bakemonogatari almost a $10 million franchise
Categories: commentary
Tagged: monogatari, monogatari:tsubasa
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And this quick and dirty calculation just looks at first week sales.
According to ANN, Hitagi Crab sold 29,000 BDs & 15,500 DVDs. Mayoi Snail sold 39,000 BDs (no DVD data). Surugu Monkey sold 41,000 BDs & 18,600 DVDs. Let’s say Mayoi’s DVD sales were in between Surugu’s and Hitagi’s at 17,000. That means through three volumes…
109,000 BDs * 5387 yen * 0.0113 = $6.6 million
51,100 DVDs * 3885 yen * 0.113 = $2.2 million
$8.8 million so far, not bad. There’s still Nadeko Snake and the two Tsubasa Cat releases… so let’s say that sales for the last three are the same as the first three, and Bakemonogatari‘s easily an $18 million franchise. And this doesn’t count sales past the first week, sales of CDs, and sales of other assorted goods, like cell phone straps, posters, and the full line of Kanbaru Kinky Toys. (But I think, in the end, like anything else in life, the cream rises to the top. This outsold every other anime series this year, including Mio-tan!)
However, it does seem like the industry is still being kept alive by the generosity of a small group of dedicated fanboys. To purchase the whole six volume set on BD would cost $360, quite a substantial sum for 375 minutes of entertainment. By comparison, $360 could probably net one the entire Curb Your Enthusiasm and the complete The Wire collections. There’s definitely a value proposition gap in anime (made worse by how much more expensive media is in Japan), and until the industry realizes and corrects this, anime will be basically only kept alive by a small but dedicated fan base.
But let’s say that Shaft pockets half of that so $9 million… and they have roughly 50 employees (based on the credits) who worked on the show… assuming each with an average effective pay of $50,000 for the time that they worked on this series… about $2.5 million… and an extra 20% fixed cost. Wow… Shaft better hurry with a season two! At least for profit’s sake, let’s not wait three years. (And definitely don’t piss off any of those 40,000 or so BD purchasers.)
11 Responses to “bakemonogatari almost a $10 million franchise”
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Wow! That’s pretty good, especially considering this economy.
Thats pretty insane. Just goes to show how good the show is.
Quality writing and good dialogue can get you everywhere, it seems.
Hitagi fever is on and Haruhi is no longer around…….
Huh. Never bothered to analyze it that way.
Still, the inefficiency of a number of things, like you mentioned, is hurting the anime “economy” badly.
And not everyone is buying on amazon.co.jp which do the insane -27% discount. So it’s at least a $10 million franchise !
But let’s say that Shaft pockets half of that so $9 million…
I don’t think that’s very likely. Shaft, like most anime studios on most anime projects, probably did Bakemonogatari as a work-for-hire, hired by a production committee that is probably dominated by Kodansha. They were hired for peanuts, and have been paid peanuts. All the profits are going to that production committee.
Gotta agree with dm, there. CNN recently took a behind-the-scenes look at the anime industry and it ain’t too pretty from the staff’s perspective. What sucks is that even if people try to take a stand, the head guys won’t really care that much since there are plenty of others out there willing to take that job. Bah… money. Good on Bakemonogatari, though. Quite the sleeper this season.
I know what you mean but BD is spelt BlueRei. :P
On a serious note, there’s a lot of hi-res video of Hitagi …. The Staple Stable CD single is also pretty good. As well as the usual full OP and full OP karaoke, there’s a 40 min chat of the seiyuus. This is a surprise as seiyuu interviews are usually a seperate CD single.
(yes, i bought the CD single. Shaft is <3)
Fuck, they did it
All this popularity… yet there are NO translations for the BD commentary tracks.
This neglect is a crime against humanity. Oh the horror.