Since two weeks ago there were some broken estimates, I decided to do this again.
All Points/Estimates are based on Amazon Ranking Stalker.Upcoming Releases
| Pts so far | Feb-23 Est | Feb-08 Est | Rls Date | Days to Rls | Solcit Date | Pts/Day | Series |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,007 | 1,760 | 1,793 | 2017/03/29 | 33 | 2017/01/12 | 25 | Marginal#4: Kiss kara Tsukuru Big Bang |
| 1,107 | 1,562 | 1,601 | 2017/04/26 | 61 | 2016/09/25 | 7 | Rewrite Season 2 |
| 1,277 | 3,432 | 7,853 | 2017/05/24 | 89 | 2017/01/21 | 40 | BanG Dream! |
| 1,360 | 2,824 | 3,670 | 2017/04/12 | 47 | 2017/01/16 | 37 | Yowamushi Pedal New Generation |
| 1,407 | 2,097 | 2,004 | 2017/03/29 | 33 | 2016/12/29 | 26 | Fuuka |
| 1,629 | 2,581 | 2,653 | 2017/03/22 | 26 | 2017/01/14 | 42 | Demi-chan wa Kataritai |
| 1,697 | 3,824 | 3,129 | 2017/04/19 | 54 | 2017/01/08 | 38 | Little Witch Academia |
| 1,784 | 3,045 | 2,556 | 2017/03/15 | 19 | 2017/01/12 | 44 | Kobayashi-san Chi no Maid Dragon |
| 1,932 | 4,611 | 4,383 | 2017/04/21 | 56 | 2016/12/22 | 31 | ACCA: 13-ku Kansatsu-ka |
| 116 | 217 | 184 | 2017/04/04 | 39 | 2017/01/05 | 2 | Akiba's Trip: The Animation |
| 166 | 272 | 223 | 2017/03/24 | 28 | 2016/12/26 | 3 | Hand Shakers |
| 174 | 2017/06/07 | 103 | 2017/02/17 | 35 | Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu: Sukeroku Futatabi-hen | ||
| 2,126 | 3,657 | 3,964 | 2017/03/24 | 28 | 2016/12/19 | 33 | Gabriel Dropout |
| 2,369 | 3,022 | 2,792 | 2017/03/08 | 12 | 2016/12/17 | 35 | Ao no Exorcist: Kyoto Fujouou-hen |
| 2,678 | 6,589 | 7,392 | 2017/04/26 | 61 | 2017/01/16 | 72 | Gintama. |
| 213 | 349 | 347 | 2017/03/29 | 33 | 2017/01/07 | 5 | ēlDLIVE |
| 249 | 409 | 529 | 2017/04/12 | 47 | 2017/01/13 | 6 | Minami Kamakura Koukou Joshi Jitensha-bu |
| 311 | 1,210 | 2017/07/28 | 154 | 2017/01/27 | 12 | Tales of Zestiria The X Season 2 | |
| 322 | 502 | 493 | 2017/03/22 | 26 | 2017/01/08 | 7 | Idol Jihen |
| 4,007 | 9,227 | 10,977 | 2017/04/26 | 61 | 2017/01/15 | 105 | Youjo Senki |
| 541 | 700 | 720 | 2017/03/24 | 28 | 2016/12/15 | 8 | Chaos;Child |
| 543 | 910 | 997 | 2017/03/29 | 33 | 2017/01/20 | 16 | Schoolgirl Strikers Animation Channel |
| 628 | 1,087 | 1,202 | 2017/03/29 | 33 | 2017/01/13 | 16 | Kuzu no Honkai |
| 744 | 1,124 | 1,186 | 2017/03/24 | 28 | 2017/01/13 | 19 | Urara Meirochou |
| 874 | 2,497 | 2,280 | 2017/05/26 | 91 | 2017/01/11 | 21 | One Room |
| 888 | 1,289 | 1,750 | 2017/04/05 | 40 | 2017/01/13 | 22 | Seiren |
| 888 | 1,414 | 1,594 | 2017/03/22 | 26 | 2016/12/29 | 16 | Masamune-kun no Revenge |
| 9,135 | 12,807 | 25,994 | 2017/03/24 | 28 | 2016/12/21 | 145 | Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo! 2 |
| 938 | 1,314 | 1,265 | 2017/03/24 | 28 | 2016/12/19 | 14 | Super Lovers 2 |
Note: A couple days after I posted this, Stalker changed Youjo, Gabdro, and ACCA into “high price” items so the above estimates are invalid for those shows now. See details here.
The above columns show, in order
• Stalker current wk1 points as of February 22, 9AM JST
• Stalker final wk1 estimate as of February 22, 9AM JST
• Stalker final wk1 estimate as of February 8, 10AM JST (previous estimate)
• 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.
• 11 of 27 (that has an estimate last time) increased.16 of 27 dropped. Though some changes were really insignificant, so it’s better to think of them as flat.
• Rakugo s2 has not been solicited long enough to have an estimate yet.
• The Konosuba estimate is much more reasonable now. BanG Dream came back down to earth too and I still think it may be overestimated.
• Youjo is looking like more of a stretch for 10k, especially if it is overestimated.
• I don’t know how to evaluate ACCA. Maybe it’s overestimated because Amazon is one of the shops you can get the box. Or maybe not.
It’s so sad to see that every season (and even year) one or two shows sales more than 10.000 or even 20.000 copies while most others struggle to even surpass 5.000
Is this just an Oricon/Amazon thing or do people only spend their money on one or two show per year (which even more sadly makes sense considering the prices of BD and DVD there…)
even the stalker predicted the same damn thing
Stalker uses only Amazon to make estimates, but its goal is to predict Oricon numbers, and Oricon reports sales from many stores (and tries to extrapolate out from there), not just Amazon. So it’s nothing specific to Oricon or Amazon.
I would expect that the overwhelming majority of people who watch anime regularly buy between 0 and 2 shows a year. Fans who buy a show every season, let alone multiple a season like me, are going to be a tiny portion of the market.
While this is disappointing and kinda boring for those of us who like tracking disc sales, what’s important is that there’s so, so many other ways to spend money on a series in Japan than buying the BDs. In some international markets like the US, pretty much the only products that will ever be released for a show are the BDs. But in Japan there’s a ton more stuff and the market just isn’t that dependent on disc sales.
Even at its peak in the mid-00s, as a portion of the *entire* anime-related market, physical DVD/BD disc sales were only 10% of the total revenue. In 2015, it was 5%. 95% of the market has nothing to do with DVDs or BDs!
…of course, we need to place a huge asterisk on that number. Those topline industry numbers are extremely skewed by massive mainstream franchises. I mean when 2016 numbers are out we’ll need to keep in mind that the box office gross for Kimi no Na wa. alone will be nearly half of the entire sum total of the non-children’s anime DVD/BD market (using JVA numbers). Disc sales are certainly going to be more than 5% of the revenue of most late night shows, i.e. the series we talk about here. Whereas for the truly massive franchises like One Piece or Pokemon or Conan or Aikatsu or whatever, disc sales are going to be far below 1%. Just totally irrelevant. So Shakunetsu no Takkyuu Musume or Shuumatsu no Izetta will care about disc sales much more than mainstream series.
These days I like using disc sales as a rough measure of fanbase size. While disc sales are only one piece of the pie, for your typical niche late night show it’s reasonable to assume that a series selling 2k avg discs is also selling less of everything else than a series selling 6k average discs, let alone 20k, 30k, or more. Does anyone doubt that disc sales paint a pretty clear picture of the immense disparity across the board between, say, Yuuri!!! On Ice and Flip Flappers? Or that there’s still a pretty solid pattern of shows with higher disc sales being more likely to get sequels than shows with lower disc sales? Even if it’s correlation rather than precise causation.
You still have to take it on a series-by-series basis of course. If a certain franchise has a huge hit manga, or a super popular line of figures, or moves hundreds of thousands of CDs, then that changes the equation. But in short, yes physical media is down. The amount of anime is up, however. While we may be in a bubble, I think it’s more than the importance of physical media is declining, albeit more rapidly in some parts of the market than others.
(And let’s not forget that physical media is in decline all around the world in all genres, and if you look at Japan as a whole anime discs are proving a little more resilient than other categories. You also can’t talk disc sales without talking about streaming, both domestic and foreign. Monetizing viewership over or alongside ownership is a valid strategy.)
I wish a lot of anime fans would read your reply, as so many of them are obsessed with how many discs an anime sales and that immediately makes X show better than Y show because it sold more.
I personally love this site just because it’s fun to see the disparity of shows, or to see which ones make a surprise hit. It’s cool to see people in Japan liking a show that I thought was obscure or that no one watched (such as Youjo Senki.) Or to see a show succeed that had no idea it was going to (like Konosuba S1.) I’ll still keep buying physical releases as I enjoy collecting them, though I wish more production committees would commit to finishing shows out. As nothing is worse than owning a show that you know will never be completed. But alas, that’s the pipe dream.
It seems Youjo Senki, Gabriel Dropout and ACCA now treated as high price box in sakura, but somehow i have feeling it may even more inaccurate than original pts lol.
Looks like the point adjustment is retroactive, so yeah I guess we’ll see which was more accurate. I imagine they were overestimated with no penalty, but a *full* box penalty (as it appears to be) is almost certainly excessive. BokuMachi ended up 50% underestimated at a ¥5k higher MSRP so uhhh, yeah.
Estimates were adjusted as follows on Stalker:
Gabdro: 3,810 → 2,336
Youjo: 8,938 → 6,030
ACCA: 4,309 → 2,712
It could have been a bigger change but the penalty was only applied to BD, not DVD, as DVD fell under the new[?] threshold. Of the three, I think ACCA might actually be more accurate now if only by coincidence. The overwhelming majority of its Stalker points come from the Amazon exclusive which is a big red flag that it’s Amazon-biased and thus overestimated.
(I’m not going to redo this post to reflect these changes though. Maybe I’ll do another in a few weeks.)
How is Kemono Friends going to be taken into account this season? I heard they had already sold out on Volume 1 and are doing reprints. I wanna see how the trend status of this anime will translate into a sales number. Is there a reason it’s not on this list? Sorry if it’s a stupid question, I don’t really know how this stuff works.
It’s being released as BDs bundled with some guidebooks, so Oricon won’t report it alongside the usual BD rankings, and Stalker can’t cover it (they only estimate DVD/BD). But regardless, it’s a CG show, which does not fit the definition of anime used here. I wouldn’t be reporting on its sales even if it were a normal BD release. Same reason I don’t cover shows like Sidonia or Arpeggio or the new Berserk here. In my opinion they don’t belong on an anime website.
thanks for the reply. The first reason makes sense, I will look for other sources to track the success of the anime and compare it to other shows this season.
As for the second reason it seems silly that you would intentionally narrow the scope of your website. Why do you not track CG shows? My impression from your reply was that they simply don’t fit your personal definition of anime. My impression of this website is that it is meant to be an archive of anime sales, so to intentionally omit shows that are widely accepted as anime decreases the usefulness of your website. Even if you believe that full CG shows don’t qualify as anime I think you should bite the bullet and cover them anyway for archival purposes
“I think you should bite the bullet and cover them anyway”
That’s not how this works. This is an anime website, not an “animation” website, else I’d be reporting on Tom & Jerry and Adventure Time disc sales, since those are animation that get released in Japan too. CG is a different medium, and to me it makes as much sense to cover them on an anime website as it does to cover live action TV series or western animation. Every site has definitions for what it covers. There’s a lot of actual 2D animation made in Japan I don’t cover either, or only partially cover: I’m not focused on standalone OVAs or films without a link to a TV series. I only cover some kids’/mainstream shows and only in a separate post (this one). There’s a number of things I leave out.
I certainly didn’t intend to give the impression that this is open to debate or change – it’s not. The parameters of what is covered by this site were determined a long time ago.
You may need to put that in the site page header, “Actual anime sales only!”
Hah that would only stoke the flames. I think a series like BBK/BRNK counts as anime but something doesn’t and it’s their site so I don’t care. All of the late night stuff that really matters to me is covered here anyway and missing what, 3-4 series a year isn’t the end of the world. What will be interesting is what will happen to arguments like these when CG becomes the norm and not the exception. It WILL happen, the aforementioned BBK/BRNK season 2 looked like the (unfortunate) future to me and we all know it’s much cheaper. Whenever that prediction comes to pass, I hope something is even still managing this site lol.
It’ll simply mean anime no longer exists, and this site will no longer be relevant and will be shut down. Someone else can start a “CG DVD/BD Sales in Japan” website at any time they wish.
I think the data here will always be relevant to us fans :) . Heck I am currently watching Acchi Kocchi for the first time and it’s not clicking with me at all, so I’m finding it quite boring. For whatever reason it reminds me of the recent Sansha Sanyou (which I liked but others complained it was boring) so out of curiosity I look it up here and lo AK averaged 2,321, just slightly higher than SS with a 4-year gap between series. I find correlations like this fascinating and I couldn’t easily scratch my curiosity itch without this site so thank you once again for the efforts something!
It’d be more a question of continuing to pay the hosting and domain fee for a site not being updated anymore.
But in any event, as bad as things are getting, that point is still a ways off. The apocalypse will inevitably come, but dwelling on it won’t change anything.
Are you sure about BanG Dream! Sales? I saw the game topping in Top Grossing in JP App Store, is the anime good?
Not sure what you mean, those are Stalker’s estimates, not my guesses. The anime simply is not selling very much, despite the event tickets. Unless it’s super underestimated, which is possible but maybe unlikely. The mobage might do well but that doesn’t mean the anime will.
As for top grossing, well, it’s doing alright at the moment (it’s gotten up to #13) but it’s also brand new. We’ll need to see how it does long-term.