We’re coming up on the biggest release of the season, so let’s review Stalker’s latest v1wk1 estimates.
All Points/Estimates are based on Amazon Ranking Stalker.Already Released
| Points so far | Estimate | Unpenalized Est | Rls Date | Days to Rls | Solcit Date | Pts/Day | Series |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4,094 | 4,094 | 4,094 | 2018/01/31 | -20 | 2017/12/06 | 55 | Pop Team Epic |
Upcoming Releases
| Points so far | Estimate | Unpenalized Est | Rls Date | Days to Rls | Solcit Date | Pts/Day | Series |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16,376 | 17,234 | 17,234 | 2018/02/23 | 3 | 2017/11/06 | 157 | IDOLiSH7 |
| 4,197 | 6,235 | 6,235 | 2018/03/14 | 22 | 2018/01/08 | 102 | Zoku Touken Ranbu: Hanamaru |
| 608 | 924 | 924 | 2018/03/21 | 29 | 2018/01/12 | 16 | Dagashi Kashi 2 |
| 232 | 340 | 340 | 2018/03/21 | 29 | 2018/01/19 | 8 | Miira no Kaikata |
| 270 | 518 | 518 | 2018/03/21 | 29 | 2018/01/07 | 6 | Sanrio Danshi |
| 248 | 444 | 444 | 2018/03/21 | 29 | 2018/01/12 | 7 | Takunomi. |
| 660 | 1,144 | 1,144 | 2018/03/23 | 31 | 2017/12/22 | 11 | Gakuen Babysitters |
| 829 | 1,250 | 1,250 | 2018/03/28 | 36 | 2017/12/16 | 13 | Hakyuu Houshin Engi |
| 3,009 | 6,190 | 6,190 | 2018/03/28 | 36 | 2018/01/09 | 75 | Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san |
| 143 | 303 | 303 | 2018/03/28 | 36 | 2018/01/19 | 5 | Killing Bites |
| 438 | 833 | 833 | 2018/03/28 | 36 | 2017/12/11 | 6 | Mitsuboshi Colors |
| 291 | 447 | 1,203 | 2018/03/28 | 36 | 2017/12/25 | 5 | Ramen Daisuki Koizumi-san |
| 1,288 | 2,182 | 2,182 | 2018/03/28 | 36 | 2018/01/09 | 32 | Ryuuou no Oshigoto! |
| 614 | 1,149 | 1,149 | 2018/03/28 | 36 | 2018/01/06 | 14 | Slow Start |
| 2,260 | 5,197 | 5,197 | 2018/03/28 | 36 | 2018/01/09 | 57 | Sora yori mo Tooi Basho |
| 2,930 | 7,098 | 10,836 | 2018/03/28 | 36 | 2017/12/06 | 40 | Yuru Camp△ |
| 856 | 1,622 | 1,622 | 2018/03/30 | 38 | 2018/01/12 | 23 | Death March kara Hajimaru Isekai Kyousoukyoku |
| 323 | 519 | 519 | 2018/03/30 | 38 | 2017/12/24 | 6 | Itou Junji Collection |
| 724 | 1,324 | 1,324 | 2018/04/03 | 42 | 2018/01/06 | 17 | citrus |
| 2,540 | 4,742 | 4,742 | 2018/04/04 | 43 | 2018/01/11 | 67 | Violet Evergarden |
| 367 | 1,278 | 1,278 | 2018/04/11 | 50 | 2018/02/03 | 24 | Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens |
| 143 | 281 | 792 | 2018/04/18 | 57 | 2018/01/19 | 5 | Koi wa Ameagari no You ni |
| 138 | 516 | 516 | 2018/04/18 | 57 | 2018/01/22 | 5 | Saiki Kusuo no Sai-nan Season2 |
| 1,585 | 5,603 | 5,603 | 2018/04/25 | 64 | 2018/01/28 | 75 | Darling in the FranXX |
| 1,182 | 3,198 | 6,720 | 2018/04/25 | 64 | 2018/01/12 | 32 | Hakumei to Mikochi |
| 100 | 418 | 418 | 2018/04/25 | 64 | 2018/02/01 | 6 | Marchen Madchen |
| 285 | 606 | 606 | 2018/04/25 | 64 | 2018/01/13 | 8 | Nanatsu no Taizai: Imashime no Fukkatsu |
| 3,014 | 5,203 | 8,473 | 2018/04/25 | 64 | 2017/12/18 | 49 | Overlord II |
| 214 | 540 | 1,102 | 2018/04/25 | 64 | 2018/01/15 | 6 | Toji no Miko |
| 20 | 44 | 188 | 2018/04/27 | 66 | 2018/01/12 | 1 | Damepri Anime Caravan |
| 1,826 | 6,658 | 6,658 | 2018/05/09 | 78 | 2018/01/29 | 91 | Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card-hen |
| 1,022 | 10,420 | 10,420 | 2018/05/23 | 92 | 2018/02/11 | 146 | Fate/Extra Last Encore |
| 287 | 802 | 2,719 | 2018/05/23 | 92 | 2018/01/16 | 9 | Yowamushi Pedal: Glory Line |
| 166 | 460 | 1,251 | 2018/05/25 | 94 | 2018/01/19 | 6 | Beatless |
| 49 | 542 | 1,296 | 2018/05/25 | 94 | 2018/02/10 | 6 | Kokkoku |
| 1,189 | 2,545 | 4,717 | 2018/05/30 | 99 | 2018/01/19 | 40 | Devilman Crybaby |
| 204 | 683 | 683 | 2018/05/30 | 99 | 2018/01/20 | 7 | Grancrest Senki |
| 1,819 | 12,074 | 12,074 | 2018/06/06 | 106 | 2018/02/01 | 107 | Emiya-san Chi no Kyou no Gohan |
| 1,081 | 2,803 | 2,803 | 2018/06/27 | 127 | 2018/01/08 | 26 | Gintama.: Shirogane no Tamashii-hen |
Solicited Too Recently, no estimate yet
| Points so far | Estimate | Unpenalized Est | Rls Date | Days to Rls | Solcit Date | Pts/Day | Series |
|---|
The above columns show, in order
• Stalker current wk1 points as of February 19, 2AM JST
• Stalker final wk1 estimate as of February 19, 2AM JST
• Stalker final wk1 estimate as of February 19, 2AM JST for high price items, with penalty removed
• Release Date
• Days until release (counted in terms of # of days Stalker will add points)
• Solicitation Date
• Points per day, calculated as (CurrentPts / (RlsDate – SolicitDate))
• Show title
Comments
Points per day vs Days to release
Points per day is useful for ironing out discrepancies in current points (Why does X have more than Y when Y has a better final estimate), while days until release helps give context to discrepancies in final estimates (Why does X have a higher estimate than Y when Y is currently far ahead). Obviously a title 10 days out will have a smaller relative gap between current and final estimates than a title 40 days out.
Penalized vs non-penalized estimated
I’ve gone over this countless times so you probably already know the drill, but you see two estimates for some shows because Stalker tracks two numbers for “high price” items, i.e. anything with an MSRP over ¥10,000. The first number is the estimate with a heavy penalty applied, the second estimate is with no penalty applied at all. The rationale for this is that more expensive items have inflated rankings on Amazon, both due to MSRP potentially factoring into Amazon’s rankings and also the fact that the more expensive an item is, the more likely buyers will use Amazon, as they tend to have the highest discount. There’s no way to know which estimate the Oricon number will be closer to, but it’s usually in the bottom half of the estimated range, and virtually always above the minimum estimate. Of course this varies depending on how a title is ranking outside of Amazon. Because the penalized estimate is the one Stalker makes most visible, I always use it as the default. But it’s worth making the unpenalized estimate more visible to reduce confusion.
Seasonal Top 10 Guesses
This season has a number of shows with the potential to sell well, but a few of those weren’t solicited all that long ago and some are currently in the middle of boosts they aren’t likely to sustain, making guesses a bit hard. We also don’t know how the high price penalties will shake out.
• Idolish7 is obviously going to sell the most. Even if v3+ drop a lot after the event tickets end, it’s still going to average well ahead of everything else. Maybe by as much as 10k.
• Tourabu is also being heavily undersold here. While Katsugeki was not Animate-biased, Hanamaru was to a huge extent. If that holds this season, that 6.2k estimate is easily going to be 13-16k wk1. It’s my current guess for #2 of the season, though that’s not guaranteed.
• The two Fate/ series are significant unknowns at the moment. They’ve both got high estimates, but /Cooking was only solicited two weeks ago and /Extra barely a week ago. The latter only just started registering an estimate. Both of them are also extremely late releases, which may inflate the estimates considerably.
• Yurucamp is hands down the surprise of the season for me. Just the fact that a slice of life show is selling this well is uncommon, but for it to be one I love so much is wonderful. I do think it’s heavily Amazon biased, so hopefully it’s not overestimated even with the penalty.
• A couple other shows are performing better than I expected, notably Takagi-san and Yorimoi. Takagi-san has four different Amazon-exclusives where 2/3rds of the points are coming from, so it’s possible it’s heavily overestimated. The v2 estimate is a significant step down too. Hakumei to Mikochi is also doing surprisingly well, especially if it ends up at the higher end of its (quite wide) range.
• Im not sure what to think about CCS Clear Card. v1 was only solicited 2.5 weeks ago and in that time the estimate has consistently gone down. It’s also 8 volumes. But it’s doing well at other shops, so I dunno? Talking about averages for shows with this many volumes is kind of a fool’s errand.
Guesses are almost a total crap shoot right now, especially with two of the biggest titles being only recently solicited, so I wouldn’t call the below a terribly informed guess, especially since I’m trying to figure out averages…
01. IDOLiSH7
02. Zoku Touken Ranbu: Hanamaru
03. Emiya-san Chi no Kyou no Gohan
04. Fate/Extra Last Encore
05. Yuru Camp△
06. Overlord II
07. Pop Team Epic
08. Darling in the FranXX
09. Violet Evergarden
10. Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card-hen
I might be selling Takagi-san short, but the numbers for v1 just look pretty suspect unless it’s killing it outside of Amazon, which I don’t see evidence of. And I may be putting VEG too high but KyoAni shows tend to be some of the few to get good boosts from HMV. The Fate series may both be too high as well but it’s Fate so I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt (though with slightly more hesitation than I would have before Apocrypha’s mediocre performance). Also I’m really not really sure where to put PTE because I don’t know what kind of tail v1 is going to have.
All in all, this is shaping up to be a pretty decent season sales-wise in the mid-tier, though it’s possible there may only be two 10k shows, or even just one.
Fujo power is amazing as always lol.
I’m not watching that many this season, so far two of my favorites are Yuru Camp and Yorimoi. They’re fun to watch so I’m glad if they could sell well. Maybe 6-7k average for Yuru? I wonder if Yorimoi could at least have 4.5k average, series is ongoing so I hope it will get better.
Speaking of which, iirc Yorimoi is also sponsored by government departments. How does that work? Do the government ask back the money they invest from anime sales, or they just let it go (give it to Kadokawa?) since they managed to advertise something(in this case Antarctica) ?
About Takagi-san, I think v1 could sell lots. Iirc the rank and points incresase significantly after bonuses were announced (Takagi PE uniform and VN?).
I think what you’re referring to with Yorimoi isn’t actual government funding, but rather that the production got some help (in terms of access to research materials/documentation, advice from experts, etc) from various governmental or educational institutions. That wouldn’t be too unexpected. They’d be listed in the production assistance/special thanks sorta section of the credits here here:
文部科学省 (Ministry of Education)
国立極地研究所 (National Institute of Polar Research)
海上自衛隊 (Maritime Self Defense Forces)
SHIRASE5002一般財団法人ＷＮＩ気象文化創造センタ (Shirase5002 General Incorporated Foundation WNI Weather Culture Foundation Center, a foundation related to the icebreaker the girls board)
株式会社大原鉄工所 (Oohara Iron Works Ltd.)
竪谷博 (じんから) (Tateya Hiroshi, owner of the pub “Jinkara”, apparently he had something to do with a manga about cooking in Antarctica called 俺、南極で料理してます)
小林千穂 (Kobayashi Chiho, radio personality)
桐生市立商業高等学校 (Kiryuu Municipal Trade School, the school Mari and Shirase’s school is modeled after)
赤坂泰基 (Akasaka Taiki, Kadokawa producer)
Ah, I see. I’ve read somewhere that they’re cooperating with government. Lots of famous seiyuu are here (which is rare these days, not mentioning for an original anime), so I thought they have some free space with their budget with government help.
Seems that’s not the case huh. They’re pretty confident with Yorimoi I guess.
I honestly don’t think seiyuu costs amount to very much. The sad reality is that most people involved in making anime don’t make much money. All in all I’d expect Yorimoi to have a very typical one cour budget. Nothing really stands out to me as unusual. But it’s a good thing that its disc sales are looking to be at least decent, because there was an interview with the Kadokawa producer for the show and he was pretty blunt that it has to sell discs to be a success. Media Factory (part of Kadokawa) is leading the committee, so certainly it’s true for them, though perhaps an oversimplification. Madhouse is second, though, which is higher than studios usually are. Crunchyroll is third, so watching on CR is important too.
I dont know if Fujo power is amazing, as only I7 seems to be doing well, but it was/is already a popular idol game, I guess one could say why isnt it doing even better. Meanwhile other shows like Sanrio Danshi, and perhaps GakuenBabysitters, and the sports YowaPeda have fallen to the wayside. Hanamaru perhaps could do a bit better too. Perhaps the franchise is already having fatigue.
Oh well, Im glad my show this season seems number 1, the power of my KENN and TRIGGER!!! I always play SECRET NIGHT.
GakuBaby is a shoujo though and the main guy has a female love interest iirc so I expected it to flop. YowaPeda still makes money in other ways, so it’s safe. Real shame about Sanrio Danshi though.
Yeah I certainly wouldn’t worry about Yowapedal, that series seems to be unstoppable. Stage plays, recap films, more TV series, etc. It’s clearly doing something right. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see another TV series after Glory Line.
Good god, KoiAme. Not that I expected much, but to see it this DoA does hurt a little. Hopefully the western streaming saves it, though it’s consigned to Amazon Prime.
This is pretty good season for cute girls / SoL sales. I haven’t heard anything about Hakumei and Mikochi, so a little surprised to see it pretty high up the rankings.
While still objectively pretty decent, KyoAni must be a bit disappointed in those VE sales, considering the galactic level of hype around it. Changing the emphasis of the novels and having such a slow start really wasn’t a great idea.
I’d imagine Violet Evergarden is going to get a good amount of streaming revenue from being on Netflix though, right? And they haven’t hit the U.S. yet.
No idea, nobody knows what the licensing fee was.
I’ve heard from some Japanese producers that, at least for some shows, the licensing fees are already enough to cover the whole budget for the show. No idea if that’s true or not.
(comment: please don’t approve the original post, I accidentally used a different username)
Sure, deleted it.
On the other hand, an article on ANN just came out, and it sort of implied that, while streaming revenues help, much of the money goes to the people on top instead of the animators. And in any case, based on articles and forum posts I’ve read, streaming revenue alone generally isn’t enough to make up for all losses: they can help, but aside from isolated cases (like I think Devilman), at most they can only mitigate loses as opposed to reversing them. Which is why merchandise sales are still important too.
“Most of the money goes to the people on top” is literally the entirety of capitalism, so yes streaming revenue is no exception. The anime industry is making record revenues but has no vested interest in doing anything to improve working conditions or salaries.
Always nice to see when the top sellers of a season are shows about cute boys being cute
It’s a real pity about Sanrio Boys. Personally, I think it’s completely charming and does everything I could ask a show of its nature to do, so I at least hope it’s moved some Sanrio merchandise if it’s not going to move discs.
Sorry, if i’m out of the topic, but why Bare-Bones Manga and Novel Rankings in this site is removed?
I realized I wasn’t going to update them very often (because it’s a tedious process to do so), and also that Oricon’s print rankings are just so thoroughly garbo that I decided they weren’t useful/interesting enough. Also I’ve been getting a lot of excess-memory-usage emails from my hosting provider since these went up, and I thought maybe they were the cause since they’re such enormous pages. (Though it doesn’t really seem to have impoved.)
Oh, so that’s it. But are you still have the data? Maybe you put in your excel or word. If you still have the data, maybe you can send email to me, because i’d like to see about manga sales. Thank you before.
I’ll dump them in a google doc tomorrow night or thereabouts.
Okay, thank you in advance
I haven’t updated them since June 2017 so keep that in mind:
Novels: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mzdRersYxOR8iF5U0r2RLAYWjT2AFRH8NkU2_PFtyt8
Manga: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ynlye3jwp3BKQyY0ghY-vlydKNmY3tUXlm3qV1_VA8s
Ok, thats not problem. Thank you
Hallo, if i want see latest update of novel or manga sales, what site i should visit? Thank you.
I don’t track those, but when I did want to take a look I’d just check the weekly posts on the MAL news forums. However, they only had weekly data, not cumulative data with totals for specific series/volumes.
Unfortunately Oricon’s reporting for print is really bad anyway – and as of last year, more than half of all manga sales are digital, which Oricon does not track.
Guess Citrus or Slow Start have no chance in hell, huh? By the way, what was the overall sales rate for Konohana Kitan?
Citrus and Slow Start are both gonna sell exactly what anyone should have expected. However, disc sales don’t seem particularly vital to Citrus. The committee is the print publisher followed by two streaming companies. And while manga is hard to measure, it went from 800k units sold around when the anime started to 1mil units already as of the anthology comic release just recently. And of course the manga does well in English. Speaking of the EN market it ranks shockingly well on Crunchyroll, and they’re third on the committee (behind a Taiwanese streaming company) so that matters. By contrast the disc publisher is way down low in the committee, probably invested barely anything and this won’t be disappointed with it averaging like ~1k. Not saying I expect a sequel but I think the main parties involved (certainly Ichijinsha and Crunchyroll) are fairly pleased.
Konohana Kitan has only released two of four volumes. v1 sold 1,158 and v2 sold 1,304. From the Table of Contents you can find any available rankings, either by series average or per-volume sales or whatever. The relevant ranking pages are updated every other weekend.
So good to hear about this. I’m really enjoying Citrus so far. The relationship is very messy but I’m rooting for a happy ending so I want to see everything animated.
It’s so amazing to see shows get second seasons without selling any DVD/BD these days. Like Kakegurui, hopefully Citrus will get that same treatment.
Poor Grancrest, Beatless, and Killing Bites. While I’m not exactly surprised about KB, seeing Beatless and Grancrest feels weird since Aniplex/Sacra.
Is there anyway to guess if a show is being overestimated/underestimated from this? or is that only once actuals are out?
Mostly curious how DarliFra is doing.
There are many different reasons why we might expect a show to be over/underestimated. Fundamentally they all come down to: 1) is Amazon particularly unrepresentative of how the show will sell overall and/or 2) is there something off in Stalker’s data/approach for the show?
Darlifra doesn’t have anything that’d lead me to expect a particularly extreme miss, although the majority of its estimate is coming from the Amazon-exclusive edition. If the Amazon exclusive is popular, that may imply that a larger than normal percentage of buyers are buying it from Amazon. And that can mean Stalker is overestimating it.
Its v1 estimate is currently 5,253 (down from 5.6k when I did this post) and 58% of that comes from the Amazon edition. So maybe the current number is slightly high, but probably not to a huge extent.
But Darlifra’s release is more than two months away, and it’s a two cour show. There’s a lot of time for things to change – in either direction.
Thanks for the insight as always. For Aniplex originals, do you know if buyers are more inclined to order from the Aniplex+ shop or is that a case by case basis?
Just sorta going off memory, I’d say that typically any visible effect from Aniplex+ is less “being underestimated wk1” than “getting a bump later on”.
While we haven’t seen many examples recently (Saekano s2 is the first in a while), what sometimes happens with Aniplex shows is that when the last volume comes out, all volumes get a modest boost. As far as we can tell, this is due to Aniplex+ orders which were being held until the last volume was out, then shipping all at once.
If you look at the Saekano bump a few weeks ago, you can see that all six volumes ranked when v6 came out, and with reasonably significant numbers. Returning to the rankings also filled in a couple previously unreported weeks of data for earlier volumes. I don’t recall exactly how much this changed the average, but it probably added a solid 1k, which is noteworthy for a sub-10k series.
An Aniplex+ bump doesn’t technically have to happen with the last volume. One of the Monogatari seasons got little bumps each time the last volume of a story arc came out, as presumably they were shipping on a per-arc basis. But it’s typically most noticeable at the end of a series.
So maybe something similar will happen with Darlifra. But that depends on what Aniplex+’s exclusive bonus is, how much it sells overall, and what the ranking thresholds are like in the week the last volume comes out (low sellers probably get bumps too, but not enough to rank).
Looking back historically, does the aniplex+ bump help compensate for any w1 overestimates?
There aren’t enough examples to say, and that’d be really hard to measure. There’s probably been less than 10 obvious examples of Aniplex+ bumps and I don’t specifically track them so I can’t just go back and evaluate them all together.
Yurucamp are really really doing great in amazon and other stores. Do you think it can be the best selling anime this season? I used my savings and preordered all of the volumes lol…. rip my life bye…:’)
Above i7? No. But it does have a shot at being second.
Ah yeah I forgot i7 exists. But YuruCamp can has higher average sales right? Since △ is just 3 volumes while i7 only has 2 tickets out of 7 volumes
That’s exceedingly unlikely unless i7 implodes after the event ticket volumes (which I guess is maaaaaaaybe in theory not completely impossible since it looks like i7 is gonna sell at the low end of expectations, based on v1). But anyway, no this would take something pretty extreme happening on both ends at once.
In a perfect example of why there’s never a good time to snapshot a season’s estimates, Fate/Extra Last Encore v1 had a 10,420 estimate when I did this post just 9 days ago. Today? The estimate has been cut in half to 5,264. After ranking high in its first week, it rapidly settled down to something that looks closer to Apocrypha’s performance.
Similar for Emiya-san Chi no Kyou no Gohan, which has declined by about a third from 12,074 to 8,587.
Meanwhile, it’s probably good we snapshot Yurucamp when we did because its estimate is completely broken right now thanks to spending a few days in the top 5. At the moment, the estimate is 11,205 – 24,882 (up from 7,098 – 10,836). This is of course nonsensical (particularly the high end), as it’s unlikely to hit the top 5 again for any extended time. As far as I can tell the huge boost was because it went unavailable for order on Amazon for a few days. When it came back up for preorder, everyone rushed to get their orders in earlier than they may have otherwise planned, because now there’s a fear of getting screwed by stock issues at release.