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NEWS: Japan's Anime Internet Distribution Market Overtakes Home Video Market

Really depressing news

The total box office arising from U.S. animations in North America in 2018 recorded 1,639,010,000 U.S. dollars, 113.8% over the previous year. Looking at shares by studios, Pixar/Disney occupies 49.4%, overwhelming others; Illumination occupies 16.5%; and Sony Pictures Animation, which released three animation works in the year, occupies 21.8%. The three studios occupied 88.7% of the total. What was remarkable was Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, the Oscar winner for Best Animation Feature. Sony Pictures Animation won the Oscar for the first time with this work. Director Yoshiyuki Tomino quoted, “For Americans involved in the film industry, this animation would be the first theatrical animation produced ‘not for children’”. This has a significant meaning for the Japanese animation industry since it recognized that Hollywood has finally advanced into the realm overlapping with the adult animation market that had been Japan’s monopoly. If this trend shifts into high gear, the existence of Japanese animation may be questioned again.

I don't think I've ever seen any Americans describe Spider-Verse as "not for children" -- it got a PG rating. I wonder why it's perceived as such over there? I don't know much about Eirin, but I can't imagine them rating it R-15.

The internet distribution market was valued at 59.5 billion yen (about US$561 million), a 10.2% increase from the previous year. The home video market was valued at 58.7 billion yen (about US$553 million), a 23.3% decrease from the previous year, which marks the fifth consecutive year that the home video market decreased.

That's a 13.1% decrease overall. So how come the overall value of the anime industry has held steady? Is it the Western market, or an increase in the sale of peripheral doohickeys?

A lot of people in the industry mention the slowdown of the Chinese market as the major factor. It is widely known that China imposes strict regulations on expressions in media content, including movies and TV. On the other hand, the regulations on the Internet were considered rather mild until recently. China, however, decided to impose regulations as strict as those applied on the existing media on the Internet due to its growing impact. In addition, it decided to apply the censorship system for conventional media content to Internet content, too. As a result, the reluctance of buyers due to the concern over the impact of the regulations surfaced in the middle of 2018, although the regulations were unenforced until April 2019.

I don't think I've ever seen any Americans describe Spider-Verse as "not for children" -- it got a PG rating. I wonder why it's perceived as such over there? I don't know much about Eirin, but I can't imagine them rating it R-15.

First, it's important to look at the figures for the size of the market "in the narrow sense." That excludes overseas productions and other things we wouldn't consider to be part of the anime industry.

The summary noted that anime fans are spending less on the home video market due to the availability of other alternatives and diversification of consuming patterns.

The summary noted that continuous daytime anime aimed at kids and family have decreased, but late-night anime series aimed at adults have increased.

From the article wrote:

This has a significant meaning for the Japanese animation industry since it recognized that Hollywood has finally advanced into the realm overlapping with the adult animation market that had been Japan’s monopoly.[/b] If this trend shifts into high gear, the existence of Japanese animation may be questioned again.

yuna49 wrote:

First, it's important to look at the figures for the size of the market "in the narrow sense." That excludes overseas productions and other things we wouldn't consider to be part of the anime industry.

I've never been entirely sure, but I think that it means the portion of revenue going to the anime studios themselves?

Hollywood has not advanced into the realm of mature (usage of adult usually refers to porn) animation. Even it you considered "Spider-Verse" mature animation (which it is not), it would still be an outlier in the animation scene. America does produce mature animation of varying quality, but simply not in the numbers that Japan does.

There will be no questioning of the existence of Japanese anime. While Chinese animation is constrained by the dictates of it's Communist government, American animation is constrained by the American perception that animation is for kids, and the dictates of the religious right and the progressive left.

That still leaves Japan providing anime that hardly anyone else does since the 1980's and beyond.