular, despite the fact that it would be unheard of for an anime to sell that much, since the top selling release of all time only has half that number. If we were comparing Japanese sales figures to more Japanese figures, it works, but you cannot compare Japanese sales to North American sales without taking into account population and all the other variables without being completely misleading. |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23829 |
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Agreed, but that circles me back to my opinion that the general population variable is irrelevant. A cricket match that draws 10,000 spectators in the US would be considered a stunning success while that same number would be an embarrassment in, say, India. The relative size of the general population in each of those countries is irrelevant in that context.
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ikillchicken
 Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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I think you're both right here and are actually basically saying the same thing. You can't simply compare the sales numbers in the respective countries. You need to take into account a number of factors. Population is one. In a country with three times the population you're going to sell three times as much all else the same. However, at the same time, if the market for anime in general is a fraction of the size it is in Japan, you're going to sell a fraction of the number of copies. That doesn't mean that show specifically is less popular though. It just means that anime overall is less popular in America.
If we actually want to make an accurate comparison of the show's popularity relative to the respective anime markets then the easiest way to cut through all of this would be to simply compare the sales numbers to the average sales numbers in each respective country. Of course, this is all somewhat moot since the numbers people have posted aren't even comparable to begin with. We've got one total number which represents the number of units sold in the entire lifetime of the show and one that merely represents the numbers it did during it's very first run. |
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