Viewership figures for the first two weeks of the autumn 2008 anime season have been published, allowing a a look at how the new shows have performed.
These are the ratings for the shows in percent, with the timeslot and station given. Parenthesised numbers are second episode ratings.
4.9% 10/09 24:50-25:20 CX* のだめカンタービレ 巴里編 / Nodame Cantabile S2
4.5% 10/05 17:00-17:30 TBS 機動戦士ガンダム00 / Gundam 00 S2 (4.4%)
3.9% 10/02 25:29-25:59 TBS 夜桜四重奏 / Yozakura Quartet
2.9% 10/03 25:55-26:25 TBS 黒執事 / Kuroshitsuji
2.5% 10/07 24:59-25:29 NTV ONE OUTS -ワンナウツ-
2.5% 10/07 25:29-25:59 NTV 魍魎の匣 / Mouryou no Hako
2.4% 10/02 25:59-26:29 TBS CLANNAD ～AFTER STORY～
2.1% 10/03 26:25-26:55 TBS 鉄のラインバレル / Kurogane no Linebarrel
1.8% 10/06 25:00-25:30 TX ヴァンパイア騎士 Guilty / Vampire Kishi Guilty
1.5% 10/01 25:20-25:50 TX とらドラ！ / Toradora! (2.3%)
1.0% 10/01 26:35-27:05 TX ヒャッコ / Hyakko (1.3%)
0.9% 10/05 25:30-26:00 TX 今日の5の2 / Kyou no Go no Ni
0.7% 10/05 26:00-26:30 TX スキップ・ビート！ / Skip Beat!
A few interesting titles are missing from this data (if you happen to know additional sources, please share), such as Rosario + Vampire Capu2, A Certain Magical Index, and Tales of the Abyss, but generally a fairly complete picture seems to emerge.
There do not appear to be any dramatic upsets evident, though the rapid growth in Toradora’s ratings may presage further popularity.
Rather than go into detail, at this point let us instead decry the meagre or grossly high ratings accorded to our most loved/despised titles. Shouldn’t we all be watching Nodame Cantabile?
It’s essentially impossible to gather proper ratings for a lot of anime as they air on UHF channels at different times/days around the country. This is why you’ve only got Fuji TV, NTV, TBS and TV Tokyo (whose affiliates always broadcast at the same time I believe). I can’t remember the site I used to get my TV ratings from but they were only ever able to get estimates for channels like Saitama TV etc.
These aren’t hugely surprising, though. Nodame airs in the Noitamina slot which is specifically aimed at non-otaku, so lots more people watch – plus it’s a sequel to a successful show based on a very popular manga. Likewise the NTV anime block on Tuesday nights has been established for some time now, and both shows are aimed at non-otaku – Mouryou no Hako is based on a popular novel, and One Outs comes from the same school of thought as Akagi and Kaiji.
I wonder why are they airing Skip Beat at 2:00 A.M. on Monday morning – it is aimed at teenage schoolgirls and most of them are asleep at that time.
Why isn’t Kannagi in there? I’d say it’s one of the more popular shows this season.
Surprisingly, Y-Quartet is in the top 3 of this list.
This is the best news.
What is defined as a “good” share? Because I wonder why they continue with anything under 5% or do DVD sales make up for this?
TV ratings for late-night anime are pretty useless for the most part. One reason is because a lot of late-night anime is spread over multiple stations, often at different times on the same night, so ratings only show how many people watched the broadcast on one given station at that time. Second reason being that not all anime air on networks that pull the same kind of numbers (and some anime don’t even air on mainstream networks at all). Third reason being that you wouldn’t normally air things past midnight if you were really trying to pull in numbers for advertising — it’s more like an infomercial, where the show itself is advertising for the merchandise. Generally speaking, ratings are important for shows that air in primetime or Saturday mornings (the kid/family blocks) but DVD (and other merchandise) sales are what matter for otaku-targeted stuff. There’s no straight correlation between ratings and DVD sales either.
So, basically, you can’t measure late-night anime as if it were primetime TV; these sorts of stats should be taken with a large grain of salt. They can be useful if you’re tracking a given network’s ratings in a timeslot over time, or comparing different network’s offerings in the same timeslot, but show vs. show like this can be apples-to-oranges.
Very interesting.
So DVD sales are the best proxy for a non-primetime show’s popularity?
How does one tell the popularity prior to DVD release?
And what is the best sort of DVD sales data to use?
Very interesting indeed! Thank you very much for sharing.
Currently, I am thinking of regularising these sales ranking style articles, so I am wondering what sort of data to use, and where to get it. It seems the DVD sales data is the most valuable…
Another interesting metric is “2ch threadcount”, which captures buzz and fandom nicely, so if I can work out how people are gathering that I might follow suit.
That is interesting, relentlesslflame. Thanks for sharing.
The funny thing is, following the idea that late-night anime is all about the merchandising, I don’t know that there really is a sure-fire way to predict it.
Obviously the popularity of the original work is a part of it — if it runs in a top-selling magazine or was a big seller in the first place, more people will want to collect the rest of the merchandise.
*Sometimes* “internet buzz” can be a good measure, but other times it misses the mark completely — see To Love-ru, where the “buzz” was generally horrible, but the DVDs have gone on to sell in the 7,500+ range per volume (which is largely considered to be “quite good” and “probably sequel-worthy”). Sometimes the buzz in the blogosphere (both English and Japanese) and among forumites (2ch, 4chan, AS, etc.) can be totally disconnected from the rest of the market too; it’s sort of funny that way.
You might think that airing in primetime would be a teller, but that’s hit-or-miss too — there are a lot of super-popular primetime anime shows (including a lot of the big shounen staples) that just don’t sell DVDs in large quantities. Only certain primetime anime really appeal to the DVD-buying otaku.
One thing that does seem to be pretty constant is that when a franchise garners a lot of positive buzz in its first season/incarnation, subsequent seasons tend to do significantly better. See, for example, Aria, Hidamari Sketch, Nanoha, and so on. The logic for that is pretty self-apparent, though. I do wonder if these people go back and buy the original season, but that doesn’t really show up in the metrics.
In terms of what DVD sales data people usually use, generally we see people refer to Oricon’s Weekly Top 300 DVD sales figures. That’s usually what people quote when they refer to the “magical” 10,000 mark of success. But it’s also been said that anime DVDs have a very long shelf-life in Japan (which is why, unlike North America, you don’t see season sets for years and years after the show’s finished).
Anyway, tl/dr, I know, but some might find these observations interesting.