Noitamina Suffers From the Discrepancy between Rating and DVD Sales

by dtshyk
Apr 16, 2009 7:25 PM | 16 Comments

Tsukuru magazine May issue reported the present situation of anime. In one of the articles, they focused on Fuji TV's programming block "Noitamina", which targets at the young female audiences. Matsuzaki Yoko, the chief program organizer, feels that the Noitamina business scheme has already reached its limit of capacity. She pointed out the discrepancy between the rating and the DVD sales, especially for titles like "Hataraki Man", "Honey and Clover II" appealing to the general audiences.

Ref. The relationship between the average ratings and the DVD sales of Noitamina anime
Rank/ Rating/ DVD Sales/ Title (**,***: unmeasurably small sales, --,---: not yet released)
*1, 4.800% *6,531 Hakaba Kitarou
*2, 4,627% *3,873 Nodame Cantabile Paris Chapter
*3, 4,564% *8,496 Moyashimon
*4, 4,439% *8,788 Nodame Cantabile
*5, 4,009% **,*** Hataraki Man
*6, 3,509% **,*** Ayakashi - Japanese Classic Horror
*7, 3,500% *6,378 Jyu Oh Sei
*8, 3,483% 12,515 Mononoke
*9, 3,475% *9,338 Toshokan Sensou
10, 3,450% **,*** Antique Bakery
11, 3,327% --,---　Genji Monogatari Sennenki
12, 3,250% *6,110 Honey and Clover II
13, 3,192% **,*** Paradise Kiss
14, 3,046% 11,039 Honey and Clover

**, 4.000% --,---　Higashi no Eden (average of episode1 and 2)

The income from the TV ads is insufficient to pay the high production cost of anime. Moreover, the economic recession demands a short-term recovery of the investments. "The ratings of Noitamina anime are pretty high, but the drop in the DVD sales was worse than we expected."

Fuji TV producer Yamamoto Kouji anticipates "Higashi no Eden" will resolve the dilemma between the rating and the DVD sales. "The main target of Eden is the core anime fans, but we also carefully arranged the anime not to repel the young female viewers. That's why we chose Umino Chika as the character designer."
Yamamoto said "Genji Monogatari Sennenki" was one of the greatest masterpieces of Noitamina, but it failed to become a big hit. He admitted they are still repeating trial and error for the establishment of the business model.

Source: Summary of Tsukuru
Source: Nikkei Trendy

16 Comments Recent Comments

BigSimo said:

Plate said:
And here I'm female and I hate the Eden character designs. :<
Actually I haven't found anyone who even likes them...

I LIKE THEM. I'm a dude though.

I LOVE them, and I'm a dude too. I'm also a huge Honey and Clover fan, so...

To get back on the topic, this article is very interesting, but I think you should add to that the BD sales in 2009 and 2010, since they are raising significantly these days in Japan.

Apr 16, 2010 10:18 AM by Jacut

Plate said:
And here I'm female and I hate the Eden character designs. :<
Actually I haven't found anyone who even likes them...

I LIKE THEM. I'm a dude though.

May 4, 2009 12:51 AM by simo000

Plate said:
And here I'm female and I hate the Eden character designs. :<
Actually I haven't found anyone who even likes them...

I second this (also female). I'm not fond of the character designs yet I like all the background stuff. AND THE OPENING ANIMATION SEQUENCE. <3 But I find the character designs are really mediocre to the point of being bad.

May 4, 2009 12:02 AM by adamantine

blame the internet for making access too easy

Apr 19, 2009 8:32 PM by dawnwan

And here I'm female and I hate the Eden character designs. :<
Actually I haven't found anyone who even likes them...

Apr 17, 2009 2:59 PM by Plate

Considering it costs 3k yen for an CD album in Japan, that's not really the case. That's why region coding is there... Japanese is a high earning, high spending economy.

Apr 17, 2009 12:31 PM by BasakaNZ

infinite_zero said:
Too much shows, too much competition, too little people buying, too much people haxing it off the internets...

Too fucking expensive is more like it. That and limited availability, at least outside Japan.

Apr 17, 2009 7:52 AM by kuroshiroi

Too much shows, too much competition, too little people buying, too much people haxing it off the internets...

Apr 17, 2009 1:12 AM by BasakaNZ

Torisunanohokori said:
Drop in the drop in the bucket then.

There are probably other sources of revenue involved that we're not considering, then, because then one would need roughly 115,000 DVDs sold (average 30,000-40,000 per volume) to hit break-even with a 12-ep anime. Barely anything sells that much.

According to Taniguchi Goro, the director of Code Geass, 70% of the TV anime go into the red.
Source:NB Online News

And we need to keep it in mind that the anime producers ship more to the retailers. So the actual sales for the producers are 1.5 - 2 times more than the Oricon DVD sales data. It's a consensus among the DVD sales freaks that 5,000 copies in the Oricin data is the break-even point.

Apr 16, 2009 10:47 PM by dtshyk

Drop in the drop in the bucket then.

There are probably other sources of revenue involved that we're not considering, then, because then one would need roughly 115,000 DVDs sold (average 30,000-40,000 per volume) to hit break-even with a 12-ep anime. Barely anything sells that much.

Apr 16, 2009 10:24 PM by Torisunanohokori

@Torisunanohokori

oops, "1 - 20,000,000 yen" was confusing. I mean, 10 million to 20 million yen. The income from the TV ads doesn't help much.

Apr 16, 2009 10:14 PM by dtshyk

dtshyk said:
It depends on the TV channel and the airing blocks but roughly 90,000 - 100,000 yen ($1,000) per 1% rating. So I guess Noitamina gets 3 - 400,000 yen x 3 - 4 ads. The production cost of one anime episode is about 1 - 20,000,000 yen. The average DVD price per one episode is 2,000 - 2,500 yen. And the anime producers receive about half of it as an income.

Meaning ratings are basically a drop in the bucket. Even if it's only 1 million yen for production, you'd still need an incredible 10% rating (realistically more like 15-20%) to break even. That stinks like day-old fish for anime that doesn't pull in the hardcore buyers.

Apr 16, 2009 10:06 PM by Torisunanohokori

Torisunanohokori said:
Moyashimon, at least, seems to have gotten decent returns. But those are some pretty big discrepencies. What's the difference in profits from DVDs vs. profits from ratings in quantitative terms?

It depends on the TV channel and the airing blocks but roughly 90,000 - 100,000 yen ($1,000) per 1% rating. So I guess Noitamina gets 3 - 400,000 yen x 3 - 4 ads. The production cost of one anime episode is about 10 - 20 million yen. The average DVD price per one episode is 2,000 - 2,500 yen. And the anime producers receive about half of it as an income.

Apr 16, 2009 8:04 PM by dtshyk

Mononoke DVD sales makes me go :D

Apr 16, 2009 7:57 PM by chryseis

Aww, Noitamina, seriously? There's so many great series there and they deserve to make tons of money. D:

But I think all anime sales are suffering now so if you have to have crappy sales, at least it's not really your fault?

Apr 16, 2009 7:53 PM by Anomalous

Moyashimon, at least, seems to have gotten decent returns. But those are some pretty big discrepencies. What's the difference in profits from DVDs vs. profits from ratings in quantitative terms?

Apr 16, 2009 7:44 PM by Torisunanohokori