Ask John: What Explains Relative Japanese DVD Sales?
Question:
Why did Hanamaru Kindergarten and Chu-Bra! do so poorly? I heard both of these sold pretty low numbers in Japan.
Answer:
My best guess at an explanation for the relative sales of Hanamaru Yochien and Chu Bra DVD sales in Japan is the fact that both shows were very mediocre. Neither title was originally a breakout smash hit manga series, so expectations for their anime adaptations should have been, and probably were, realistic in Japan. Generally speaking, two types of anime sell especially well on Japanese home video, and two types of anime don’t. Anime that are especially good and anime that are especially popular tend to sell quite well in Japan. For example, high quality anime including Ghibli films, Gundam Unicorn, Summer Wars, Durarara, and Working!! have sold tens of thousands of DVDs this year. Especially popular cult hits including Angel Beats!, Bakemonogatari, Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu, Hidamari Sketch Hoshimitsu, K-On!!, and Toaru Kagaku no Railgun have also sold fairly well recently on Japanese DVD. At the opposite end of the spectrum, esoteric, grim, and challenging anime – the type that Americans often like – tend to be unpopular among Japanese fans. For example, Kuchu Buranko, Okamikakushi, and Tatakau Shisho DVD sales in Japan this year have been quite dismal. Shows that just don’t catch on, usually because they’re simply mediocre, like Hanamaru Yochien and Chu Bra likewise tend to sell literally only a couple hundred DVDs per volume in Japan because they’re not interesting or entertaining enough for fans to want to own them, and not cultish enough to make them “must own” titles. The exception to this general rule are the occasionally exceptionally awful titles like Musashi Gundoh which transcend their normal territory. Titles like Musashi Gundoh or Chargeman Ken are so awful that they become “must own” cult novelties generating big sales despite being terrible anime.
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I don’t think producers ever set out to create anime that are either “not good” or “not popular”. Even if they have modest expectations based on the popularity of the source material, I think the market performance of some of these shows is well below what would appear to be even reasonable expectations. So perhaps it’s more interesting to wonder what might account for these “misfires”, if in fact we believe that to be what they are.
I think timing can be a big part of the issue. The “lag” between a show’s initial conception and the actual airing can be a long time (12 to 18 months or more), and attempts to latch on to current trends or predict future trends can be stymied by this delay. Also at play are the other shows airing in that season, which aren’t always known to producers until closer to the air date. If a franchise doesn’t have a strong, loyal fanbase, they’re sort of at the mercy of whatever the flavour of the week is and they just hope that they will be that flavour. But you are sort of right in the sense that, at least to a certain point, this is a market where the bigger problem isn’t necessarily being “bad”, but being overlooked/forgotten/ignored. (i.e. “The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference.”) No matter what we might say about these shows, they certainly failed to attract the interest of Japanese DVD/BD purchasers at large.
I think it’s rather useless in general to say that anime being “good” accounts for sales, as this is rather loaded and subjective. I’m sure most any anime fan has a list of shows they consider “good”, “interesting”, and “entertaining” that unfortunately just didn’t catch on with the market at large. I tend to think that, loyal franchise fans notwithstanding, there’s a limited money pool for random anime purchases among the core purchasing audience (especially given the price of anime home media in Japan), so being the right show at the right time can be everything. Given the availability of other options, both legitimate and otherwise, a show has to rely on a confluence of factors to be financially successful, and I’m sure that few are studying this more closely than those currently trying to pick the anime series that will air 12-18 months from now.
I think the hope the producers of Chu-Bra had was that it would sell well on disc because of uncensored fan-service.