A case of the first season being too much fun
出典 : Amazon.co.jp
The first season was so exciting that even the staff couldn’t have imagined it, and the momentum carried over to the discs, but in the second season the enthusiasm dies down and the sales tend to drop significantly.
In this case, it would be more accurate to say that the first season sold too well rather than the second season lost a lot of steam.
The best example of this is “Osomatsu-san”.
The first season of this anime was extremely exciting and the sales of the first volume of the disc exceeded 100,000 copies, which is clearly an unbelievable amount of sales.
However, it was impossible to keep the momentum going for several years, and by the second season, sales had dropped significantly, with an 85% drop from the first season.
The one that surpassed Osomatsu-san in terms of sales was the light novel anime “The Student Council’s Isson”.
The original series has sold a total of 6 million copies and is a huge hit for a light novel, so the fact that the first season sold well is not a fluke.
However, in 2009, when the first season aired, it was a time when daily life anime based on light novel was not yet popular, and after that “Baka to Test to Shokanju”, “Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai”, “Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai” and many other popular works were born, and in the winter of 2013, when the second season aired, “Haganai” and 8 other light novel animations were aired and competed with each other, which seemed to be a problem.
It can be said that these works that had too much excitement in the first season are the “type of work that easily gets heated up and cooled down”.
The trend is towards gag anime, and besides Osomatsu-san, “Detective Opera Milky Holmes”, “Invasion! Ika Musume” and “Yonderuyo Azazel-san”.
A case where the buyer had already left the first term
出典 : Amazon.co.jp
In some ways, this is the most severe pattern.
At the time of the first season, disc sales were dropping as the volume progressed, and by the time the final volume was released, less than half of the buyers had purchased the work… It’s inevitable that by the time the second season aired, the number of people leaving would increase even more.
For example, “Blue Exorcist” sold 24,000 copies in the first volume of the first season, but after that, the numbers dropped significantly, with sales of the final 10 volumes dropping below 10,000.
Magi” also sold 17,000 copies in the first volume of the first season, but the sales of the last 10 volumes dropped to 0.4 million copies.
This trend was also seen in “SHOW BY ROCK” and “School Rumble”.
These cases are directly related to the popularity of the original work, and when the popularity of the original work drops during and right after the broadcast, the number of people who buy the anime discs will naturally decrease.
In particular, the decrease in popularity of the characters and the rapid development of the storyline can easily lead to such a situation.
Summary
I don’t blame them for losing sales because of the content, but it’s sad to see them lose popularity for other reasons.
Especially in recent years, with so many works being produced by a single company, it takes a long time to get to the sequels, and in the meantime, people get bored of them… I feel like a bad trend is forming.
I sincerely hope that the anime industry is such that the sequels are released at the right time for the fans.
