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

From what I know.. anime will eventually break even the profits with time. BD/DVD sales is just the fastest way to earn money.. the fastest way of ROI ( return of investment) while it is true that BD is not the only one to look at for anime success - it is one of the most basic way to look at

GaruPan Movie has hit at least 1.7 billion yen as of the Movie BD/DVD listing here: http://ckec.jp/pc/dynamicContents.do?___SHOP_NO=00000003&f=garupan-movie .

Kizumonogatari Part 1 was revealed on March 25 to have grossed above 800 million yen from 600,000 attendees: http://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000060.000016356.html , so it moves up from #9 to #8 in the list here.

Highest Box Office Gross: Late-night/midnight Anime Movies Top 20 (Current as of Mar 25, 2016)

Key: Rank / Cumulative gross / Initial number of screens (Highest number of screens) / Movie Name
*1　￥2,860,000,000　121(166)　『ラブライブ！ The School Idol Movie』
*2　￥2,080,000,000　129(***)　劇場版 魔法少女まどか☆マギカ 新編 -叛逆の物語-
*3　￥1,900,000,000　137(186)　映画 けいおん！
*4　￥1,700,000,000　*77(179)　ガールズ＆パンツァー　劇場版
*5　￥1,040,000,000　*64(*88)　劇場版 あの日見た花の名前を僕たちはまだ知らない。
*6　￥*,850,000,000　102(***)　劇場版 PSYCHO-PASS サイコパス
*7　￥*,850,000,000　*24(101)　涼宮ハルヒの消失
*8　￥*,800,000,000　108(157)　傷物語 Ⅰ 鉄血篇
*9　￥*,743,000,000　*94(***)　劇場版 TIGER&BUNNY -The Rising-
10　￥*,700,000,000　*38(*99)　劇場版 マクロスF 恋離飛翼
11　￥*,678,184,800　*39(*85)　THE IDOLM@STER MOVIE 輝きの向こう側へ （VideoM@ster版 = ¥772,973,700）
12　￥*,650,000,000　*30(*31)　劇場版 マクロスF 虚空歌姫
13　￥*,600,000,000　*70(*94)　劇場版 TIGER&BUNNY -The Beginning-
14　￥*,590,000,000　*43(***)　劇場版 魔法少女まどか☆マギカ 前編 -始まりの物語-
15　￥*,560,000,000　*18(*48)　劇場版 シュタインズゲート 負荷領域のデジャヴ
16　￥*,560,000,000　*43(***)　劇場版 魔法少女まどか☆マギカ 後編 -永遠の物語-
17　￥*,550,000,000　*50(*51)　魔法少女リリカルなのは The MOVIE 2nd A's
18　￥*,544,515,096　120(152)　映画 ハイ・スピード-Free! Starting Days-
19　￥*,500,000,000　*30(*93)　劇場版 とある魔術の禁書目録 エンデュミオーンの奇蹟
20　￥*,460,000,000　*80(***)　劇場版 弱虫ペダル

●　High Speed! -Free! Starting Days- is from Box Office Mojo, which is a source that's usually effected by USD/JPY currency exchange rate changes. If Bunkatsushin, Cinema Today or their official websites releases a more accurate number, then the Box Office Mojo numbers will be replaced.

Hmmm.. BD sales is not impressive his week. :( Congrats to Haikyuu anyway!!

Yes, when I first heard that the LoveLive arcade game was being made by Square Enix instead of Bandai, parent company of LoveLive I wondered why but when they said arcade sales were bad enough that they were halting all development and getting out of the business, it all made sense. Wouldn't have known why if they hadn't listed it publicly.

The only entity I know of that gives annual and public breakdowns of its income is Bandai Namco Holdings which you can even Google. Other than that yeah its at the discretion of the IP holders to decide what they want to make public or not.

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. Amazon is so big they do devastating negotiations on the wholesale price but if you aren't on Amazon you might as well not exist. 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....

I believe it includes everything of a franchise. So it also includes disk sales.

About the industry being this big with what you said, that would depend of the size of the losses. In reality right now I believe that the anime industry has majorly small losses and small profit(distributed to all members of the production Committee), and that is the reason of the increase of productions.

Does that include sales other than disk sales? would the industry even be this big if 1/3 of everything made is a loss and another 1/3 is only really small profit?

@hpulley the 2 million budget is from shirobako, manabi should cost even less to make.

I'm not really. I'm aware of all those things, I'm not stupid lol. What I'm commenting on is people cheerleading ridiculously low BD/DVD sales. I probably should have never mentioned failing financially but then I didn't know people would take me so seriously. Like I said though they want to see everything as sunshine and rainbows all the time which I don't get. It's just a really low standard I'm not willing to go down to unfortunately. You should tell the cheer leading crowd these things, not me by the way.

Whoa! HQ sold really well. I'm proud!

For the people in the industry that I heard talking about the sales of series, I never heard anyone saying that most series don't recoup costs, what I heard saying is that investors(be it producers or sponsors) expect a short term return(around 1-2 years), while majority of series only provides a long term return. This means if they want to get a sizable profit in a short period of time they have to get many series running, the addition of all of those profits provides a sizable profit.

I also heard somewhere that 70% of all anime series are sure to at least return the money soon or later. So in every season with 50 series, 35 will certainly not be a loss but 15 will.



The Manabi line is just an Heuristic. Is not supposed to be a precise and exact measurement.
It is at least more useful than nothing.

So for one show which admitted the budget we might know. So many different factors in so many shows which is why the Manabi line was really only useful when applied to Manabi.

It is a mathematical equation, that's pretty accurate.
Let's say $60 for disk price, average budget of $2 million

2,000,000 : 60 = 3333 (to break even on disk sales alone (which is really good))

I have no idea what these industry experts are saying about how barely no series series can recoup costs, are they that stupid?

The trouble is that you're using video disc sales as the sole indicator of the health of the anime industry. The Blurays and DVDs are not the major source of income for most shows now. The Manabi line, if it ever existed, is not useful in this modern multi-media cross marketing age. You need to know how the source material, games, foreign licensing of streaming (now big enough again that licensees are on the production committee of many shows) and disc sales, CDs, hug pillows, concerts, figures, snack tie ins, etc. sell to know if it made money or not.

In a few cases of original anime without much in the way of merchandise, no game, nothing else ... well, in those cases you could look at the BD, DVD and CD sales and perhaps you could tell if it was a bomb or not. This is pretty rare these days, even with original anime they usually create spinoff manga, games and merchandise.

Seeing vol.2's ranking you don't have to worry about big drop, likely some, but not big.

Or I'm just not being 100% completely serious here though somehow I suspect I'm onto something if only a little. Really more than anything I just love how nothing phases the MAL community. Like everything is just always sunshine and rainbows and mediocrity be it artistically or commercially is somehow knocking things out of the park every single time. I fully believe MAL's beloved BokuMachi could come out next week, potentially do between 2-3K copies and just barely hit the fabled Manabi line while KonaSuba could pass the 10K mark and people would still single out and cheerlead about just how swell that is and what milestone has been achieved because it's the thing they recognize most and they just wouldn't know any better. I'd call the permanent upbeat nature of people in sales threads downright admirable if it didn't feel so misguided and like the consumer side of yes man culture.

Atleast you know how to miss the point by exactly 1 mile

Mostly just goofing around and refusing to join the cheerleading like a good little boy. I'm sure the glorious anime industry turned a meager profit this season and everything is 100% perfectly fine as always. After all isn't everything fine as long as Monogatari sells and there's more of it? What else matters?

Bd-wise, it seems like a standard winter season(thanks to konosuba and monogatari)
But bombing financially? Where did you get that info? You sure you included magazine sales boost, original source sales boost and merch sales?

Good for you I guess, I'm glad this season bombed financially in my eyes so I'll choose to see things that way and it's win/win