Namaenash

From this article here https://www.animenew...omic-con/.94186

Mari Morimoto:
So the fans wanted Naruto to get together with Sakura?

Well, there's definitely camps of fans who felt that way, and there were also those that were very happy he ended up with Hinata. But there were quite passionate opinions on both sides!

I almost caused a rift in my own household too, because my wife was very upset also that Naruto didn't get together with Sakura. In fact, she complained quite vehemently to me!

Jo Otsuki:
Quite few of the female staff at Studio Pierrot that produces the anime, apparently were also upset.

Whoah. So how did you handle that, especially with your wife?

I tried to defuse the situation by assuring my wife that SHE was actually the model for Hinata. (laughs)

As you were saying that, I thought, I wonder if your family life was more like Hinata and Naruto's family or Sasuke and Sakura's? (everyone laughs)

Masashi Kishiimoto: Well it might not actually be like either. My wife is quite strong as well, she's a strong character.

Oh, so kind of like Sakura!

So I think my wife might secretly realize that Hinata wasn't really the model for her (laughs)

Ah yes, I remember reading this article back in 2015.

The interview that ends all Kishimotos interviews. His career as a mangaka pretty much went downhill from that point onwards. I suppose hes already wealthy enough and he can retire.

You can tell that hes trying hard to do damage control. They knew theyre loosing a segment of the customer with the ending. They just dont know the magnitude of killing NS (more than ~95% manga sales drop if we go by the stats).

Fast forward, Naruto franchise is not even in top 50 annual sales. His new manga barely sold 10k copies per volume and was cancelled at volume 5. Hes forced to return to Boruto, and took it over from the previous writer, only to have its sales continue declining.

You'd think that since SS is SOoooooOooooo popular, they would have made an SS movie by now. Or since Sasuke and SAKURA are so popular they would have put the two of them in a movie together but instead they get ONE kitten tier spinoff manga and a novel almost no one read. 

Its been a while since I checked-in last time. Hope you all are doing great.

SS popularity has always been a myth. Now that there are specific products dedicated to this pairing, we can finally debunk the myths of the pairing popularity.

Not surprisingly, they are very small. We have facts and figures, so, its easy to debate and make arguments.

Fundamentally, Kishi dont need to switch direction of his story telling. Even if he did, or someone else ask him to do, he need to do it properly.

Folks who work with data would know that your source of truth shouldnt be based on quantitative data only (in this case popularity poll, or God forbid, YouTube watch count). Consumer studies always include qualitative as well as quantitative to make decision that will amplify the sales of the products. What happened with Naruto franchise is a good case study of how cognitive bias in decision making could easily brought down multi-billion dollar franchise. Not only that, but also future projects related to the key folks in the franchise (look at what happened to Samurai 8).

Today, Naruto franchise is beyond salvation, that much is clear. The producer need to accept the fact that ~95% of their sales are now gone, thanks to their bias to go down with NH/SS route. Theyll sell products, sure, but it wont be at the magnitude they used to have.

What Kishi shouldve done: focus on making a good story, ignore the noises coming from the fandom. Especially the loud ones (looking at you NH/SS).

I meant no disrespect. Simply stating the facts, instead of opinions. And the fact is as clear as day: NS was part of the significant few that finance the franchise.

Where were you in 2012? RtN novel was part of the movies promotional material (read: advertisements). This is widely known. Again, youre trying to compare adjacent products vs strategic products.

One is marketing budget, the other one is franchises production budget. Once again, its not Apple-to-Apple comparison.

One is designed to be printed in limited numbers (promotional purpose to the adjacent product), the other one is designed for strategic growth and customer stickiness (print as much as budget allowed to be in the circulation, cross fingers the sales rate goes beyond the target so that publishers wont bite the bullet for returned copies from sales channels. If sales go beyond the target, reprint again and push to the circulation using some of the revenue generated from the previous prints batch. Rinse and repeat.).

I think youre confusing yourself. Look, I know its hard to accept the fact that NH/SS just doesnt sell and they turned out to be the smallest segment that barks the loudest. The facts are just right in front of us. Not worth to dwell in details and cherry pick frankly. It further exhibits the limited understanding you might have when it comes to manga industry in Japan (publications, circulations, etc).

The facts have spoken for themselves and I pity folks who cant comprehend basic statistics, such as Pareto principles or Pareto / power law distribution. If you cant relate to this, theres no point to debate really. Im happy with my facts, and you can stay with your opinion.

No one is saying NS fans is the majority of the fandom. My argument has always been around Pareto principles. The significant few who support this series financially. You take it out, you wipe out majority of the income. As simple as that. In Naruto franchise case, NH/SS readers are NOT the significant few. NS is certainly part of that significant few.

https://en.m.wikiped...areto_principle

https://en.m.wikiped...to_distribution

Youre talking about adjacent product (Rock Lee) vs actual strategic pivot of the product (Boruto & SS manga). Its not Apple-to-Apple comparison.

One (Rock Lee) is meant for adjacent, normally for the purpose of marketing / fan service. For sure budget will come from marketing budget, which is money meant to be burned (typically goes to advertisements, joint merchandise products, etc). Think of Databook.

The other (Boruto , SS) is meant to extend the livelihood of this franchise. This comes from their production budget.

Simply put, they took the wrong bet with NH/SS and killed the significant few that finance the series. That much is clear and the manga sales clearly provide the facts. Other details are just made up excuses to justify the wrong decision.

Precisely my point. The sales was very bad. Im sure the publisher dont target it to be half the sales of Boruto.

No smart people would come to business plans meeting to suggest that Hey, lets publish a new manga and aim for half the sales of our current manga series. Publishing manga requires not just content creators investment, but also logistics muscles.

These are not charity. They do this for a living. The price of a manga volume is 400-500 yen (which is about $3 - $3.75). Its widely known that its a thin margin business. So, you got to aim for high volume to drives profits. Its also known that manga with low sales are being subsidised by the few larger ones. Since it may take time for the manga to take off. Thats up to Shueisha to manage. So, nett nett, publishing more mangas under the same franchise means higher production cost.

So, how much is required for a series to break even? (I.e run without subsidies). No one knows the exact answer except the publisher, in this case Shueisha. My intuition tells me the threshold is about 175k - 200k sales per volume. Why? Since this is the threshold to which Boruto manga moved to V-Jump Magazine from the prime WSJ, back in July 2019 after their last two volumes didnt sold beyond 175k copies.

Shueisha essentially gave up with this series since July 2019, re-categorised it as series that needs subsidies (I.e. beneficiaries), no longer a series that gives subsidies (I.e. benefactor/donor). No point beating a dead horse. Its already dead.

I think they are surprised that the sales of Sasuke Retsuden is so low. The same way theyre surprised they loose >95% of sales by going with NH/SS and created Boruto: Naruto Next Generation. Which is why theyre trying to gauge whats needed to be done next by asking polls, etc.

SS doesnt sell. Their recent manga bombed like nobody business. The ending pretty much wiped out >95% of their revenue, so, since now its proven that NH & SS are financially small, I doubt theyll make more content about them. Good riddance.

Smart move for Kishi to write about Minato. Its the safest bet really. It just further proof that the people that cares are the remaining very few loyal readers from the original series. No one from Boruto, or Next Generation made it in the list. If the Minato manga sales is less than Boruto, he pretty much going to proof that nothing can be done to revive the series.

Speaking of the list, Id take public poll with a grain of salt frankly. Not only the data is full of noise, but you also cant infer who are actually contributing financially. Furthermore, doing poll now is only demonstrate survivorship bias.

https://upload.wikim...ip-bias.svg.png

Correlation does not imply causation

The downfall of Naruto franchise is listening to noises from the internet without actually understanding their customer segments. Hinata/NH was never popular or bring additional profits; while SS fans purchasing power was very small. This is what happens when a producer get rid of the significant few (NS), which was the largest financial contributor.

Unless they want to keep losing money, the best way is to stop/cancel/end whatever they are producing right now.

 

Pairings Fandoms (SS + NH + NS and others Pairings) isn't even 10% of a public Shonen manga. The vast majority are casual fans who like cool fights and characters.  Again Naruto is a Shonen with few romantic chapters and Fanservices. Pairings aren't important to these fans. (You can call Retsuden sales weak, But still will get 50% or more of the current Boruto Sales).

Boruto isn't a story focused in SS/nH. (Why SS fandom should care about Boruto? He isn't Sasuke and Sakura's son)

It's a story about Naruto's son, Kawaki and Alliens with old casting serving as a support Characters (And not rarelly being humilliated or disappearing for years)

The problem is you wants to blame the entire Boruto Flop just to SS/nH Fandoms and ignore the entire trash that is Boruto's story which failed to sustain the original Naruto public in these eight years.


If you are blaming SS/nH fandom for Boruto's fiasco. Please explain why with NS fandom could be different?

I don't undertand how  NS "fandom" could have saved Boruto from the  Flop. Unless if you really think NS fandom was responsible for 90% of Naruto sales...

Many NS fans would  abaddon  Boruto too. Just like many SS/NH/Sasuke/Naruto/casual fans left in these 8 years,  The story will remain the same with NS being canon ignoring Sarada Gaiden. The only difference is Sakura slapping Kawaki in Hinata's place.
You have to Reboot the ENTIRE Boruto, change the author and even put the anime in a another studio to save the series. Not just change a pairing.

 

 

Well, again, I'm not going to debate over something that's never happened.

 

NS in Boruto never happened. Sakura becomes Boruto's mother never happened. You won't be able to make smart arguments that are fact driven.

 

If the best counter argument that you have is based on what-if and non-existent situation, then we can stop debating/discussing, since it's unproductive. You can have your opinion, and I can have my facts. Let readers choose which ones to believe.

 

What I've stated so far are merely facts:

 

1. The ending was made for NH and SS. Turns out they are the wrong bet, and the franchise were doomed financially.

 

2. No one except the publisher have lifetime sales figure. The sales published by aggregators (e.g. Oricon) are factual so long as they are within their top X ranking. Aggregators do not publish lifetime sales.

 

3. ~15 years of Naruto manga yields a lifetime sales figure of ~250 million copies (You have NS, NH, SS during this period).

 

4. ~6 years of Boruto: Naruto Next Generation manga yields a lifetime sales figure of ~4 million copies (You have NH, SS during this period).

 

5. There was a systemic decline and loss of revenue that demonstrates clearly the Power Law (Pareto Principle) of the fanbase (NS clearly being the significant few).

 

 

...and the best part that I find it amusing from your argument:

 

 

 

Pairings Fandoms (SS + NH + NS and others Pairings) isn't even 10% of a public Shonen manga. 

 

You, Sir/Madam, just agreed with the Pareto Principle argument that I spoke about that there are significant few who finance the franchise. I don't know where you get that 10% from, but regardless, you just reinforce my argument. It is an adage of business management that "80% of sales come from 20% of clients" --Feel free to educate yourself. You're welcome. It can be 20%, it can be 10%, whatever the exact number might be we wouldn't know without the actual granular data points; but the mental model and the posture is the same: significant few.

 

Now, we finally know how small SS and NH are and it won't be surprising that the franchise doomed financially the moment they removed NS.

 

The rumour about hiatus of Boruto anime also comes without surprise. Most of the time, anime is more like advertising channel. The real revenue generators are Merchandise, Advertising, Licensing, etc. For instance, Hello Kitty makes about $80 billion from merchandise sales, while Star Wars makes about $42 billion. 

 

Think of it this way: TV Tokyo has always put Boruto as the top selling product, but they never share the breakdown of their profit margin for Boruto. And then suddenly there's a rumour that it is going to hiatus. Common sense when you put these together: they're not making much profit all this while. Perhaps just barely enough to survive. It's possible that the executives decides that whatever capital they put to Boruto for the past 8 years better be allocated elsewhere that is more profitable. 

That is indeed the mentality of SS/NH mindset: always made up a situation and narrative that does not exist. Lol.

There is no point debating on what-if. Its just a simple plain fact that SS/NH are the wrong bet. They thought they are big, but the fact says otherwise. The ending and the continuation is made for NH/SS, and these fanbase need to own it up, rather than throwing the blame to something else.

There is absolutely no point having a what-if discussion about Sakura being Borutos mother. Lol. That is not what happened and you just cant make smart arguments based on what-ifs and wishful thinking.

Facts are facts, and NS folks go by facts (what is written in the manga, what is recorded in sales figures, etc). Now, discussing based on facts and data is most welcome, but discussing based on what-if or non-factual events, hm, I dont know. Not my cup of tea :)

Well 8/6 months  after the manga ending the post Material drawing/made by Kishimoto aren't performing bad.

Gaiden got 1.000.000 of sells the the same quantity for a regular Part 2 Naruto Volume
Boruto The Movie got 40.000.000 of Box Offices. The Biggest  Naruto Movie in the history.
Far better than The Last  or Road to Ninja.
The Novels was selling good too.

Thats why i don't belive SS/NH and the loss of NS fandom have some impact in the casual fans who never cared about pairings and only like the fights..

Boruto's flop is the entire fault of the trash/uninteresting story who are damaging the entire franchise since 2016.

Not really. This is a very easy argument to debunk. So, allow me to simplify things for you. Ockhams razor.

First, you need to compare lifetime sales of each of the volume or each of the product. Only the publisher have this information, so, we have to work with data that is available to us and make assumptions. The various charts that you present does not exhibit lifetime sales of the individual volume. It exhibits the sales recorded (typically by aggregators, such as Oricon) as long as the product is in their radar (typically their rank).

What is available publicly, though:
- Naruto manga sold ~250 million copies over 15 years and 72 volumes,
- Boruto manga sold about 4 million over 6 years and 12 volumes (stats 2 years back I think).

You can clearly see the Power Law here, in which the new direction of this franchise lost more than 90% of its financial prowess.

You can twist and turn, but you will end up with the same conclusion. Theres just a systematic lost of fanbase purchasing the manga. Just a plain arithmetic of lifetime sales gives you that conclusion already. Again, Ockhams razor the simplest explanation is most likely to be true. In this case, NS fanbase, the 20% that contributes to 80% of the revenue has gone.

Second, it is about the gradual decline. Now, this is coming from me, someone who spent more than a decade living in Japan. So, you can take it as it is. Just trying to explain you why the decline was gradual and systemic, not sudden.

You need to appreciate how their manga supply chain works. There are four major channels to sell manga in Japan:
1) direct sales,
2) wholesale that goes to bookstores, konbini, etc
3) dealers that goes to smaller shops,
4) online sales

Now, we are talking about 2014-2015, in which online sales are not that big yet and it is still growing (it was roughly 15% of overall manga sales, before it beats physical manga sales in 2019-2020). So, lets not add that to the mix yet.

Now, for Naruto, again this is coming from someone who lives there since late 90s for about a decade or so; the biggest channels are wholesale and dealers. Now, if my memory serves me correctly, only wholesale gets the consignment agreement with the publisher. That is, if the manga is unsold after a period of time, they can return it to the publisher up to certain amount. The publisher can then recycle it or convert its paper to something else (commonly toilet paper). Why only wholesale gets to do it? Because of logistics constraints, easier to collect the unsold from few points in a region, rather than thousands of points in the case of dealers. Few dealers gets consignment agreements, but thats more of an exception rather than the norm.

Majority of Naruto manga buyers are actually dealers that redistribute again to the next chain and some wholesalers who opt to partial purchase agreements to get more discounts. Not really John Doe the end reader.

So, when you put this into perspective, it explains clearly why it takes a while for the the franchise to find a new equilibrium. Simply because the demand generation comes from wholesalers and dealers that orders based on recent purchase trends. These wholesalers and dealers will book the order to their best knowledge based on previous period purchase to gain the optimal cost-benefit ratio.

This explains why the decline is systemic. They order the next volume, based on the purchasing trends of the past few volumes. Sometimes, they order based on special deals or discounts (for instance, last volume of a series typically have a larger discount to ensure longer shelf-life in bookstores, etc. that explains typically the sales of last volume tends to spike slightly, but its overall lifetime sales may be on par with the other volumes on average).

The wholesalers and dealers wont know the exact lifetime sales of a volume at the time the new volume comes out (typically in the next 2-3 months). So, they have to forecast based on various things as well, apart from the past purchase trends. This also can be used as a proxy to gauge the lifetime sales of a volume prior to the current one. If the current volumes order is low, you can make a guess that one or two volumes before it is also declining. Do you all remember back in 2014/2015, there was anecdotal post in this site and social media that the last volume of Naruto was pilling up at the stores? And then suddenly when Boruto Gaiden came out, the sales were not as stellar as volume 70, 71, 72 if Im not mistaken (a drop of more than 30% if Im not wrong).

For Naruto franchise, the decline was systemic. You can clearly see a step-by-step reduction (based on non-lifetime sales tracked by Oricon, etc) until it found its new equilibrium.

Coming back, I can totally understand why it is difficult for SS / NH fanbase to accept the fact that they are a very small segment financially. They live in a delusion that they are so big and so popular. It is their insecurities and it is only normal they would blame something else when the actual data/facts dont go according to the narrative they want people to believe (e.g. blaming Boruto when SS Retsuden sales is low, etc).

It is a case study of wrong business decisions based on false assumptions and false pretext: that NH and SS is huge, therefore new direction of the franchise with these pairings as the premise and their children as the features is the bet they are taking.

The ending of Naruto franchise was made specifically to cater NH and SS audience. Which, ended up to be very small in terms of financial contributions.

This is Pareto principle at play and NS fanbase is the ~20% that brings ~80% of the revenue. History and data spoke by itself.

You take out the significant few, youll loose at least ~80% gradually until the market corrects itself and find the new equilibrium. Happens clearly with Borutos less than 100k sales per volume. Thats the new equilibrium, and when you relate it to the abrupt ending made for SS/NH, thats pretty much their size. About 5% of the original fanbase from sales perspective.

NS fanbase have moved on. No point to visit the twitter post just to increase its view.

If they want to reboot, sure, by all means. Theyll be dealing with a different customer segments. The NS fanbase that made large contribution to Naruto franchises financial success in 15 years is no longer here.

Gee, a manga about the "romance" between a glorified single minded groupie and a dinosaur riding unapologetic domestic violence edgelord is not doing well. Shocker.

I guess all that talk about SasuSaku being popular was just that: Talk.

I remember a couple of months ago I wrote in this forum that we will finally be able to get the true size of SS fandom with this series. Here we are, and its not surprising we found out that its actually very small.

A manga that was produced based on a novel that sold poorly to appeal to a fandom that was supposed to be big based on rumours, but its true size has never been validated. Who wouldve guessed it will sold poorly? /s

Not sure if the decision makers were in denial, desperate or simply cannot make smart decisions. It could be three combined. lol.

Anyways, I will hold my judgement until the hard figures come out (if at all). We know for sure by now, SS is very small. The sales figure for this specific product validates that. Whether it is smaller than NH, we dont know and frankly it doesnt matter.

Ive said this before and Ill say it again: Naruto franchise is dead the moment they killed NS, one of the major fandom financing this series.

Will reviving NS bring back sales to the rate before volume 64 came out? Absolutely not. Readers have moved on.

Anything NS at the moment will just kill the already very small NH/SS fandom. NS folks are generally logical and reasonable, we go by manga contents and whats written. While NH/SS fandom will try their hard to justify and get validation that they are very big without any basis except some unofficial polls about pairings, some rumours, etc. It is their insecurities since the original manga that was written for 15 years hardly made any positive content for NH/SS.

With this manga released, we can finally put that debate into conclusion: both SS and NH are very small. They are the freeloaders and it is very unfortunate the executive made decisions that appeals to these very small audience, which end up causing the franchises death.

Yet, here we are today with Boruto, with NH+SS and without NS: the franchises manga sales lost its > 95% of the revenue. Not a strictly proof by contraposition, but hard facts nonetheless. Something that less intelligent folks are having difficulty to accept.

250 million copies in 15 years vs barely 4 million in 7+ years. More than 2 million copies each volume vs less than 100k copies each volume.