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Forum - View topicThe Anime Economy - Part 1: Let's Make An Anime!
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sburstall
Posts: 178 Location: Ohio, USA |
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This is true for movies also. Making a movie is a crap shoot and one hopes their movie makes money.
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kufirst
 Posts: 86 Location: Kansas |
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Great write-up. It sounds more or less how I thought the process would go. Obvious emphasis on making income, with lots of roadblocks waiting to derail EVERYTHING!
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Lord Geo
Posts: 2713 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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The funny thing is that the R1 anime industry doesn't want to seemingly wait. Naturally, most companies don't have TV reruns & international sales to rely on, not to mention potentially paying too much for a title, but most anime licensors in North America seem to hope that a title can make back its money as soon as possible, because if it doesn't within a certain amount of time (let's say a year just for argument's sake) or some other issue comes up (not necessarily licensing issues), then the title is a failure in their eyes. For example, John Sirabella admitted that Media Blasters did end up making their money back from licensing GaoGaiGar within a year after releasing the second half of the show for the first time. True, they had to drop the excellent English dub for the second half, but they still made their money back, so the later litebox collections GaoGaiGar received had to give them nothing but profit in the end. The fact that profit seemed to have been made should mean it was a successful release to some effect, yet MB never licensed GaoGaiGar FINAL, seemingly only because the dub was dropped from the TV series, so therefore it was a failure of a release in Sirabella's eyes. In another example, sometimes FUNimation will give a series they licensed a S.A.V.E. boxset release without ever giving it a regular complete boxset release, such as Big Windup! (these immediate S.A.V.E. releases is likely where the "S.A.V.E. is only for failed releases" mantra originally came from). I'm not saying that Big Windup! would have been able to make it's money back if it wasn't given the S.A.V.E. release right away, but who knows if there were a couple other series that FUNi could have made their money back over time, but instead FUNi decided to cut their losses as soon as possible and just go for the S.A.V.E. boxset.
This part, as indicated, is true, though. Who knows how many of FUNi's bombed licenses were paid for by DBZ... |
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gwern
 Posts: 67 |
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Wait, that's 'quite reasonable'? This is hilarious - is there anywhere I can read more about these requests? |
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Divineking
 Posts: 1300 |
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This is some pretty interesting info. Was kinda surprised that the percentage of shows that actually break even in the end was so high, but it makes sense since if it was low, we obviously wouldn't be getting the amount of shows each season that we have now.
Also kinda interesting to learn how recap episodes work out...and it's kinda sad now knowing how many anime directors don't have all that much knowledge on the subject but I guess that's also something that becomes apparent when you watch enough shows. |
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configspace
Posts: 3717 |
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I think the big caveat is that like Justin mention, very few are big hits. Most are in the red. That one executive mentioned that "eventually" over many years he expects many to make a profit (re-runs, merch, etc). The question is just how long is that ROI
Certainly, this is a crucial advantage of being run by a production committee. I have heard some complain about rights. I suppose that's the tradeoff, else self-financed studios or productions financed by the individual creators would go broke[1] I'd like to know how much this applies to US publishers though. For example, we know from Funi that Big Windup, Higurashi and Shana were big losers. [1]The exceptions are the indies who do become successful like Makoto Shinkai. An interesting comparison of a few anime movie budgets: http://anime.nickistre.net/blog/anime/2008/10/13/makoto-shinkais-movie-budget http://anime.nickistre.net/sites/anime.nickistre.net/files/images/AnimeMovieBudgets1.png |
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Zac
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 7912 Location: Anime News Network Technodrome |
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How many businesses do you know of that are super comfortable taking a loss on a product for years after release? |
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superdry
 Posts: 1309 |
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There is the "Manabi Line" regarding sales of a late-night anime that would break even. Whether that's true now is a different story, but at least it gives a baseline to look at. So, I'm not entirely surprised that 70% of shows eventually break even - between licensing deals of all sorts and home media sales. I do wonder if some time production committees go in to produce a show knowing that the anime might not make a profit, but it's there to help boost sales or recognition of the original material (assuming adaptation). |
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configspace
Posts: 3717 |
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That manabi line of 2,000 copies/vol (at the standard singles pricing in Japan) turns out to be false. It might have started as a joke on 2chan or maybe a false assumption, perhaps not taking into account other costs, but we know that for the most part, it's got to be at least twice that much. Just from the sales figures for the releases for the first year for most titles and the production costs, we can see for ourselves most don't break even, at least from video sales alone initially. For example: animenewsnetwork.com/interest/2011-10-01/animator-shunji-suzuki-confirms-nichijo-r-15-itsuten-low-sales talks about how Nichijou and R-15 bombed. Nichijou's first week sales in June 2011 was 3,544 / vol. Since that was only for its first week, we can round it up to at least 4,000 by end of July, a month later, which might be a bit conservative. Still he mentioned:
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clipeuh
 Posts: 117 |
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Interesting. When is the next part coming out ?
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Shenl742
Posts: 1525 |
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Wow! Great column Justin! Lots of really nice info there.
Looking forward to future installments. How many do you have planned? |
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Zac
ANN Executive Editor
Posts: 7912 Location: Anime News Network Technodrome |
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Three parts. Part II publishes Wednesday, part III on Friday.
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 7584 Location: Wales |
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Looks like this will be interesting and informative.
..or just air painfully obviously unfinished (looking at you Shinbo).
Coincidentally, I recently watched Paranoia Agent... I'm struggling to remember a story of a production that went horribly wrong from the Schoolgirl Milky Crisis book. Lacking that, I have a recent article that is also relevant: Curse of the Blue Duck |
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NonoAsumy
Posts: 90 |
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I have no numbers on this. But Nichijou obviously had much higher production costs than an average anime. |
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jsevakis
Former ANN Editor in Chief
 Posts: 1685 Location: Los Angeles, CA |
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Glad everyone's into this article. Very rewarding. It took a very long time.
Part 2, which will post Wednesday, will get VERY deep into the R2 DVD market, with numbers. And yes, I can tell you the Manabi line is ludicrously low. |
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