Has the “Anime Bubble” burst?
An interesting graph from an Asahi Shimbun article reporting that industry insiders are claiming that the “anime bubble has burst” [found via Itai News]
The top part with the red line shows the number of new works of anime produced each year since 2000. The bottom part shows total sales for the anime industry, with the darker blue section of each bar representing anime aimed at a general audience and the lighter colored section representing anime for kids. Both graphs show a decline since 2006.
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…Are they kidding?
There’s a decline, but it isn’t really enough to start wavering about how anime is dying.
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The data should be compared with data on production of other genres such as o-warai comedy, variety shows and historical drama.
Secondly, a much longer set of time series data would be useful in examining trends.
If there is any possible underlying reason for a decline in anime, the declining birthrate and relentless fan-subbing draining profit from the overseas market might be mentioned.
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The funny thing about fansubs is that they tend to be of much higher quality than official subtitles (I’m sometimes amazed by their level of detail). No wonder if they’re putting a dent into anime sales.
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I agree. That’s the reason I dont buy anime DVDs. While the price should definitely be lower, I can’t abide by the horrid subtitles that get put into some of these anime. Fansubs are superior in almost every aspect other than the fact that you dont get a physical medium.
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The not so funny thing (or is it?) is that there is a whole bunch of editors that just pick fansubs, with a small adaptation work, to use for commercial releases… (I worked in the industry, years ago).
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Whatever the excuses, it’s still copyright violation, it’s seriously damaging the anime export industry, and it certainly won’t help legit publishers to spend on better subtitles or more productions.
Personally I don’t think they stop it. It’s too easy to record, rip and subtitle a TV series, and get it out way before the legit version.
I don’t know if it is a factor in declining anime production. I think things go in cycles. It seems to me (as a long-time anime viewer) that a lot of modern series are formulaic and derivative, however that may just be nostalgia talking.
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Editors here (except a small number of publishers, like Bandai) are just focused on a japanese public (…just like in the video games industry, which explains the poor level of latest japanese production), and just don’t give a damn of the foreign market, so I’m not even sure that foreign distribution is included in these charts. It’s starting to change slowly, but the world of edition in Japan is like a dinosaur : it will take ages for them to adapt, and I’m almost sure that a lot of them won’t do it in time.
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it certainly won’t help legit publishers to spend on better subtitles
Here in Poland our publishers started to publish titles with fansubs (still screened by professionals)… this is cheaper for publishers than doing the translation from scratch.
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Oh, darn.
With Anime in the decline, whatever shall I do in Japan?…
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Indulge in hundreds of years of arts and literature? Enjoy a tea? Get a chick, some chick, it doesn’t really matter, and get laid?
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Enjoy the sights, the food, the events. Anything.
Minus the entire anime and videogame culture, I am sure you can manage. Lots of things to see and do there.
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I live in Tokyo. It was a joke
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No way can I believe this — especially if my own kids are anything to go by.
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I agree with RMilner. And these graphs probably don’t show anything from rental and streaming services that have probably gained popularity lately.
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Also, there was a first decline in sales between 02-04 as well, in the same amount of years, before it bumped again, which could mean it is just being cyclic, as almost everything.
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Has this article considered the drop may be due not to a lack of interest in anime, but rather people getting their media by newer mediums (I.e. Piracy)
The majority of people who are nerds in the anime culture are computer savvy enough to know how to get the anime they’re looking for from
torrent sites or peer to peer networks.
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Of course, it’s always those bloody pirates, never those sneaky ninjas…
By the way, Hail to the Flying Spaghetti Monster!
Ramen!
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I think they’re confusing the lack of current good anime and the lack of any sort of original plot in current anime with a downfall in its appreciation. There is most definitely nothing wrong with the anime fanbase.
Anime Central in chicago has gone(since I’ve been attending) from having 8,000 attendees to over 15,000 attendees. This isn’t to say Japan’s fanbase might not be waning, but I hope they don’t stop making it altogether based on a graph.
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Maybe it isn’t just my nostalgia.
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There is no way these 2 dataset can shown anything interesting. From those graphs I could interpret the decline as starting in the 02-04 range, as the sales per anime show produced seems to be higher back then, thus yielding a larger net revenue per show. This of course assumes the cost of producing a show has stayed constant.
You would at least need to compare it to other types of business in the same time period. Also, it could be fun to see a graph of net surplus once the production costs have been subtracted.
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I’d wager the economy and the recent popularity of mail-rental-DVD services such as Tsutaya’s Discas is a more likely reason for any drop in sales. Some contracts allow you to rent an entire series all at once, and are there ANY otaku who don’t know how to backup a DVD?
Especially as part-timer work conditions and take-home pay keep getting worse.
And Aso’s 12,000 yen? Choose between maybe buying half of one anime series you enjoy, or get a 3 month rental contract and enough blank DVDs to copy all you want.
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maybe they just have realized that releasing crappy anime en masse isnt just as good as less anime but better quality…
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heh
if you think about 2006, out of ~300+ titles only a few did really stick out. Suzumiya Haruhi alone was making something like 10% of summer Comiket.
So the number of title doesn’t really count, it’s more like a matter of quality.
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Which is why the industry head in the actual article was recommending focusing on quality over quantity.
I like many recent anime but I don’t think that, say, every bishoujo game out there needs an anime, for instance. There are some anime adaptations of said games that are pretty good, and many that are bad.
There’s always been a lot of crappy anime out there, even in previous decades. It’s just that most of the crap from previous decades has been forgotten over time.
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You know, they could probably continue to focus on quantity if they would lower the prices of anime DVDs in Japan. For example, you can order a complete season in the US on DVD for roughly $40 to $100. In Japan one DVD containing a pathetic two episodes costs 4000yen or $40. So for the same price of a complete season you’re only getting two episodes.
And it’s easier than ever to get your hands on pirated copies of anime online which would actually indicate that the numbers in these charts are very high.
Printing DVDs has never been cheaper so I find it really hard to believe that 1/3 of Dragonball Z costs 100,000yen, even if you include a crappy plastic figure.
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Question: Is this just in Japan or worldwide? I think in part it is the fault of sites like youtube, veoh, etc that allow torrent users and internet pirates post their stolen goods on the internet. Say, what you will, but anime and manga sales have suffered because of this vastly growing trend. I mean think about it why buy at all if your just going to steal the file anyway. And please don’t give me lame excuses…” I’m just seeing if I like it” or “I can’t afford it.” Because number one any kid could do chore’s or yardwork to earn money for things you want. Second, with a little patients almost every store like FYE or Suncoast has discount cards and individual dvd’s that sale for half price. Third, how can you have a computer and surf the web for the multitude of torrent sites and not have money to buy the anime or manga you want. If you don’t want it all that is needed is to return it. You might not get your money back, but you’ll get credit in that same amount for that particular store.
Sorry, about that… This is just a sign of things to come, if they don’t start licensing “good quality” anime sooner. Keep prices as they are…(take $5 off and then look how they start to fly off the shelves…that is along with discount cards). If they industry don’t become more visulent and enforce laws a, programs that limit and or eliminate piracy via internet.
If the following doesn’t happen well, it’s good bye to all anime and manga, because when it comes down to it Japan will isolate sales to only Japan. They will seek out all infortrators and fire them. Then block off all internet sites that carry torrent or streaming tech.
This is just a warning.
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I guess it comes down to what you get out of it. If anime serves as something to plop your kid down in front of while you’re busy, that’s easy – they don’t complain too much about cheap animation or crappy story arcs.
It’s another thing if you like it for the artistry that goes into it, but this still isn’t the end of the world.
Even if anime production becomes scarce, thanks to the internet we’ll still have access to some of the fantastic artwork out there done by our favorite anime artists (and it doesn’t have to be by stealing it – there are more than a few excellent artists who offer up their artwork proudly online). Let the sweatshops shut down. It doesn’t mean that the glut of artists and creators will crawl under rocks and disappear.
Manga itself, from which so much anime has originated, will always be around, whether larger publishing companies are willing to fund them or not. If doujinshi these days can be published with as much quality as any other manga by independent publishers, there’s no reason we won’t also be able to get some quality work by original writers and artists out there. Hopefully this will even encourage artists with great ideas who may have previously been turned away by larger publishers. Perhaps it’s just how this business is changing, and it may eventually be for the better from a creative standpoint.
Of course, the problem with the artists taking over will always be money. They work themselves to death to begin with just to meet deadlines in both print media and animation production, for very little pay. Working independently will mean they’ll have to work just as hard, on top of paying to publish their own work and get it out to the public for a smaller return (then again, I don’t know what the artist’s cut is from a major manga publisher out here. I don’t imagine it’s much). Full scale animation production will be trickier to handle in an independent way, since it requires teamwork, and the cost of equipment use and materials can rise pretty quickly. In the meantime, there are Flash snippets here and there by individual animation artists that can be found online. Not all of it is the greatest quality, but perhaps if there’s a real desire by artists to animate their own work (and if they have the time needed to do it), we’ll start seeing more and better things emerge.
So, after all of that blither – all hope is not necessarily lost, though there is a downside. If the anime artists are driven enough to keep working in the conditions they are already reported to put up with presently at the studios, we may still be able to see great things from them independently if the whole business ends up crashing. On the other hand, if former anime artists and creators lose their jobs and are forced to go into other businesses doing equally exhausting jobs, they may no longer have the time or energy to work on their art…Though even in that instance, there’s still likely to be a handful of artists here who may well be privately bankrolled and encouraged to continue creating through bad times in the business. We’ll just have to see how it pans out over time.
Either way, anime itself isn’t going to disappear even if it takes awhile for production companies to regroup and figure out how to do business without losing more money than it’s worth. I trust people to have enough brains to eventually figure out a solution that will be able to fund their production companies while making anime affordable enough for people to turn away from illegal downloads and start paying for it again. Does anyone know whether Crunchyroll has been very effective in their efforts to get people to pay for anime online?…Not that it’s of much use to anyone in Japan, but it might be a start in general.
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This is nothing new. Several years ago they were screaming about the end of the anime industry as we knew it and nothing came of that. Nothing will come of this either. What may cause some problems in the future is the fact that Japan is outsourcing so much of its grunt work to South Korea that the Japanese lower-level employees aren’t getting as much experience as they should. The result could lead to a significant lack of seasoned talent in the coming years–but that has nothing to do with this study.
As far as the quality-vs-crap ratio, there will ALWAYS be a ton more crap than quality programming no matter what you do. It was like that 80 years ago, and has remained true ever since. This is not to say that we should simply accept it (I personally believe certain trends in “reality TV” have been problematic for the past decade) but quality programming doesn’t just happen and it’s not an easy thing to just create in large quantities.
Basically, this data is faaaar to shortsighted to show anything more than a slight (and likely natural) dip in numbers from one year to the next. If the numbers had plummeted or had shown a significant decrease over a period of years, then it would be worth worrying over. This study shows neither.
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Oops, “faaaar too shortsighted…”
My bad.
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IIRC a lot of those guys make most of their money off merchandise anyway.
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