And are you going to say anything regarding the actual show at all?
It's not underpriced in comparison to similar things on the market. It's just that the anime market in Japan has seriously 🤬 themselves, causing them to sell anime at stupidly high prices and limiting the market further than it should.
1. Not really. There isn't really anything to say.
2. (You seriously want to go into this debate with me?)
They've seriously 🤬 themselves? Anime in general isn't very popular in Japan to begin with. The TV ratings aren't exactly good, even for some of the prime time shows like Bleach which had laughable ratings for the past few years for its timeslot.
Not to mention, for the vast majority of shows, there is no ad revenue to speak of. Is Mirai Nikki raking in ad revenue? Hardly, the show isn't generating any, and they have to rely on the BD's and DVD's to break even (And by the looks of things, they're losing money on the project.).
I recommend reading this.
hissatsu01
These are the reasons anime is so much more expensive in Japan:
1. Small demand for the vast majority of anime, but with relatively dedicated fanbase.
2. High cost of production.
3. Lack of any ad revenue for late-night anime.
4. Smaller home video market in general. (As Annf has been kind enough to explain to you)
5. Higher cost of living in general than in the US.
6. Japan's overly complex and inefficient distribution system.
(Reasons 4-6 are why even Hollywood movie releases cost about twice as much as they do in the US)
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/bbs/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=1023549#1023549
Here's where Annf explained what he's talking about.
To put it simply, you need to make anime several times more popular, and production costs (Which can range from $120,000-$220,000
per episode. Note these production costs are from 2009, so they're much higher now.) several times cheaper for anime to get cheaper. Right now those high prices are what's keeping those shows alive. They've done cheaper releases (I.E.
Emotion the Best), and for nearly every single one of those sets, the sales have been so bad they can't make the weekly Oricon charts.
Now as for how you can make anime more popular, who knows. With how Japanese otaku are looked down upon, and even some casual anime fans, many don't want to associate themselves with anime, and I'm not including Ghibli films in there. Those are mainstream in Japan, and beloved by so many people.
They aren't really limiting the market (It's basically
always been like this.) when if they made the stuff as cheap as here, it would collapse before it would have the chance to grow. If you sell the whole show for like $20 for example, you would need to sell like 300,000 to 600,000 copies to break even on a 12/13 episode show. The vast majority of anime in Japan would NEVER sell anywhere near that, even at the whole show being offered for $20. I don't even see most manga volumes sell that well, and manga is exponentially more popular than anime. Take a look for yourself.
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2012-02-22/japanese-comic-ranking-february-13-19
And here's the best-selling manga of 2011 by total copies (It should be noted, the publisher usually releases one manga volume every quarter, so 4 volumes a year.). Yeah, a bunch are selling 1,000,000 some copies, and that's with each volume costing like $5, and there being 4 of them per year.
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2011-11-30/top-selling-manga-in-japan-by-series/2011
