31579 replies to this topic

[BlueStarSaber]

Say I founded this on Twitter in regards to manga popularity in Europe

https://twitter.com/...0816837632?s=19

Edited by BlueStarSaber, 27 September 2020 - 03:22 PM.

[Bryon_Konoha_Ninja]

Say I founded this on Twitter in regards to manga popularity in Europe

https://twitter.com/...0816837632?s=19

Huh.

[BlueStarSaber]

Huh.

 My Mistake it's anime, it pretty much saying countries in eastern Europe and in the UK Naruto is the most popular, while the west Europe countries it's One Piece. With Spain being the exception of both which Dragon ball is the most popular

[Bryon_Konoha_Ninja]

 My Mistake it's anime, it pretty much saying countries in eastern Europe and in the UK Naruto is the most popular, while the west Europe countries it's One Piece. With Spain being the exception of both which Dragon ball is the most popular

 

Still interesting info to learn nonetheless :)

[RulesofNature]

Another thing is since the US shares it's region code with Japan, there's a very real concern over there that people will reverse-import anime to save a bunch of money.

[Bail o' Lies]

I'm going to explain something real quick.

 

When it comes to video releases, Japan is kinda still stuck in the VHS days where you could fit three episodes onto a single tape. When DVDs came out, this continued and they tried this in America. It didn't stick, so we started getting DVD sets with all the episodes whereas in Japan you still buy 3 episode blurays. And in Japan, one of those disks run around $60 iirc. $60 for three episodes whereas in America that would buy you an entire season of a show and, depending on the show, have a fair bit of change still in your pocket.

 

Manga, on the other hand, costs something like 650 yen per volume, you can read it anywhere, and recycle it if you don't want it anymore (or burn it if the writing goes to crap). Manga is just a lot more accessible, hence why some can sell thousands or even of copies despite having no anime like Dungeon Meshi. That series was selling 350k copies per volume in it's early days, and it's first four volumes reached combined sales of over 2 million.

From what I recall from some video I watched once, one of the big reasons Gundam keeps not taking off in the states or Japan feels like it not taking off was the DVD sales. They like you said are used to being about to get Japanese fans to pay $20-60 dollars for a few episodes; which most western fans refuse to pay that amount.

 

Japanese companies has a lot of, "it worked before so don't change it," mindset to their entertainment and its industry. Sure they can be innovative at times but once they come up with a system they often refuse to abandon it.

 

Look at Final Fantasy XIV for example. They had a documentary about it that main points of why it failed at the start was. FF11 was one of the first mmo ever and defined what an mmo was to Japan and became one of the biggest success the franchise ever had. So, Square wanted a sequel. So, they put all the people from ff11 in charge of ff14 and they set about making ff14 into ff11 2.0. They got exactly what they wanted, the problem with this is that between the two games their came out a game the defined what an mmo was to the world; WoW. The design team took what worked in ff11 and didn't look at any of the mmo that came out in the years after 11 or even their main competitor. They also didn't think a Final Fantasy game could flop. So the game came off as archaic. It flopped. And to save it the new guy had to implement all the improvements to the mmo genre that the original team ignored.

Edited by Bail o' Lies, 28 September 2020 - 06:36 AM.

[RulesofNature]

From what I recall from some video I watched once, one of the big reasons Gundam keeps not taking off in the states or Japan feels like it not taking off was the DVD sales. They like you said are used to being about to get Japanese fans to pay $20-60 dollars for a few episodes; which most western fans refuse to pay that amount.

 

Japanese companies as a lot of, "it worked before so don't change it," mindset to their entertainment. Sure they can be innovative at times but once they come up with a system they often refuse to abandon it.

 

Look at Final Fantasy XIV for example. They had a documentary about it that main points of why it failed at the start was. FF11 was on the first mmo ever and defined what an mmo was to Japan and became on of the biggest success the franchise ever had. So, Square wanted a sequel. So, they put all the people from ff11 in charge of ff14 and they set about making ff14 into ff11 2.0. They got exactly what they wanted, the problem with this is that between the two games their came out a game the defined what an mmo was to the world WoW. The design team took what worked in ff11 and didn't look at any of the mmo that came out in the years after 11 or even their main competitor. They also didn't think a Final Fantasy game could flop. So the game came off as archaic. It flopped. And to save it the new guy had to implement all the improvements to the mmo genre that the original team ignored.

True. It's why they decided to follow up Wing with the original series, since they though the UC would just take off like it did in Japan. But with SEED, it was popular when it was fansubbed and passed around through file-sharing. But by the time they got it to America, Destiny had already arrived to rip apart the CE fandom AND they censored the US release. In fact, SEED actually did pretty okay here in Canada where it aired uncensored. 00 saw the show move to the Sci-fi channel. And IBO? In addition to the problems of that show the US release was rated TV-M, so there's no way in hell they could market it like older Gundams to teens.

 

Not to mention, them wanting people to buy Gunpla and how they screwed up their relationship with Walmart, resulting in Walmart not wanting to stock SEED toys. See, Gundam action figures sold well...if you were one of the main machines. But Bandai kept stocking them with side Mobile Suits that didn't sell. They tried to get Zeta toys in, but iirc the show not airing on TV/not making the toys soured the deal and as a result Walmart refused to stock SEED toys.

[James S Cassidy]

 

I'm going to explain something real quick.

 

When it comes to video releases, Japan is kinda still stuck in the VHS days where you could fit three episodes onto a single tape. When DVDs came out, this continued and they tried this in America. It didn't stick, so we started getting DVD sets with all the episodes whereas in Japan you still buy 3 episode blurays. And in Japan, one of those disks run around $60 iirc. $60 for three episodes whereas in America that would buy you an entire season of a show and, depending on the show, have a fair bit of change still in your pocket.

 

Manga, on the other hand, costs something like 650 yen per volume, you can read it anywhere, and recycle it if you don't want it anymore (or burn it if the writing goes to crap). Manga is just a lot more accessible, hence why some can sell thousands or even of copies despite having no anime like Dungeon Meshi. That series was selling 350k copies per volume in it's early days, and it's first four volumes reached combined sales of over 2 million.

This is true, even today.
Take One Punch Man Season 2.
Japan has like 6 disks for the season of only what...12 episodes? Each $60.

The American release of the series is the entire season on blue-ray.

[Namaenash]

When I live in Japan, my friends buy DVD to appreciate the producers and people involved in its making. I think it's treated more as collectible items.

It's also a common practice for Japanese company to set higher price in their homeland, as opposed to abroad / export. We're talking about the world's 3rd largest economy by GDP, folks (and 4th largest by PPP).

Some products, like manga, relies on volume to make profit. Manga is a significant cultural item in Japan. It's sold at a very low price, as RulesofNature mentioned, about ¥650 per volume. That's less than a cost of a lunch meal. To give you a perspective, a box of ekiben costs ~¥1,000. Manga is available almost everywhere: bookstores, convenient stores, digital, etc.

At the end of the day, it all boils down to the unit of economics (the ratio of customer lifetime value to customer acquisition cost). Therefore, most of the profitable franchises share something in common: they thrive in selling merchandise.

Pokemon, Hello Kitty, Anpanman merchandise sales alone brings more money than all MCU franchise movies combined, let alone Naruto franchise.

It doesn't matter if your anime is not popular, or if your manga has limited distribution, so long as you can sell merchandise at scale, your franchise is here to stay.

[Derock]

When I live in Japan, my friends buy DVD to appreciate the producers and people involved in its making. I think it's treated more as collectible items.

It's also a common practice for Japanese company to set higher price in their homeland, as opposed to abroad / export. We're talking about the world's 3rd largest economy by GDP, folks (and 4th largest by PPP).

Some products, like manga, relies on volume to make profit. Manga is a significant cultural item in Japan. It's sold at a very low price, as RulesofNature mentioned, about ¥650 per volume. That's less than a cost of a lunch meal. To give you a perspective, a box of ekiben costs ~¥1,000. Manga is available almost everywhere: bookstores, convenient stores, digital, etc.

At the end of the day, it all boils down to the unit of economics (the ratio of customer lifetime value to customer acquisition cost). Therefore, most of the profitable franchises share something in common: they thrive in selling merchandise.

Pokemon, Hello Kitty, Anpanman merchandise sales alone brings more money than all MCU franchise movies combined, let alone Naruto franchise.

It doesn't matter if your anime is not popular, or if your manga has limited distribution, so long as you can sell merchandise at scale, your franchise is here to stay.

 

That's very interesting. Understandable about Pokemon and Hello Kitty, especially the latter. When I went to California, I went to a Hello Kitty store. I know that franchise is huge in popularity, even in the 90s!

[BlueStarSaber]

Well Pokemon has made 90 billion making it the highest grossing media franchise of all time.
 

I take it these merchandise sales are why boruto is still barley hanging on?

[Bail o' Lies]

Well Pokemon has made 90 billion making it the highest grossing media franchise of all time.
 

I take it these merchandise sales are why boruto is still barley hanging on?

I would say its legacy, the fact that it still have some international sales, and the fact that Studio Pierrot don't have anything to replace it with.

 

Because, I honestly find it very hard to believe people are buying enough plushies of Boruto in Japan to keep it afloat.

Edited by Bail o' Lies, 29 September 2020 - 04:41 PM.

[Bryon_Konoha_Ninja]

I would say its legacy, the fact that it still have some international sales, and the fact that Studio Pierrot don't have anything to replace it with.

 

Because, I honestly find it very hard to believe people are buy enough plushies of Boruto in Japan to keep it afloat.

 

And we've seen how desperate Studio Pierrot is to try to keep Boruto going while they also have Black Clover to work with (but one has to worry how they could screw the pooch with it like they did with Naruto too...), and that could be why they're doing this even as many people have given up regarding Boruto and Naruto as a whole franchise.

[Namaenash]

Well Pokemon has made 90 billion making it the highest grossing media franchise of all time.
 
I take it these merchandise sales are why boruto is still barley hanging on?

I doubt it. Naruto franchise has never been strong in merchandising.

Mostly its legacy, thanks to the 'gold chest' they have accumulated during its heyday. There's no doubt it was one of the most successful franchise a few years ago. They have strong legs to produce endless anime episodes and fillers, not to mention they released movie almost every year (back then). I think they wouldn't have any issue producing anime in many more years to come.

Although, whether it's aligned with their expectations or whether it's profitable or not, public wouldn't know for sure without facts made available.

Proxy indicators are available for people to deduce.

[Bail o' Lies]

And we've seen how desperate Studio Pierrot is to try to keep Boruto going while they also have Black Clover to work with (but one has to worry how they could screw the pooch with it like they did with Naruto too...), and that could be why they're doing this even as many people have given up regarding Boruto and Naruto as a whole franchise.

Black Clover is fine, but its no Naruto.

 

Naruto basically gave them "kitten off, we can do anything we want," money. They were able to end Bleach when they got fed up with having to constantly do filler, because of Naruto. They were able to screw around with Tokyo Ghoul's story, because they had Naruto. They were able to pick and choose which stories they wanted to do anime of, because they had Naruto. 

 

Now, they have two Naruto-like anime that aren't making the money they were used to.

Edited by Bail o' Lies, 29 September 2020 - 09:13 PM.

[Bryon_Konoha_Ninja]

Black Clover is fine, but its no Naruto.
 
Naruto basically gave them "kitten off, we can do anything we want," money. They were able to end Bleach when they got fed up with having to constantly do filler because of Naruto. They were able to screw around with Tokyo Ghoul's story because they had Naruto. They were able to pick and choose which stories they wanted to do anime of because they had Naruto. 
 
Now, they have two Naruto-like anime that aren't making the money they were used to.

And in the end, they only have themselves to blame for what they did to Naruto in the first place...

Edited by Bryon_Konoha_Ninja, 29 September 2020 - 06:52 PM.

[BlueStarSaber]

Heck check out this video about rock lee https://youtu.be/haezsT0iGsY

[Phantom_999]

I would say its legacy, the fact that it still have some international sales, and the fact that Studio Pierrot don't have anything to replace it with.

 

Because, I honestly find it very hard to believe people are buying enough plushies of Boruto in Japan to keep it afloat.

 

I doubt it. Naruto franchise has never been strong in merchandising.

Mostly its legacy, thanks to the 'gold chest' they have accumulated during its heyday. There's no doubt it was one of the most successful franchise a few years ago. They have strong legs to produce endless anime episodes and fillers, not to mention they released movie almost every year (back then). I think they wouldn't have any issue producing anime in many more years to come.

Although, whether it's aligned with their expectations or whether it's profitable or not, public wouldn't know for sure without facts made available.

Proxy indicators are available for people to deduce.

 

This is true. I mean sure there will be casual buyers every now and then that get a plushie or something from Boruto because they think it's neat. There is always the off chance of that, and maybe that is why they put it on sundays for impressionable kids to get into Boruto. Never the less the former long term consumers of anything related to Naruto and its ill begotten offsring are not really a factor anymore (minus the Hinata wankers that only cared whether or not she got her fairy tale ending). Boruto's volumes don't sell as fractionally as well as Naruto back in it's prime even when taking the decline of manga sales in general into consideration (I think digital sales may have something to do with that). Besides (and again anyone can correct me if I'm wrong on this) but merchandising still seems to favor Naruto still rather than Boruto overall but well for obvious reasons, it's not doing much of anything (That is anecdotal observations of course)

Edited by Phantom_999, 29 September 2020 - 10:54 PM.

[totherpage95]

Heck check out this video about rock lee https://youtu.be/haezsT0iGsY

well theres naruto sd

[Bail o' Lies]

This is true. I mean sure there will be casual buyers every now and then that get a plushie or something from Boruto because they think it's neat. There is always the off chance of that, and maybe that is why they put it on sundays for impressionable kids to get into Boruto. Never the less the former long term consumers of anything related to Naruto and its ill begotten offspring are not really a factor anymore (minus the Hinata wankers that only cared whether or not she got her fairy tale ending). Boruto's volumes don't sell as fractionally as well as Naruto back in it's prime even when taking the decline of manga sales in general into consideration (I think digital sales may have something to do with that). Besides (and again anyone can correct me if I'm wrong on this) but merchandising still seems to favor Naruto still rather than Boruto overall but well for obvious reasons, it's not doing much of anything (That is anecdotal observations of course)

Pretty much. Again, kids watch Boruto in Japan because it on Sunday (the only day they don't have school) and its "babies first shounen."

 

As for merchandise, after a best an attempt of letting Boruto stand on its own. It flopped so hard; that everything is now advertised as Naruto-Boruto products if they include the sequel's cast at all. In the konohan theme park it almost completely Naruto except for an image or two of Bolt.

 

Hinata only really ever sold love pillows from how I understand it. They tried expanding her merchandise after the last. It failed.