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NEWS: Japanese Anime Home Video Commercial Sales Fall 16.6% in 1st Half of 2017


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SWAnimefan



Joined: 10 Oct 2014
Posts: 634
PostPosted: Mon Sep 25, 2017 10:44 pm Reply with quote
TheAncientOne wrote:
SWAnimefan wrote:
Makes me wonder if this also accounts for North America or just Japan.

Just Japan, as should be made clear by the beginning of the second paragraph of the article.

I'm curious what a graph of streaming revenue (within Japan) would show for the same period.

It isn't as if Japan is unique in the shrinkage of home video sales:
http://www.latimes.com/business/hollywood/la-fi-ct-home-video-decline-20170106-story.html


This is why I made that comment. Home Video Market sales is like looking at the Blockbuster sales in the US in the late 90s. There are stores outside the country that also are accounted for in the overall sales.

Then again, maybe referencing Blockbuster is exactly the reason why Home Video Market sales are down in Japan. Because the Japanese are slowly moving online to Netflix or VoD services, lessening the need to rent videos.


relyat08 wrote:
This should definitely not be seen as some kind of death sentence for anime, or even a bad sign at all. The market is simply transitioning. I'm glad that some people are starting to catch on here finally. Video sales are an overall surprisingly small source of income for the majority of anime.


In some respects, the Anime companies were one step ahead of other Japanese video companies in airing their shows on streaming sites. But they still been reluctant to fully embrace because of the fondness of those video stores. Though if they work with the stores like Animate, they still can sell physical medium at the same time advertising the digitial.
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luffypirate



Joined: 06 Oct 2006
Posts: 3186
PostPosted: Mon Sep 25, 2017 11:31 pm Reply with quote
Now is the time...I've started buying anime again! I will help save the industry! :p /s
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leatherhead333



Joined: 15 Aug 2013
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Location: Kansas
PostPosted: Tue Sep 26, 2017 11:40 am Reply with quote
relyat08 wrote:
Kadmos1 wrote:
With the age of streaming official streaming services, do you think that is a big factor or small yet significant factor?


It's a big and significant factor. Digital availability is so much better in Japan than it ever has been. Obviously more people are starting to take advantage of it. This should definitely not be seen as some kind of death sentence for anime, or even a bad sign at all. The market is simply transitioning. I'm glad that some people are starting to catch on here finally. Video sales are an overall surprisingly small source of income for the majority of anime.
Pre streaming era no. I'd say Disc sales still had a big say in whether something did good. Of course the bigger (typical shounen jump) shows can rely on other stuff but shows that don't hit it big the audience? Merch and ratings ain't going to make up most of the profit for them.
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relyat08



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PostPosted: Tue Sep 26, 2017 12:50 pm Reply with quote
leatherhead333 wrote:
relyat08 wrote:

It's a big and significant factor. Digital availability is so much better in Japan than it ever has been. Obviously more people are starting to take advantage of it. This should definitely not be seen as some kind of death sentence for anime, or even a bad sign at all. The market is simply transitioning. I'm glad that some people are starting to catch on here finally. Video sales are an overall surprisingly small source of income for the majority of anime.
Pre streaming era no. I'd say Disc sales still had a big say in whether something did good. Of course the bigger (typical shounen jump) shows can rely on other stuff but shows that don't hit it big the audience? Merch and ratings ain't going to make up most of the profit for them.


Exactly. Which is why we're talking specifically about right now and speculating about the future; a vastly different world. How it used to be is actually pretty much irrelevant.


Last edited by relyat08 on Wed Sep 27, 2017 11:52 am; edited 2 times in total
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leatherhead333



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PostPosted: Wed Sep 27, 2017 7:23 am Reply with quote
relyat08 wrote:
leatherhead333 wrote:

It's a big and significant factor. Digital availability is so much better in Japan than it ever has been. Obviously more people are starting to take advantage of it. This should definitely not be seen as some kind of death sentence for anime, or even a bad sign at all. The market is simply transitioning. I'm glad that some people are starting to catch on here finally. Video sales are an overall surprisingly small source of income for the majority of anime.
Pre streaming era no. I'd say Disc sales still had a big say in whether something did good. Of course the bigger (typical shounen jump) shows can rely on other stuff but shows that don't hit it big the audience? Merch and ratings ain't going to make up most of the profit for them.


Exactly. Which is why we're talking specifically about right now and speculating about the future; a vastly different world. How it used to be is actually pretty much irrelevant.[/quote]

It's still a good way to gauge the public interest though. If a series sells only like 800 copies for the first volume (which happens to several shows each season these days) I really don't believe that streaming revenue will make up for everything else. Overall I feel like streaming helps the shows that only do average sales wise the most. Popular shows don't necessarily need it (it's a big bonus of course but not having it wouldn't ruin them) and shows that sell fudge all obviously aren't going to get enough traffic to save them.
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relyat08



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PostPosted: Wed Sep 27, 2017 12:13 pm Reply with quote
leatherhead333 wrote:

It's still a good way to gauge the public interest though. If a series sells only like 800 copies for the first volume (which happens to several shows each season these days) I really don't believe that streaming revenue will make up for everything else. Overall I feel like streaming helps the shows that only do average sales wise the most. Popular shows don't necessarily need it (it's a big bonus of course but not having it wouldn't ruin them) and shows that sell fudge all obviously aren't going to get enough traffic to save them.


I would consider 800 copies pretty average these days. Have you seen the charts? It's pretty dismal.. And yeah, I would say that streaming helps shows that do average-to-poor on disc quite a lot, definitely, and I would consider anything up to 2000 to be pretty much within that. Streaming is also not the only form of revenue these shows get, naturally, though. International licenses, merchandise, source material, etc, makes up for a lot of the rest. As I've said before elsewhere, Disc sales can still make a show, but they can't break a show anymore. Popular shows can be successful based on their disc sales alone, but a show that has very poor disc sales can not be written off solely based on them. We have stuff like Kuromukuro, which according to people at PA Works who I talked to, did exceptionally well streaming on Netflix, yet it only sold an average of 1500 copies per volume. That was a success as far as they were concerned, but anyone just looking at the disc sales is going to think it flopped. The Great Passage sold like 500 copies of each Box Set and that apparently did fine as well. Rakugo Shinjuu was in the same area as Kuromukuro and got a sequel, etc. Anyway, yeah, low disc sales do usually indicate less interest, but not always, and what constitutes low sales is not necessarily what people think it is anymore. I get excited when anything I like sells more than 1000 copies, because the budget gap left to make up after that is easily within the scope of what other revenue streams, like streaming and international licenses, can manage.
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yuna49



Joined: 27 Aug 2008
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 28, 2017 10:17 am Reply with quote
I have to wonder about the demand for Kuromukuro and Fune wo Amu among Western audiences. Neither series generated much in the way of discussion on this or other anime sites I visit. Both were handicapped by being carried on services that have much more limited fan bases than providers like Crunchyroll or Funimation. Personally, I binge watched Kuromukuro after the series ended because of Netflix's annoying practice of bundling episodes together rather than airing them as they are released in Japan. By then even the fairly limited amount of discussion of that series had vanished to nothing.

Fune wo Amu isn't the sort of show to excite fans looking for those mainstays of anime like cute girls, ecchi scenes, or lots of fighting. It follows a bunch of people editing a dictionary. I think it was one of the better shows of 2016, but again it got little attention in the fanbase both because of its subject matter and because it was carried on Amazon.

I would expect the producers to make optimistic projections about the popularity of their shows.
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relyat08



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PostPosted: Thu Sep 28, 2017 12:51 pm Reply with quote
^I spoke to Aninabe at Otakon this year. It wasn't a projection, but a pretty confident statement to its success. I was lamenting the fact that Kuromukuro had gone under the radar and wasn't getting much discussion. I wasn't shown actual numbers, of course, but he seemed surprised that it wasn't getting much discussion and said that it continued to do extremely well on Netflix both internationally and in Japan. Maybe he was just trying to be positive, but I've talked to him on a number of occasions and I don't think he would outright lie about that.
I take this as one of those signs that Netflix is just a different audience. They aren't really part of this community, they don't hang out on forums or Facebook and talk about anime, but they watch it when it's on Netflix and, based on that conversation, stuff Justin has said, and other producers and directors, like Yuasa, stuff on Netflix tends to do significantly better than you would expect on a different service. I gotta imagine there is a reason they are willing to pay the money and that more studios continue to sign deals with them.
Lack of discussion doesn't really mean as much as maybe those of us in the community, especially those who dislike waiting on Netflix, seem/want to think. The internet fandom is still just a small portion of the actual fandom.
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Lord Oink



Joined: 06 Jul 2016
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 28, 2017 2:54 pm Reply with quote
relyat08 wrote:
^I spoke to Aninabe at Otakon this year. It wasn't a projection, but a pretty confident statement to its success. I was lamenting the fact that Kuromukuro had gone under the radar and wasn't getting much discussion. I wasn't shown actual numbers, of course, but he seemed surprised that it wasn't getting much discussion and said that it continued to do extremely well on Netflix both internationally and in Japan. Maybe he was just trying to be positive, but I've talked to him on a number of occasions and I don't think he would outright lie about that.


Does streaming profit really matter though? As far as disk sales go Kuromukuro and Dagashi Kashi sold roughly the same at 1500 per volume, which is pretty mediocre. The difference is Dagashi Kashi is based on a manga, which saw at least a double amount of sales after it aired, leading to a second season announcement. Kuromukuro was an original, so if the only supplemental revenue is streaming, then as a fan of both shows, my hopes for a second season of Kuromukuro isn't very high. I agree disk sales are less important these days, but streaming hardly seems like a major factor at play. Merch and manga sales are the figures to look out for.
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relyat08



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PostPosted: Thu Sep 28, 2017 9:33 pm Reply with quote
Lord Oink wrote:

Does streaming profit really matter though? As far as disk sales go Kuromukuro and Dagashi Kashi sold roughly the same at 1500 per volume, which is pretty mediocre. The difference is Dagashi Kashi is based on a manga, which saw at least a double amount of sales after it aired, leading to a second season announcement. Kuromukuro was an original, so if the only supplemental revenue is streaming, then as a fan of both shows, my hopes for a second season of Kuromukuro isn't very high. I agree disk sales are less important these days, but streaming hardly seems like a major factor at play. Merch and manga sales are the figures to look out for.


The answer to your first question is an unequivocal yes. That's a major point of this conversation. That streaming is a huge revenue generator for anime now and is entirely making up for the fall in disc sales. In fact, I would say it is more than making up for the fall in disc sales, especially when you take the international audience into consideration(China has over 200 million people watching anime on official streaming services). Disc sales matter more for originals, but they are not the only benchmark for success. I wouldn't expect a sequel to Kuromukuro, I don't think that was ever a possibility, but the show was most likely profitable. And I think averaging 1500 copies is pretty solid, to be honest. If a single Netflix deal presumably almost pays for an entire anime production by itself, than an additional 1500 for every BD volume will easily make up the rest. Half that would have probably been fine.
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