Japan's Weekly Blu-ray and DVD Rankings for Mar 14 - 20

hpulley said:

They can read it here just as well as you can ;)

The comments here are just the tip of the iceberg of the general misconceptions around sales and the industry. Not just here but in Japanese media they often confuse rank for good sales. Getting people here and there to understand good sales or bad sales is very difficult, especially as there is very little information given out. Oricon is about the best we have but it is quite limited and thus our possible analysis is very limited. Understandably these businesses are in competition with one another and don't want their secrets known.

But let the cheerleaders cheer. We don't know the full picture and neither do they. We know so little that it is almost impossible for us to predict what will get a sequel and what will not. Cheerleading here is not heard by those in Japan. A few sales by the most dedicated of us doesn't count for much either. Legal streaming here counts for a lot more than it used to, so western audiences can have some effect by supporting their shows in streaming and buying regionally released media but it is still the Japanese fans, male and female otaku for most shows which have the most impact as they buy all the merch, go to the concerts, read the original material by the thousands and millions. So let the Mal cheerleaders have their fun.

Profit and loss is not the only part of the equation. Some shows seem to go on and on for purely emotional reasons. Even with all the concerts and merchandise I'm not sure if Milky Holmes ever made any money at all but it continues. Symbv told me there may be some sentimental value to it at Bushiroad but they aren't saying so we may never know.

@ichii_1 you can't just divide the budget you think you know by the disc price. That assumes that all the money goes back to them! It does not, not at all. If amazon charges $60 retail, the producers don't get $60; Amazon can offer 26% discounts because they likely take 50% of the money so they are only actually losing 13% with the discount; Aniplex has forced them to sell at full price with a small bonus but that hasn't changed anything much as they can still sell non-Amazon editions at a discount. The disc producer on the production committee may get most of the money from the discs, others may only get some royalties. The music producers may get most or all of the money from the CDs.

The original creator likely only gets a manuscript fee and very small royalties from disc sales; they actually make much more from a publication boost so the author of KonoSuba must be very happy with over 50K novels selling a week now -- she will get way more money from that than she will from 5x8K=40K discs. The publisher puts money up front for the production but doesn't share in the boost of the printing.

Many members of the production committee are there for selfish reasons and may not care if the Blurays sell as they may not get anything from them anyway; as long as Nana sells 75K discs and 100K concert tickets, the music people are happy; look at Nanoha Vivid, no Blurays for it at all but King Records still did fine with Nana and Yukarin's CDs selling. As long as Super Sonico sells more figures... you get the picture. They all put some money into it but those negotiations run deep and people try of course to put in as little as possible and get as much out as they can. Just good business....