The most recent week of reported US sales data (10/26-11/01, 2015) was a big one for some notable deviations from the norm, some bigger than others. A bunch of Funimation titles outperformed both their rankings and their typical weekly performances, which I might be able to explain. The Wind Rises, on the other hand, dropped over 17,000 copies from its BD total, which is a little bit of a head-scratcher. I have some thoughts on each case.

Raw Data:

Plots:

Note – this plot is cropped and doesn’t include the DBZ:F releases or the fluky below-zero figures.

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I’m unsure just what happened with the three titles that lost sales – I thought VHD was frozen, Poppy Hill ranked well enough, and The Wind Rises losing 17k BDs in a week is a joke. It’s possible the first 2 are just small corrective blips (would not be the first time), but if the 17k drop is real, it’d have to be due to a major recall/retrun shipment or miscounting on the part of a retailer. What it *isn’t* is a reclassification of BDs into the DVD column, as BD data updates first and the DVD column would already be showing an increase if that were the case. Typos are my prevailing theory until we see the same numbers persist over another week. If that value holds up, I’ll start looking through the data for a less handwavy explanation.

However, I have reason to believe the across-the-board higher Funimation totals may be legit. You see, this is the week after the new DBZ movie came out, and Funimation was offering a 15% discount on a second item to those who made the order from their shop. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that 2000 of those 45k week 2 buyers were One Piece fans who took the opportunity to snag a copy of Film Z on the cheap. The fact that funi movies were almost across the board better than their norms while Kaguya-hime, the one Ghibli title not in a state of massive flux this week, is not is suggestive:

It’s odd that Bayonetta didn’t get the same boost, but it’s 57% off now and has been ~50% off before in September. Plus it sold considerably more than the One Piece Movies and Hal to begin with; they may have already tapped out most of its potential customer base.

This theory also explains why AoT part 2 saw no significant boost – it’s a more costly purchase, and it’s not a one-off purchase. Most people would also buy the first part, and it was only 15% off one additional item.

If this is true, it means the funi shop counts towards these totals, which is an intriguing thought. I haven’t been tracking discounts on amazon or the funi store on any sort of consistent basis, but I may have to find a way to start if the numbers continue to indicate the funi store is explicitly tracked by Nash. We’ve still got another couple of weeks of sales data to analyze before Black Friday starts to kick in, so until next time!