Anime music releases, revenues in decline
Plus: Japanese TV stations broaden role in selling anime overseas; 'The Boy and the Heron' soars in China; Director questions anime's isekai boom; and more
This is your weekly Animenomics briefing, covering the business of anime and manga. Today is Wednesday, April 10, 2024.
In case you missed it: Netflix acquired the exclusive streaming license to Makoto Shinkai’s Golden Globe Award-nominated Suzume in Japan.
Crunchyroll had some exclusivity to the film internationally outside Asia and France, but it’s now also available on Netflix in 169 countries.
Record companies retreat from anime music releases
Anime music’s share of new record releases fell last year to 6.5 percent, the lowest level in 15 years, new data published in the Recording Industry Association of Japan’s latest annual trend report reveals.
Why it matters: After a decade of strong demand in the 2010s, anime music (or anisong) releases appear to be losing momentum, anime journalist Tadashi Sudo writes in the Animation Business Journal.
By the numbers: Japanese record companies released 465 unique anisong titles in 2023, the fewest number of releases going back 25 years.
At the peak of the last decade, record companies released double the number of records—more than 1,000 releases in 2015.
Even as companies pull back on new releases, their active catalog of anisong has grown 4.9 percent to its highest level since 2016.
Zoom out: Anime’s music-related revenues have fallen 25.7 percent since 2016, Association of Japanese Animations data show, with physical CD and digital music sales bringing in ¥27.4 billion (US$180 million) in 2022.
What’s happening: Like the general populace, mainstream artists and creators have become more accepting of anime and are making more music adjacent to anime culture.
Theme song hits like last year’s “Idol” (Oshi no Ko) and this year’s “Bling-Bang-Bang-Born” (Mashle: Magic and Muscles) both come from artists that don’t specifically perform anime music.
Tatsuya Kawase, who researches the anisong market, found that the number and percentage of singers performing anisong have decreased since the 2010s.
Between the lines: Record companies are also marketing releases with direct ties to anime outside the anime genre in some situations.
At the 38th Japan Gold Disc Award last month, Hiromi Uehara’s original soundtrack album of anime film Blue Giant was named Jazz Album of the Year.
Joe Hisaishi’s A Symphonic Celebration: Music from the Studio Ghibli Films of Hayao Miyazaki was named Classical Album of the Year.
The bottom line: As anime music diversifies from specialists to performers who cross genres, fewer releases are specifically categorized as anime-related.
TV stations play broader role in growing anime abroad
Japanese television stations continue to actively invest in anime productions and are reaping the profits from anime’s overseas success even as television makes up a smaller share of anime revenues year after year.
Why it matters: Television stations still have the rights to many of Japan’s classic anime properties, such as Doraemon, Detective Conan, and Crayon Shin-chan.
Driving the story: The Tsukuru culture magazine, in its annual issue covering the anime and manga industry, highlights areas where television stations are working to grow anime abroad.
TV Asahi and manga artist Yoshinori Kobayashi are working with an Indian production team for a remake of the locally popular Obocchama-kun, currently scheduled to air at the end of the year.
Outside acquiring Studio Ghibli, Nippon Television is responsible for international sales for recent hits The Apothecary Diaries and Tsukimichi: Moonlit Fantasy.
Fuji Television continues to collaborate with producers in China to localize Chinese animation for Japanese viewers in exchange for distributing anime in the country.
The intrigue: The Tsukuru notes that Nippon Television has joined production committees to manage international sales without ever airing some titles on its own networks, as seen in Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon.
Clippings: ‘The Boy and the Heron’ skyrockets in China
The Boy and the Heron earned CN¥99.1 million (US$13.7 million) on its opening day in China and went on to record the biggest single-day performance ever by a non-Chinese animated film the next day. (The Hollywood Reporter)
The Studio Ghibli film by Hayao Miyazaki will earn at least CN¥760 million (US$105 million), ticketing services provider Maoyan projects. This will make it China’s highest-earning anime film, Securities Times reports.
Eisys-owned DLsite, a digital marketplace for self-published manga and video games, has suspended payments using Visa, Mastercard, and American Express credit cards as payment processors pressured the site to remove pornographic content. (Automaton West)
Fan antagonism toward anime and manga’s official English translations that are perceived as socially progressive is being used to justify piracy, the use of AI translation, and threats against individual localizers and translators. (Nikkei Asia)
Kakao Entertainment’s new co-CEOs want the South Korean company to build closer ties with subsidiary Kakao Piccoma, the operator of Japan’s highest-grossing webtoon app, to grow webtoon IPs globally. (The Korea Economic Daily)
My Hero Academia crossed 100 million copies of its manga volumes in circulation worldwide with the sale of the 40th volume in the series. It’s only the 20th manga series to ever achieve this circulation milestone. (Comic Natalie)
Veteran director questions anime’s isekai genre boom
“I think there are too many stories already asking, ‘Do we all really hate the modern world so much?’ I find it strange that all that gets made is isekai stories. There was even a series about being reborn as a vending machine recently. That one really stunned me. I feel like there are fewer grounded anime works than there used to be.”
— Kazuchika Kise, anime director and character designer
Context: Kise questions the popularity of isekai anime titles—where a protagonist is transported to or reborn in a fantasy world—in an interview for the website of Shirow Masamune’s Ghost in the Shell franchise.
What they’re saying: The Ghost in the Shell: Arise director believes there is an overreliance on story and visual elements in anime today that are lacking in realism.
“Recent anime works will show things like a level-up gauge that appears when characters tap the air, even though there’s no in-setting reason for them to have a personal interface like that,” Kise points out.
He contrasts this to Ghost in the Shell, where the cyborgs depicted are bound by human conditions despite being fantasy elements. “There’s no magic, and there are no monsters.”
Zoom in: Isekai web novels, where many isekai anime productions are adapted from, continue to remain popular among anime and manga fans.
More than 1,500 isekai titles were created on the web novel self-publishing website Shōsetsuka ni Narō last year, a 10 percent increase from 2022.
1 chart to go: Sizing up anime, manga markets overseas
Anime and manga make up one-third of the ¥4.69 trillion (US$30.9 billion) market for Japanese content overseas, according to an analysis by market research and production planning firm Human Media.
Why it matters: The two media formats combined grew 11 percent between 2021 and 2022, with manga sales driving nearly all of Japan’s publishing sector activity overseas.
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Holy crap, $30.9 billion dollars???