For the 2014 JVA report post, see this post.
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.
2001-2015 report: http://jva-net.or.jp/en/genre_2001-2015_en.pdf (EN)
2001-2015, sales in millions of yen
Year | Total ¥ | Share | vs Last | DVD ¥ | DVD % | BD ¥ | BD % | VHS ¥ | VHS % | Other ¥ | Other % |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2015 | 58,512 | 26.8% | -9.1% | 19,368 | 33% | 39,144 | 67% | 0 | 0% | 0 | 0% |
2014 | 64,352 | 28.0% | -13.7% | 24,102 | 38% | 40,250 | 62% | 0 | 0% | 0 | 0% |
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% |
2001-2014, sales in units
Year | Units | Share | vs Last | DVD | DVD % | BD | BD % | VHS | VHS % | Other | Other % |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2015 | 11,699,832 | 16.1% | -9.8% | 5,579,013 | 48% | 6,120,819 | 52% | 0 | 0% | 0 | 0% |
2014 | 12,976,748 | 16.4% | -17.3% | 6,516,266 | 50% | 6,460,482 | 50% | 0 | 0% | 0 | 0% |
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. Format split:
• This is the first time BD has ever moved more total units. It’s been ahead in revenue since 2012 due to higher average unit cost, but had never cracked that 50% unit count.
• Japanese animation for adults/general public continues to have a much much higher degree of BD dominance than anything else – except for foreign animation for adults/general public. This was also the case last year. This is likely lingering Frozen sales (added 140,152 in 2015) plus some other big Disney/Pixar movies, especially Big Hero 6 (317,675) which I assume also went into this category. Those movies tend to do single releases that bundle DVD and BD together, which means all the sales get categorized as BD. If they were released on both formats separately, I imagine at least 40% of their sales would be on DVD if not much more.
2. How these numbers compare to the numbers we deal with:
As usual, don’t underestimate everything we’re not seeing through Oricon. Particularly through the intentionally limited subset of series I track on this website. The aggregate total sales of every disc with a release date in 2015, per my spreadsheet, is 4,101,473 (down from 4,537,410 in 2014). That’s only 35% of the 11,699,832 being reported by JVA. (Interestingly, 35% matches the 2014 number. Almost two-thirds of the market is still “invisible” to us, either due to being unreported or just outside the scope of what I cover. Movies are part of it because I only added up TV volumes and some OVAs, but nowhere near enough to close the gap.)
Some of the more obvious reasons are that my number:
• Isn’t including any pre-2015 releases selling in 2015, though it includes the smaller category of 2015 releases ranking in 2016 up until the point I posted this.
• Is almost exclusively late night TV anime, while the JVA category is undoubtedly much broader.
• Misses anything that didn’t make Oricon’s rankings.
• Is subject to the usual Oricon undercounting.
• Would only represent sales (estimates), which would of course be less than shipped numbers, if that’s what JVA is using.
• Rental! It’s not as prevalent as it used to be but it’s still a significant part of the industry and not covered by Oricon.
The point is, there’s a whole lot more to the industry than what the usual late night anime sales tracking community either can or is interested in covering and this is important to remember. Different sources sliced in different ways tell different stories.
3. Comparisons to other categories:
• Share of the overall video disc market (by revenue) is still relatively high, if not as high as in 2013-2014. But it’s higher than every other year since 2001 onward, so the third highest overall. But a strong share of a weakening market is only small comfort.
• For some perspective, while anime is having a rough time, the four Drama International/Asian categories have accounted for a very large percentage of the entire video disc market’s decline. In the first half of the 00s, they accounted for 40-45% of all revenue. In the second half they were 30-35%. They dipped below 30% in 2011 and have continued to shrink ever since, down to 24.1% of the market in both 2014 and 2015. A comparable change in our adults/general public domestic animation category would be dramatically more devastating than anything we’ve seen here. Drama International/Asian used to account for ¥120-170bn. The entire market in 2015 was only ¥218bn. Japanese people simply stopped buying foreign TV series and films on home video over the last decade and that more that anything has contributed to the decline of the video disc market.
• Japanese animation for adults/general public remains the biggest single category in the JVA report, although “Music Domestic”, the perpetual #2, is much closer this year than in the past. In the early-mid 00s, our category was making 2-3 times Music Domestic’s total, but now the latter has a rather close 24.1% of the market vs the former’s 26.8%.
4. Comparisons to recent years:
• While 2013 was unusually strong, 2015 is not just a step down compared to 2013, it’s a step down compared to every year from 2002 onward. And this despite record numbers of series being animated. Remove 2013, and units sold is an unbroken decline every year from 2005 onward.
• That’s not unique to anime, that’s the state of physical media in general. Streaming services are getting more widely used (yes even in Japan) as well. But nonetheless, this is not good news. …Especially because 2016 is sure as heck not going to reverse this trend, given how abysmally it’s performed so far.
Once again, a disclaimer that bears a reminder: the late night anime I track on this site does not match 1:1 to this genre category. It should 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. It is possible for late night to do better or worse than these numbers show.
I meant to do this five months ago, but better late than never?
Yes better late than never. I appreciate the effort. I had read this document back when it was released but it’s nice to see it organized in a smaller table on here!
Is the big rise in 2013 attributed to sales in late night anime? I think 2013 had a bunch of big hits. And I can’t think of many big releases for the general public like pixar/ghibli movies that came out in 2013. There was Eva 3.33 though.
By the shows I track, the Oricon reported volume totals for discs with a release date in the indicated year are:
2010: 3,966,111 (26.7% of 14,873,977)
2011: 4,375,670 (30.2% of 14,490,855)
2012: 4,132,340 (31.1% of 13,273,126)
2013: 4,794,359 (30.5% of 15,706,682)
2014: 4,537,410 (35.0% of 12,976,748)
2015: 4,101,473 (35.0% of 11,699,832)
Though I forgot to remove OVAs. I include OVAs if they’re directly connected to TV series I track. Gundam UC, which I recently added, could be throwing the numbers off. If I remove OVAs:
2010: 3,470,071 (23.3% of 14,873,977)
2011: 3,688,435 (25.4% of 14,490,855)
2012: 3,666,689 (27.6% of 13,273,126)
2013: 4,334,472 (27.6% of 15,706,682)
2014: 3,996,983 (30.8% of 12,976,748)
2015: 3,564,216 (30.4% of 11,699,832)
Either way, “stuff I track” has been increasing as a proportion of the Domestic Animation for Adults/General Public category. That may be a result of:
• More complete tracking from Oricon
• Less back catalog titles from previous years selling
• Non-late night anime dropping less severely than other things in the category
• Non-TV releases (esp movies) doing worse
Or some combination of the above.
As for 2013, yes it’s by far the biggest in th1 2010s even in the more restricted TV subset. I’m not entirely clear why but it certainly had some big sellers:
Shingeki ~347k
Utapri s2 ~236k
Love Live s1 ~208k
SAO s1 v4-9 ~202k
Garupan v2-6 ~185k
Jojo s1 ~180k
And a number of other >100k series.
2014 being a solid hold from 2013 (by this “stuff I track” measure, it dropped for the category as a whole) owes a lot to two huge shows and two others over 150k:
Love Live s2 ~458k
Monogatari 2nd v4-12 ~367k
Kurobas s2 ~169k
Haikyuu s1 v1-6 ~152k
It also caught the tail end of Shingeki and a fair amount of Free s1-2. But all in all, it just didn’t have as much at the top end as 2013.
2015 wasn’t in the same league. In its defense, Fate/Zero s1-2 being boxsets isn’t flattering to a pure unit count because singles would probably have come to 150-200k discs depending on how many came out in 2015. Highlights were:
Utapri s3 ~213k
Deremas v1-7 ~209k
Kurobas s3 ~140k
And a couple titles all clustered around 100k like Kekkaisen, Shirobako, Kancolle, SAO II v4-9. Also caught carryover for Free and Haikyuu. There’s just no massive 300k smash hit though.
Meanwhile 2016… lol.
Owari v2-5 and Koyomi will contribute under 140k, Haikyuu s2 maybe 130k. Osomatsu-san is going to be utterly huge of course, while it’s a 2015 show all the volumes are coming out in 2016, they already total ~429k, and it should end up over 500k. If 2016’s volume totals are -anywhere near- recent years, we’ll have the Matsuno boys to thank.
Love Live Sunshine is the wild card, but its effects will be slightly limited by only 4 of 7 volumes having a 2016 release date. You still have to figure four volumes of LL (v1 with event ticket) is at minimum 200k units though.
I really don’t know what else 2016 has. Besides LL, Summer is comatose thus far. Fall is irrelevant to this discussion because almost all of those discs will be 2017 releases.
Even if 2016 somehow has the same volume count as 2015, that would mean ~1 in 5 anime discs (700k of 3500k) sold in 2016 will be from just two shows. If the volume count is lower than 2015, it could be even more, maybe 1 in 4? (Again a lot depends on how Sunshine does).
While that’s not unprecedented (2014 was also 1 in 5) it’ll be happening in a year with significantly lower total unit sales. Kinda scary! 2013 was 13% and 2015 was 12% from the top two.
What series that make 2005 sales was so strong? Even to this day.
Gundam SEED Destiny. Sales average of 68,959 units per volume, for a 13-volume series, comes to a grand total of 896,467 discs sold. And because it started airing in the Fall 2004 season, all but maybe one or two of those volumes would’ve been released during the 2005 calendar year. After Gundam, it’s a massive dropoff to the next-biggest sales totals for TV shows that went on sale in 2005: AIR (145,962 discs sold) and Mahou Sensei Negima (119,364 discs sold).
The other one that could be bumping that number is Howl’s Moving Castle. That was released on DVD in Japan in November of 2005, and given that it was the third-highest grossing movie ever in Japan at the time, it’s safe to say it probably also sold a ton of discs. Unfortunately we don’t have the data here to know how many it sold, or how frontloaded its sales were (vs. any sales that carried over into 2006).
Howl had sold roughly 1.2 million DVDs by the end of 2005, though how much of that counted as 2005 for JVA depends on when JVA ends their year. Howl came out late in the year (November 16, 2005).