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According to Mainichi Online, the number of visitors to Tokyo International Anime Fair 2009 were 130,000, which was the largest since its start in 2002. The event itself was successful, but the anime producers share a sense of crisis. The main concern is that the sales of anime DVD have reached the ceiling.

Here is the graph of the anime DVD sales in Japan between 1997 to 2008.

Created by dtshyk based on JVA data
The number in 2008 is the sum of DVD and BD sales.

The gap between the sales of successful and failed titles are increasingly large. In 2008, the sales of some successful titles were more than 100,000 copies per volume but the failed titles were sold only a few thousands or less. The anime producers regretted that they had been blinded by the competition and had released excessive number of titles. The number of titles to be aired this spring will be decreased by 30% compared to the last year.

Source: Mainichi
Source: AV Watch

Ref. TV Anime DVD Total Sales Ranking for 2008 (the total sales of the first volume)

Wait, so anime producers are working together to balance out the sales of anime, because anime such as Kaiba and Kaiji (picked two from the "out of the ranking" list) were terribly unpopular?
Or am I misunderstanding something here?

I like the move. This could mean higher budgets for the anime that does get made and lower prices.

You basically got the point. So anime producers think once a title fails to catch the attention of the fans, the sales will be miserable because there are a lot of competitors.

well then spring better be a fucking good season

I do hope so too.

Quality over quantity<3

Fuck.

This gives me so much hope for the anime industry. Not only do they realize they made a mistake but them fixing it will be good for the industry in general. I am increadably happy with this news.

Yeah, thought so. Well it's a good move then in my eyes, since a lot of good quality anime goes unnoticed.


lol, I assume that was out of annoyance and frustration at how ridiculously unpopular those two anime were/are.

Good news indeed, I was wondering how some studios even made money considering how bad sales for some anime were, despite how good they may have been. This will hopefully help a bit.

Its good to see that they are starting to get concerned that their shows don't sell . Hopefully from now on there will be less crappy shows out there and more better ones because people wont even bother to get stuff that they don't like even if they would be " free " to archive / collect * thinks about the internet * .

Ah, NO WAY! They finally noticed what everyone else knew already! O_O

I'm honestly doubtful. It's understandable, no doubt, as the bottomline has always been business. But good-selling anime doesn't necessarily equal quality anime. In fact, it's quite the contrary. The treasures are usually found at the rubble of the pile or at the middle, as they do not contain the typical mainstream elements. Seirei no Moribito comes perfectly to mind.

What's fantastic about anime is that there's always something for everyone. It doesn't matter the genre you like, how niche of a fan you are, you want quality, or plainly high entertainment value, you have it. Couldn't a balance of sorts be achieved? Perhaps, when things get better, the reward of creativity alongside the free flow of ideas will be allowed once again.

Note: I borrowed the quote above only to make a point about the topic. Sorry for the earlier confusion.

Bold strategy cotton

let's see if it pays off for them

finally. plz stop making dumb moe harem shit so people can retrain themselves to recognize good anime when they see it and not let anime like kaiji and real drive not even make the charts while strike witches and kanokon do.

that is one hell of a runon, but i'm too tired to fix it.

I'm not sure if I like this...

Sure there are alot of anime that are crap and don't sell...
But what this statement really says to me is... they don't want to take chances with anime they aren't sure will succeed... In other words... they're going to stick with "Formula" series instead of trying more original stuff. =/

Also... They need to take into account their sales based on the good anime that came out in 2008. Honestly... there haven't been any A+ original series for a long long time... The quality of their top series is also to blame. 3 of the top 5 series on that list are sequels for one... And Macross and Gundam are part of the larger series name... so they already have that as a selling point. But honestly... when you don't have original material for a while the market will go stale... Look at Hollywood >.<

Then there's the fact that the world economy as a whole has been slowly tumbling down tumbling down tumbling down >.>
I'd like to find a Japanese economic chart some where and compare it to this chart... I bet its similar...

Either way... news like this usually isn't good for the industry.

ditto

On the contrary, it's the dumb moe shit that sells. If companies are worried about their DVD sales, then Bluesnow is right, anime studios will be taking less risks on creative and original shows like Kaiba.

I think this is good and bad news. It might cut back on some of the crap that is produced but it could also see less risk taking as well. Just because a show sells well doesnt mean it was any good. Its a tough global economy though so ofcourse companies are going to turn to shows that will sell, since they are in the business of making money.