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NEWS: Japan's Anime Market Hits Record High for 6th Consecutive Year


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Aca Vuksa



Joined: 22 Mar 2018
Posts: 643
Location: Nis, Serbia
PostPosted: Fri Nov 29, 2019 3:21 pm Reply with quote
Good to see anime market growing away stronger, what about a manga market?
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Kougeru



Joined: 13 May 2008
Posts: 5521
PostPosted: Fri Nov 29, 2019 3:49 pm Reply with quote
still real shame about the home video and merchandising markets. Quality is being sacrificed for quick short-term access, in the long run. Overall quality is also much lower and I don't mean just production. As someone that watches almost all non-kid's shows each season, to me it's obvious that the industry is clearly focusing on quantity rather than quality and I hope that reverses soon.
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Blanchimont



Joined: 25 Feb 2012
Posts: 3426
Location: Finland
PostPosted: Fri Nov 29, 2019 6:11 pm Reply with quote
Aca Vuksa wrote:
Good to see anime market growing away stronger, ...

It grew. But just in case it went unnoticed, it helps to read the article carefully;
Quote:
On the other hand, the home video and merchandising rights markets decreased by 23.3% and 4.4%

That trend is somewhat counteracted by rise in streaming;
Quote:
...and streaming, with 10.2% growth
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Shay Guy



Joined: 03 Jul 2009
Posts: 2093
PostPosted: Fri Nov 29, 2019 6:20 pm Reply with quote
Aca Vuksa wrote:
Good to see anime market growing away stronger


That's not my takeaway. My takeaway is that since 2012, the industry's been growing 8% to 11% per year -- and now suddenly, growth is practically flat. It's even more startling if you zoom in on the overseas market, which tripled from 2014 to 2017 -- an average of 45% annual growth -- then grew a measly 1.45% in 2018. That's very nearly hitting a brick wall.

I notice that Amazon shut down Anime Strike in January 2018. That could have contributed. Unfortunately, the English PDF summaries of these reports don't break down overseas revenue by streaming vs. disc rights/royalties or whatever -- there's just a page with a one-paragraph summary and a breakdown of number of contracts by region/country/language. Not even a revenue-by-country breakdown.

What I do see in the last two summaries, though, is that 2017 reportedly had only 2408 overseas contracts, in comparison to 6639 contracts the year before. Not sure what was going on there; maybe more anime bundled into fewer contracts? Not much of a drop in US-specific contracts, anyway. There are Stories there, and I'd be very interested to learn just what's going on behind these numbers.
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Top Gun



Joined: 28 Sep 2007
Posts: 4566
PostPosted: Fri Nov 29, 2019 7:01 pm Reply with quote
Maybe the more concerning part is that these increased profits are split over WAY more series each year than even half a decade ago. Everything's stretched very thin.
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bennyl



Joined: 06 Apr 2019
Posts: 123
PostPosted: Fri Nov 29, 2019 7:13 pm Reply with quote
It can't be coincidence with AT&T picking up Crunchyroll and Sony buying Funimation that revenues flatlined. They are probably going to be pushing licencing fees down.
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NOGI48



Joined: 14 Feb 2016
Posts: 70
PostPosted: Fri Nov 29, 2019 7:33 pm Reply with quote
Japan needs to stop putting these DVD/Blu-ray boxsets that only have 3-5 episodes in $60. That's the main reason why home video sells are decline.
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nDroae



Joined: 26 May 2017
Posts: 382
PostPosted: Fri Nov 29, 2019 8:27 pm Reply with quote
NOGI48 wrote:
Japan needs to stop putting these DVD/Blu-ray boxsets that only have 3-5 episodes in $60. That's the main reason why home video sells are decline.

It's generally assumed that they're priced at the point of maximum profitability in the Japanese market - that a few people willing to spend huge amounts profit the seller as much as or more than would a lot of people willing to spend much less. I'd like to believe that's not true, but I don't.

People everywhere just don't want to deal with physical media anymore.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/04/dvd-and-blu-ray-sales-nearly-halved-over-five-years-mpaa-report-says/
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Rika Hue



Joined: 19 Dec 2015
Posts: 147
PostPosted: Fri Nov 29, 2019 8:59 pm Reply with quote
I don't know how much each franchise contributes to the overall profit, but there was the boom of Sword Art Online, Attack on Titan, and even Frozen a few years ago to remember. Maybe Demon Slayer, My Hero Academia, and Frozen II will push sales a bit next year. On the other hand, as painful as it is to think about, the hit to Kyoto Animation this year may have an effect on next year's numbers, as I assume Free! etc has an noteworthy effect on overall sales.

Hopefully we get some quality hits next year that can boost sales and enthusiasm! I think everyone is on the edge of their seats waiting for the next big thing after Kimetsu no Yaiba and~ and~ and~. All we can do now is support the shows we love however we can - whether it's (legal) streaming, going to movie premieres, buying merc / discs, etc!

If nothing good happens, there' always everyone's 'plan to watch` list that could use some love and care Wink <3
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The Hollow Shrine



Joined: 07 Apr 2015
Posts: 38
PostPosted: Sat Nov 30, 2019 1:57 am Reply with quote
In other news, anime continues to be complete donkey s#!t for 6th consecutive year. Way to go, Japan.
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configspace



Joined: 16 Aug 2008
Posts: 3717
PostPosted: Sat Nov 30, 2019 3:32 am Reply with quote
Blanchimont wrote:
Aca Vuksa wrote:
Good to see anime market growing away stronger, ...

It grew. But just in case it went unnoticed, it helps to read the article carefully;
Quote:
On the other hand, the home video and merchandising rights markets decreased by 23.3% and 4.4%

That trend is somewhat counteracted by rise in streaming;
Quote:
...and streaming, with 10.2% growth

True, but it also stated that even more of that growth is accounted for by live events at 23.1%
I assume this is where Japan benefits most. What I find surprising in looking at the graph,that the global revenue (solid line), which also flat-lined, hasn't caught up to the money made from the much smaller Japanese audience (dotted line)
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jellybeanbandit



Joined: 18 Jun 2019
Posts: 107
PostPosted: Sat Nov 30, 2019 7:04 am Reply with quote
Shay Guy wrote:
I notice that Amazon shut down Anime Strike in January 2018. That could have contributed. Unfortunately, the English PDF summaries of these reports don't break down overseas revenue by streaming vs. disc rights/royalties or whatever -- there's just a page with a one-paragraph summary and a breakdown of number of contracts by region/country/language. Not even a revenue-by-country breakdown.


I doubt that had anything to do with it. America isn't a big portion of the overseas market to flatline the entire overseas market because one streaming service quit. Something in Korea, China, or even Europe would have more effect since they're much bigger markets. Especially not something like Amazon.

configspace wrote:
I assume this is where Japan benefits most. What I find surprising in looking at the graph,that the global revenue (solid line), which also flat-lined, hasn't caught up to the money made from the much smaller Japanese audience (dotted line)


You got it backwards, mate. Dotted line is overseas. Solid line is Japan.
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Mr. sickVisionz



Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 2171
PostPosted: Sat Nov 30, 2019 8:33 am Reply with quote
I can't read the chart titles and there's no English subtitle under the images, but if the first chart is total market value and the second is the split between domestic and international, it's interesting that the total market basically mirrors what the international market does.

Especially in some of those years where the domestic market is like ~75% of the market and going in the opposite direction of the international one, yet the total market chart looks much more like the international one.
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yuna49



Joined: 27 Aug 2008
Posts: 3804
PostPosted: Sat Nov 30, 2019 1:08 pm Reply with quote
Shay Guy wrote:
I notice that Amazon shut down Anime Strike in January 2018. That could have contributed.

Amazon hasn't stopped licensing series, but they still only pick up two or three shows per season. That's not a whole lot less than Strike was licensing when it was in operation. More likely Amazon discovered that most of its Prime subscribers were not interested enough in anime to pay an extra $5-6/month for it.

Amazon still has pretty decent taste in the shows they select. Right now they are carrying Vinland Saga, Blade of the Immortal, Babylon, and Psycho-Pass 3. Mostly they leave slice-of-life shows to Crunchyroll and Funimation with the recent exception of Girls' Last Tour, hardly a typical SOL offering.

I suspect the growth in streaming revenues came mostly from Asian markets including Japan itself. In past years most of the growth came from China. Remember, too, that these figures include a lot of things beyond the productions themselves. According to the article, the biggest growth in revenues came from events. Prior reports also included things like Pachinko licensing fees. I believe the total also includes sales of foreign-produced content (e.g, from Disney) in Japan. The AJA casts its net widely to make the industry seem larger and more influential.
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Jose Cruz



Joined: 20 Nov 2012
Posts: 1767
Location: South America
PostPosted: Sat Nov 30, 2019 4:22 pm Reply with quote
yuna49 wrote:
I suspect the growth in streaming revenues came mostly from Asian markets including Japan itself. In past years most of the growth came from China. Remember, too, that these figures include a lot of things beyond the productions themselves. According to the article, the biggest growth in revenues came from events. Prior reports also included things like Pachinko licensing fees. I believe the total also includes sales of foreign-produced content (e.g, from Disney) in Japan. The AJA casts its net widely to make the industry seem larger and more influential.


The best statistic is the "studio revenues" which is the actual money that goes into the animation studios. They have not released this data yet, but in 2017, the estimated revenues of all domestic commercial animation studios were 241 billion yen compared to 2,153 billion yen size of "animation revenues". It tends to follow the trends of the bigger number but the growth is more limited when there is an increase in "overseas revenues" because these overseas revenues consist of a smaller proportion of studio revenues: in 2017 only 22% of studio revenues come from overseas, an increased amount from 2012 when only 8% was overseas revenues.

Eventually, I think that the majority of anime studio revenues will be overseas but that might still take 10 years to happen. With international streaming services increasing in importance (Netflix, Amazon, Crunchyroll and the Chinese services).
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