Japan's Weekly Blu-ray and DVD Rankings for Oct 24 - 30

-Janet said:


True on how bad the ending of Kabaneri was but I actually like the concept of the anime so I can't complain compared to Aot which I didn't enjoy at all I prefer Kaba. Sucks the disc sales weren't as great the Directors expected but at least it sold somewhat . Ah I didn't know Zutto was based on vocaloid with a shoujo theme, now I understand why it sold that amount.

As for Macross Delta ( best anime of the year ) not sure why it sold terribly the anime had a good amount of action, music was phenomenal and animation beautiful. I'm not sure if the character development was the cause of it going downhill but HEY I checked Delta's tumblr and it said something about the anime not being over.


Pretty sure the music was what saved the anime to begin with and nw thanks to the fantastic sales we might be getting a movie sequel ^^

hpulley said:
While Macross Delta is selling it actually isn't selling that great for the video discs anyways. The CDs are selling well as you know. I'm still sure we'll see a movie at least but Kawamori sensei had probably hoped for more.

Zutto Mae is actually based on a novel series which is based upon a vocaloid by HoneyWorks. The anime is basically a HoneyWorks music video with some cute shoujo style stories but I like it! Glad to see it is selling pretty well. Along with the novels, songs, etc. I suspect it is doing pretty well for itself. I can't wait for the sequel!

Kabaneri is hard to call. I think they had probably hoped for more disc sales, even with a pretty sweet streaming deal. For me personally it started out well but didn't end well. Not sure if we'll see more of this one.

Orionite_ said:
Not a huge sales follower , but pretty good to see cut-off at 2k+ , as I remember some have been around 200 , right ?

Orionite_ said:
Not a huge sales follower , but pretty good to see cut-off at 2k+ , as I remember some have been around 200 , right ?

phoenixalia said:


Just for that comment, I hope sales will keep increasing. ^__^

Ejc said:

Since @hpulley tagged me, I will add the numbers here...

This is how much Love Live! 2nd Season roughly made in 2014:

116,500 @ ￥4,860 = ￥*,566,190,000　→　Vol.1 Limited Edition. Assume it sold the lower bound of the given figure of 117K rounded (http://www.oricon.co.jp/news/2047284/full/)
***,396 @ ￥3,780 = ￥*,**1,496,880　→　Vol.1 Regular Edition.
245,352 @ ￥7,560 = ￥1,854,861,120　→　362,248 copies total for Vol.1 to 6 from the Anime Series 2014 Yearly ranking.
Total = ￥2,422,548,000

Oricon had Love Live! at ￥5,371,600,000 in the Overall Series 2014 Ranking (https://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=1416495), so the CDs and live concert discs make slightly more money than the anime.

Now, Love Live!'s franchise sales in 2014 was revealed to be ￥43.2 billion from the Cool Japan magazine (http://yusaani.com/news/2015/09/19/194023/), so the 2014 sales of the 2nd Season is around 5.7% of the total 2014 franchise sales. That's a very small portion, which shows why disc sales are not as important as it once was for huge multimedia franchises. Even for smaller franchises, many have several other revenue streams (such as overseas streaming, merchadise, mobile game sales, etc), that I expect disc sales to be not as important as back then.

Ejc said:
μ's Final Live Day 2 just short of 90,000 Oricon sales now.

***　*29　***,552　*78,187　*5　Love Live! μ's Final LoveLive! ~μ'sic Forever♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪~ BD Memorial BOX

○ラブライブ! μ's Final LoveLive! ~μ'sic Forever♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪~
巻数　　　 初動　　　　　　　2週計　　　　　　累計　　　　 発売日
　　　　　BD(DVD)　　　　 BD(DVD)　　　　BD(DVD)
BOX　　　71,185　　　　　　75,627　　　　　78,187　　　　16.09.28 ※BDのみ販売　[Weeks: 5/5]
LIVE　**,814(*3,280)　**,919(*3,672)　**,919(*3,905)　16.09.28 ※合計 83,011枚 ※Day1　[Weeks: BD = 2/2, DVD = 3/4]
LIVE　*3,472(*5,796)　*3,916(*6,546)　*4,325(*7,271)　16.09.28 ※合計 89,783枚 ※Day2　[Weeks: BD = 4/4, DVD = 4/4]



Big drop from Vol.1. It's all bizarre though, as the underestimation for Vol.2 is very very low. Even lower than Vol.6 of Love Live! 2nd Season, which had stock issues in week 1.

I'm not sure if Vol.2 had major stock issues at other stores besides Amazon JP... but if not, then I guess some who bought solely for the 1st live Day 1 serial code, did not feel the need to buy Vol.2 right now, unless they don't end up winning the right to buy tickets for Day 1 from the Day 1 lottery. It's likely that many will be in this boat, as there are only 12,000 seats available for Day 1. I heard they will not utilise the full 17,000 capacity, just like how only 50,000 of the 55,000 capacity at Tokyo Dome, was utilised per day of the μ's Final Live, because of the stage.

Vol.1: 49,484 estimate with 66,912 week 1 (35.22% underestimated)
Vol.2: 40,531 estimate with 45,815 week 1 (13.07% underestimated)

2nd Season data...

Vol.1: 60,214 estimate with 82,505 week 1 (37.02% underestimated)
Vol.2: 23,867 estimate with 41,865 week 1 (75.41% underestimated)
Vol.3: 23,407 estimate with 41,482 week 1 (77.22% underestimated)
Vol.4: 29,051 estimate with 41,243 week 1 (41.97% underestimated)
Vol.5: 27,964 estimate with 38,997 week 1 (39.45% underestimated)
Vol.6: 24,239 estimate with 30,960 week 1 (27.73% underestimated)　←　Stock issues, as it had a huge 10,809 week 2
Vol.7: 38,670 estimate with 51,985 week 1 (34.43% underestimated)



The 2nd Season will most likely be announced during the 1st Aqours live in February 2017. It's not 100% that it'll be in 2017 though, but if the production committee does not want to run into the same problem with contracts as what happened with μ's, then they will want to do as many things as possible within 5~6 years. That's assuming they haven't done something different with the contracts with Aqours...

hpulley said:
Note that the volumes sold to your average person in Japan are NOT rental versions anymore. This is how the high price started, they were priced for rental but people realized they could buy them and did but nowadays, these are NOT rental discs. It says clearly on the packaging and when you play the disc that rental is not allowed for almost all discs produced today. The price model is based upon what it would cost Blockbuster Japan to get a rental copy but these are for personal use only.

What rental business still exists in Japan (Blockbuster exited Japan in 1999) is mostly in barebones DVD versions. They would never purchase the expensive limited edition Blurays with all the bonuses anyways as they would just get lost and damaged.

So your explanation is probably about 20 years too late. The high prices have persisted and were the main source of revenue for anime at one time but today that is no longer true for most shows. Streaming, including foreign streaming especially to China, is a really large proportion of it and big companies like Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and others pay a very high fee for worldwide streaming rights. As @Ejc has posted recently, even the huge sellers like LoveLive and Gundam only sell a small portion of their overall sales in discs and manga.

moodie said:

hopefully its start declining so it can die out faster than any category of anime ever before

ErwinJA said:
An average of 7000 per volume. That means if volume 1 is 7000 and it keeps dropping after that (usually the case) to where volume 6 is 5000, it's not there.

And actually, prices are lower than they used to be. It used to be $60-80+ even for a regular DVD with 1-2 episodes. This is because Japan has a completely different market dynamic. You see, in the US and most other countries, there's a two-tiered system. Normal consumers pay one price, and rental outlets (Netflix, Blockbuster, Red Box, etc) pay a different, higher price - typically 2-3 times the cost of the "home use" version. The higher priced version accords with it additional user rights for commercial applications like renting it out or screening it in front of a paying group. In Japan, the personal market is small due to a variety of factors, and especially so for niche markets like anime. As such, the home use tier is nonexistent there - only the commercial tier is ever produced. That means that anyone who wants to buy the series pays the same amount and gets the same version that would show up in a Japanese version of Blockbuster.

WisestOne said:
Appreciate the analysis. That is insane how much the Blu-ray cost in Japan. I almost can't believe it to be honest. For the sales to be great it would need to sell 7000 each volume or total? I assume each volume, as 7000 doesn't not seem like it would fetch much money.

Wilhelmina said:
Dunno if my order counted there, but the feeling of able to make LL series keep their reigns surely amazing. Don't really care about the ticket tho, as I won't be able to visit Japan until at least Aug next year.

ErwinJA said:
It's for volume 5. Each volume typically consists of 2 episodes, which would make this episodes 9-10.

Now, for sales and profitability: each volume also costs as much as a complete season/series set in the US ($50-60), if you want to get an idea of what the revenues are like, and these do have pretty good margins due to the high price. But they need it when you look at those sales numbers. Last I heard, one episode typically cost about $140,000-180,000, give or take, or about $2 million for a single cour.

Profitability gets more complicated, but 3000-4000 is generally considered around the break even area, though that can be significantly lower, or higher, depending on costs and merchandise sales. Typically, that's really only recouping around 50% of the production cost through DVD sales (again, give or take). That means that, at about 5000-6000, a show is getting ready to break even just through DVD/Blu-Ray, but still not a spectacular success. 7000+ is something that's starting to get broad support and see real profits, and 10,000+ is a hot property. 20,000+ is amazing enough to save a studio, and Love Live is near god tier.
Note that for this, sales estimates include both DVD and Blu-Ray, and are figured as an average among all volumes.


Edit: Putting it together, Love Live Sunshine isn't just doing well, it can just about fund an entire 1-cour series from the sales of each volume. The Detective Conan movie outsold it, but its content cost probably around 2-3 times as much as that of a typical series volume. Kubikiri Cycle is doing very well for an OVA, while Zutto Mae is posting decent results for a movie. re:Zero and Macross Delta are hovering between very good and great sales. The rest of those on the blu-ray list are mediocre to decent in sales, but nothing really stands out. On the other hand, there are no complete flops there either.