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Answerman - Why Are Anime DVDs More Expensive Than Western Animation?

I took just economics in my senior year of high school, and it covered this. You know how they say as the price falls, more will buy, or as the price goes higher, less will buy? If there's inelastic demand, it means no matter what the price, about the same people will buy it. Like one thing people have an inelastic demand for is gas, no matter how high the price goes up, people still buy it because they need it. Groceries are another thing people have inelastic demand for, as the price goes up or down, sales don't dramatically increase.

wouldn't a big factor in this be that anime has to be imported from japan so the price is to cover the shipping costs whereas cartoons don't have to be imported? however i do think it would be interesting to see how it is the other way around like how expensive cartoon DVD's are in japan!

I remember working in a Suncoast store in the 1990's and having to watch the disappointment on people's faces as we told them the new release that just came out that day on VHS that we didn't have in stock that they wanted us to order would cost them $100+...or they could check back in about 6 months time & it should be available at a realistic price.

Initially VHS tapes of recent movie releases were all high priced, in the $70 to $90 range. Most were sold to video rental stores which seemed to pop up on every block. When Tomb Raider came out on tape they decided to try a much lower price point. It reportedly sold so well that it became obvious that for main stream stuff this was the way to go.

Nowadays is no different, grab any anime disc you have bought and in the fine print in the back cover it will say it is for domestic use only, further down it will say you have no right to use it to copy, edit, recruit, lend or public exposure (as in, any anime convention).

I took just economics in my senior year of high school, and it covered this. You know how they say as the price falls, more will buy, or as the price goes higher, less will buy? If there's inelastic demand, it means no matter what the price, about the same people will buy it. Like one thing people have an inelastic demand for is gas, no matter how high the price goes up, people still buy it because they need it. Groceries are another thing people have inelastic demand for, as the price goes up or down, sales don't dramatically increase.

Yup, Alan nailed it.

Basically, VHS tapes were 'rental' priced ($100+ each) to discourage your average Joe Six-Pack from buying it outright, and rather, going to his local video store to rent it instead as part of an agreement between the studios & video rental stores. You could then either buy a discounted, previously-viewed VHS from said rental store a few months down the road, or finally buy it outright, new, at a regular price a few months after even that...it was generally 6 months after it was released to rental that the movie made it out to retail at a $20 or so pricetag

If the consumer could buy the new-release movie for $20 or less, like they can now, why the hell would they go to a store & rent it?

I remember working in a Suncoast store in the 1990's and having to watch the disappointment on people's faces as we told them the new release that just came out that day on VHS that we didn't have in stock that they wanted us to order would cost them $100+...or they could check back in about 6 months time & it should be available at a realistic price.

Oh yeah, that made me think about how even when you're screening something for a school, you have to get permission. I'm sure there are a ton of cases of doing it secretly though. I doubt Disney gets much money from every math class showing Donald Duck in Mathmagicland every year.

Brand wrote:

I think the thing here is with streaming you can watch all those one and done series and not have to buy them. As you know back in the day if you wanted to watch a series you just had to take the chance on it and buy it (or maybe borrow it from a friend). Now you can watch it first and then if you really like it buy it. But I am going to guess most people watch a series only once. So, no need to buy DVDs.

Not sure if that was a thing. Before our recent streaming age, you usually watched your TV show on TV/Cable, and then decided to buy it if you were a fan. Some may have bought the DVD before watching the show, but I would have thought that would be the exception and not the rule. Who knows though, I could be completely wrong..

This answer begs the question, what will happen as anime becomes more mainstream? ATM The 7 deadly sins is a hit in netflix and like other netflix exclusives, it will be released in disc, probably next year. I bet it will be sold at Target, Walmart and similar mainstream outlets for a price similar to western produced animation series and chances are the company to get the disc distribution rights will not be one that specializes in anime. Something similar has already happen with Jojo season 1, which was released by warner home video. Of course I could be wrong, we are living in interesting times.

Huh, I was completely unaware of that system. The $100+ tapes...were they advertised in any way? I always assumed, from that age until now, that companies would just release a tape about 8 months to one year after a movie came out for $20 or so. I figured that people would go out to rent a tape because it was $5 to rent, a quarter of the price of buying the tape. That being said, the local video rental stores never seemed to have any releases ahead of time--by the time they appeared in the New Releases section of these Blockbusters, they're already at $20 to buy. Or is L.A. special due to its proximity to Hollywood and it bypasses the $100+ system completely? (I never actually visited a video rental store until about 1994 though.)

It may also interest you to know that a similar "dual price point" model still exists today with e-books. I work for a public library, and the way e-books work in the library world is that we buy a certain number of licenses to a title, just like we'd buy a certain number of physical books. So if we buy ten licenses for an e-book then ten of our customers can have that e-book borrowed at a time; everyone else has to wait until one of them gets "returned". And to buy a hot bestseller the publishers typically charge us around $75-$100 per license, versus the $10-$15 you as a private customer would pay to buy it for your Kindle (and unlike the video store we're lending it to you for free, so we're not going to make up that cost). And lest you think that since it's electronic we'll have it forever once we've paid, we don't. Most of the ebook publishers only allow libraries a set number of checkouts per license (typically around 25-30), and after that we have to pay again if we want to keep it available for people. We don't pay overinflated prices for any other types of materials - in fact, we can usually get books and DVDs from specialized library vendors for less than retail price since we buy them in bulk. It's just the electronic items, ebooks and e-audiobooks, that are so expensive.

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The less nerdy parts of the DVD/BD sales landscape is a little behind in transforming to a collector's market, but in a few years, they may look more like the anime market: slightly higher prices, and more limited editions, aimed at collectors.

Hope not. It would be a sad day.

Personally I find the Anime DVD/blu-ray prices in North America pretty reasonable especially the Limited Edition DVD/blu-ray combo pack from Funimation an entire 12 episode series for 69.99 is a bargain compared to Japan and if you really look around the Internet you can find said series for 45 bucks or less So it's all good ITS ALL GOOD!!!