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The Anime Economy - Part 1: Let's Make An Anime!

Lord Geo wrote:

The funny thing is that the R1 anime industry doesn't want to seemingly wait.

How many businesses do you know of that are super comfortable taking a loss on a product for years after release?

Like already mentioned, the break even manabi line of 2,000 copies is a myth, and despite the fact that Nichijou is higher cost in terms of more tweened frames (though certainly not more detailed or more complex), the fact that at ~4k copies "doesn't come close to breaking even" is still not a good sign.

If we then speculate that ok, Nichijou = twice the cost, therefore, 4k is the minimum break even line (going by his statement of "not even close"), that still leaves most other anime doing poorly in the first year at least if you look at sales figures, like R-15's and all others like it.

But I'm sure we'll get hard numbers in Justin's next report

Like already mentioned, the break even manabi line of 2,000 copies is a myth, and despite the fact that Nichijou is higher cost in terms of more tweened frames (though certainly not more detailed or more complex), the fact that at ~4k copies "doesn't come close to breaking even" is still not a good sign.

One longtime anime executive estimated that, given enough time, a good 70% of all anime eventually turn a profit. This happens over years of TV reruns, back catalog DVD sales, and re-releases internationally. The process is seldom rewarded quickly.

Similarly, anime DVD/BD releases tend to do the majority of their lifetime sales within the first week. After the first month, sales drop to almost nothing. The high pricetag of anime releases in Japan doesn't promote blind-buying, so once the hardcore fans have secured theirs, these discs aren't going to be moving very many copies at all.

In other cases, a media company will set about creating a new original work that can potentially make money in any number of ways: a popular show can be used to sell toys and model kits, or perhaps the company is really trying to sell a card game (like with Yu-Gi-Oh!). More often, their goal is to simply sell as many DVDs as possible.

But more often than not, the director just blows his deadlines, causing the entire production to run late. There have been incidents where the final master tape shows up at the TV studio only hours before it airs! Sometimes the production delays get so bad, the producer has no choice but to allow a hastily-edited recap episode to be inserted, buying the crew an extra week. (Recap episodes are seldom planned, and usually indicate chaos behind-the-scenes.)

No mother dreams of having an ugly baby, and yet ugly babies are born with astonishing regularity. Likewise, no producer dreams of making a terrible show, and yet they happen all the time. These days, most producers are rather hands-off when it comes to the creative decisions behind a show -- they often haven't gone to film or animation school, and so they'd much rather leave that to the talent.

I kinda wonder if this is still accurate nowadays. In Japan, the majority of anime series produced are aired late at night and the TV channels are paid to air them, right? Reruns are also presumably mostly limited to shows that are already succesfull, so i can't imagine an underperforming series ever benefitting significantly from TV re-airings as a source of income.

Similarly, anime DVD/BD releases tend to do the majority of their lifetime sales within the first week. After the first month, sales drop to almost nothing. The high pricetag of anime releases in Japan doesn't promote blind-buying, so once the hardcore fans have secured theirs, these discs aren't going to be moving very many copies at all.

As for international licensing... well, it is far from the goldmine it used to be back in the boom years.

The high pricetag of anime releases in Japan doesn't promote blind-buying, so once the hardcore fans have secured theirs, these discs aren't going to be moving very many copies at all.