For the previous discussion of these JVA reports, see this post. The full broken-out data for 2013 is now available (thanks to primadog for the heads up) and I’ve decided to dig into the historical data a bit more.
The numbers below are for the category 日本のｱﾆﾒｰｼｮﾝ(一般向け) which the official translated reports list as “Animation for Grown-ups Domestic” though 一般向け more means “general public”. I assume they’re defining the general public as “not kids”. But it’s not strictly late night anime, as the numbers really show once you get to unit counts.
2001-2012 report: http://www.jva-net.or.jp/en/genre_2001-2012_en.pdf
2013 report: http://www.jva-net.or.jp/report/genre_2013.pdf
2001-2013, sales in millions of yen
| Year | Total ¥ | Share | vs Last | DVD ¥ | DVD % | BD ¥ | BD % | VHS ¥ | VHS % | Other ¥ | Other % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 74,580 | 29.6% | 11.4% | 29,124 | 39% | 45,456 | 61% | 0 | 0% | 0 | 0% |
| 2012 | 66,956 | 25.9% | -2.3% | 30,392 | 45% | 36,564 | 55% | 0 | 0% | 0 | 0% |
| 2011 | 68,517 | 26.2% | -2.1% | 37,219 | 54% | 31,298 | 46% | 0 | 0% | 0 | 0% |
| 2010 | 70,008 | 26.3% | 3.1% | 44,351 | 63% | 25,583 | 37% | 0 | 0% | 0 | 0% |
| 2009 | 67,920 | 24.8% | -3.5% | 55,442 | 82% | 12,128 | 18% | 0 | 0% | 350 | 1% |
| 2008 | 70,383 | 24.6% | -12.2% | 65,901 | 94% | 4,454 | 6% | 0 | 0% | 28 | 0% |
| 2007 | 80,176 | 25.3% | 0.1% | 80,176 | 100% | 0 | 0% | 0 | 0% | 0 | 0% |
| 2006 | 80,116 | 24.2% | -3.9% | 79,565 | 99% | 0 | 0% | 551 | 1% | 0 | 0% |
| 2005 | 83,405 | 22.5% | 41.9% | 80,487 | 97% | 0 | 0% | 2918 | 3% | 0 | 0% |
| 2004 | 58,785 | 15.7% | -11.3% | 52,786 | 90% | 0 | 0% | 5999 | 10% | 0 | 0% |
| 2003 | 66,245 | 18.9% | -11.1% | 57,067 | 86% | 0 | 0% | 9203 | 14% | -25 | 0% |
| 2002 | 74,520 | 23.0% | 73.2% | 55,078 | 74% | 0 | 0% | 19571 | 26% | -119 | 0% |
| 2001 | 43,037 | 14.5% | 11.2% | 37,568 | 87% | 0 | 0% | 5972 | 14% | -503 | -1% |
2001-2013, sales in units
| Year | Units | Share | vs Last | DVD | DVD % | BD | BD % | VHS | VHS % | Other | Other % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 15,706,682 | 19.1% | 18.3% | 7,935,344 | 51% | 7,771,338 | 49% | 0 | 0% | 0 | 0% |
| 2012 | 13,273,126 | 15.7% | -8.4% | 7,395,302 | 56% | 5,877,824 | 44% | 0 | 0% | 0 | 0% |
| 2011 | 14,490,855 | 17.6% | -2.6% | 9,094,449 | 63% | 5,396,406 | 37% | 0 | 0% | 0 | 0% |
| 2010 | 14,873,977 | 16.5% | -5.2% | 10,376,365 | 70% | 4,446,176 | 30% | 0 | 0% | 51,436 | 0% |
| 2009 | 15,689,547 | 17.9% | -6.4% | 13,569,193 | 86% | 1,874,684 | 12% | 0 | 0% | 245,670 | 2% |
| 2008 | 16,757,885 | 19.5% | -5.2% | 15,983,864 | 95% | 759,253 | 5% | 0 | 0% | 14,768 | 0% |
| 2007 | 17,668,466 | 18.3% | -1.4% | 17,668,466 | 100% | 0 | 0% | 0 | 0% | 0 | 0% |
| 2006 | 17,918,005 | 17.0% | -2.8% | 17,800,432 | 99% | 0 | 0% | 117,573 | 1% | 0 | 0% |
| 2005 | 18,430,346 | 16.1% | 45.6% | 17,838,260 | 97% | 0 | 0% | 592,086 | 3% | 0 | 0% |
| 2004 | 12,658,023 | 11.5% | -5.5% | 11,569,191 | 91% | 0 | 0% | 1,088,832 | 9% | 0 | 0% |
| 2003 | 13,389,524 | 14.1% | -22.3% | 11,591,254 | 87% | 0 | 0% | 1,803,117 | 13% | -4,847 | 0% |
| 2002 | 17,243,046 | 20.2% | 85.1% | 12,800,184 | 74% | 0 | 0% | 4,464,588 | 26% | -21,776 | 0% |
| 2001 | 9,313,338 | 12.1% | 14.5% | 7,874,049 | 85% | 0 | 0% | 1,480,374 | 16% | -41,085 | 0% |
Comments
1. BD has taken a majority share in sales by yen over the last two years. Since its introduction in 2008, it’s gone from 6% of the market to now 61% by sales in yen.
2. While the market share of BDs is increasing somewhat across the board, the degree of dominance over DVD in late night anime is not at all shared by other genres. No other genre has BD even close to DVD’s share. The only other genres with even one third share going to BD are Western Film and Western Animation.
3. But by pure units, DVD still sells more than BD, 51% to 49% in 2013. This shows where the long tail comes in for DVD. Of titles in my spreadsheet with a release date in 2013, I count just under 1 million units sold, barely one-eighth the DVDs reported here. Meanwhile, I have 3.3 million BDs recorded, which is 43% of the number sold here. Clearly, DVDs are doing an overwhelming number of their sales on back catalog, with a lot of pre-2013 titles moving a little bit each week, while BDs are relatively heavily skewed towards new releases. (And this is a reminder about how Oricon does not report everything, far from it!). The other huge factor for DVD is that the rental market in Japan is significant, and still heavily DVD-biased, and rental copies do not show up in Oricon rankings.
4. Trends of sales in yen over the past 13 years show:
• Volatility in the market in the first half of the 00s, with a massive spike in 2002. This has to be in large part due to Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi (Spirited Away) which would have pushed the bulk of its sales in 2002, and then Tororo came out on DVD at the very end of 2001. I imagine some other Ghibli movies got bit re-releases at this time too.
• Peak 2005-2007, the three highest years on record all totaling more than ¥8bn each.
• Sharp drop from 2007 to 2008, followed by five years of relative consistency, each year within 3.5% of the last.
• A significant jump in 2013, just edging out 2002 to become the strongest year on record outside of the 2005-2007 peak.
Note that I don’t know if or how this report adjusts for inflation, but you can just use the unit sales chart to indirectly control for that. 2013 did move significantly less units than 2002 but if most of 2002’s units were cheaper mainstream movies it’s not very surprising.
5. Trends of sales in yen versus the overall market:
• While it looks like the market stagnated in 2008-2012, its share was on par with or better than 2007, and better in each of those years than any year from 2001-2006.
• 2013 is the single best performance for this category sine the beginning of the reports, by a fairly significant margin.
• Overall, the category is slightly increasing its share of an overall shrinking market. Anime is affected by declining physical media sales like everything else, and if anything slightly less so.
6. 2013 was a good year. Peak market share for the category, significant increase over 2012, strong performance both in units and yen. Even DVD unit sales increased slightly, for the first time since 2005.
And again, just a general disclaimer that bears a reminder: the late night anime I track on this site does not track 1:1 to this genre category. It would be contained within it, but other things will count in it as well. You cannot use these numbers to measure with perfect accuracy the performance of late night anime as a whole.
Another missing factor for DVDs, besides the long tail and back catalogue, is rental sales. Of the 62 million DVD units sold in 2013, 33 million (53.3%) are for rental:
http://www.jva-net.or.jp/en/monthly_2013_en.pdf
For anime, the ratio is probably less, but it has to at least be quite sizeable.
Oh yeah so this does include rentals. That would definitely make up a large portion of the missing 7/8ths.