Category Archives: Fun With Numbers

Fun With Numbers: Pays to Shop Around

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In my post-March piece on US amazon rankings, I noted there were other retailers that sold anime over the internet. I figured it was an important enough point that I took a look at the prices offered for the releases I’m tracking in April. Specifically, I took the MSRP for each of these 32 releases, and compared it to the actual prices offered at Amazon, Right Stuf, and Robert’s Anime Corner Store. Even a look limited to these three stores shows a pretty significant variation in which one offers the lowest price and how much (prices are in dollars and rounded up, lowest price in blue):

April-pricesNo one store has the consistent lowest price title sowed up. RACS seems to have be the bargain more of the time, and the amazon releases that are lower than the competition are much lower, but the relative price being offered really seems to depend on each release. Beyond helping me tweak my model and expectations for what US amazon can and can not be used for,* this list makes the millionth version of this point; if you’re going to shop for R1 releases, shop around.

*The rankings could still potentially be very indicative of the relative strength of similarly priced series, as stuff like shipping and service can cause people to prefer certain retailers. It comes down to whether amazon popularity is indicative of popularity elsewhere or not. Either way, it’s probably smart to expect Sentai releases with their lowest prices offered elsewhere to be underestimated by an amazon-only model.

Fun With Numbers: Normalized Google Traffic for Spring 2014 Anime Thus Far

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I keep forgetting google trends is a thing. It occurred to me that there’s a really basic stat available to measure an anime’s $0 popularity level. I’ve been tossing around the idea of trying to tinker up an effective way of displaying variance anime fanbase size by cost, and how much google search traffic it generates is likely a pretty good approximation of the lowest possible end of that. I searched the spring anime which have aired thus far (via mal, skipping the shows with 2000 members or less) on global google trends in both their official Japanese and Romanized titles, normalized against the term “Spring 2014 Anime”.

Obvious caveat – some of these series go by alternate titles, so the romanized search traffic may not be all of it.

Also, somewhat unexpectedly, series like Baby Steps and Black Bullet with full-English titles still see peak traffic this month. I guess phrases have to be pretty popular to beat out kids looking for free streams of anime. Love Live still seems fairly inflated, though (considering how much of its English title traffic was the same pre-2012).

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Fun With Numbers: Statlines for the Video Game-Anime Adaptations of 2012

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The investigation into video game source popularity (started with 2011 data here) continues into 2012, where, despite an increase in the total number of shows aired, the number of game adaptations remained almost constant (rose from 9 to 10) and the total number of 10k+ shows actually went down (from 4 to 1).

To recap the meaning of these numbers; in order to get some idea of how existent and/or strong the video game franchise popularity -> anime popularity -> added video game franchise popularity chain is, I pulled a pair of stats for each of the 10 video game adaptation anime made in 2012 that I have data for. The 2 stats I chose to measure video game popularity were maximum yearly rank of the franchise on popular VN retailer getchu (mildly NSFW) and total console game sales for games released within one year of the anime’s initial airdate, via vgchartz. Data is archived here, and summarized on the chart below.

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Fun With Numbers: March Amazon Data and Ambiguity

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Having 2-3 times as many datapoints does usually make things more clear, except when it doesn’t. Adding March releases to the set of amazon rank data I’ve been gathering did help fill out some of the plots, but it also brought me face-to-face with some very real points I overlooked last time around. At any rate, it’s been an informative month of data gathering (table’s here, if you’re interested). This post is mainly an update on where I stand right now on this cf of an analysis project, with a recap of points addressed last month, a summary of the other things that came up, and an *extremely* rudimentary sales estimation model.

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Fun With Numbers: Statlines for the Video Game-Anime Adaptations of 2011

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I may have mentioned this before, but nailing down the impact of anime on video games (released on irregular timetables and with less baseline-dependent variance in stats) is much harder than ballparking the same effect for manga or light novels (where volumes are released at regular intervals and can generally be seen to follow a pattern in the absence of strong outside stimuli). Too, while sales tools exist for measuring the success of console video games in Japan, those tools are much less viable when it comes to measuring the effects of typically PC-based visual novels. Still, roughly 10 anime are adapted from games every year, and it’s a very important part of the market to understand.

In order to get some idea of how existent and/or strong the video game franchise popularity -> anime popularity -> added video game franchise popularity chain is, I pulled a pair of stats for each of the 9 video game adaptation anime made in 2011 that I have data for. The 2 stats I chose to measure video game popularity were maximum yearly rank of the franchise on popular VN retailer getchu (mildly NSFW) and total console game sales for games released within one year of the anime’s initial airdate, via vgchartz. While it should be noted that this was a small sample taken in a year with slightly fewer new shows, the results are potent fuel for speculation. Data is archived here, and summarized on the chart below.

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Fun With Numbers: Amazon Rank Progression for US Releases (March 25)

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Note: The part 3 of the series on composers is on hold for a little bit. I got pretty deep into the rabbit hole and want to actually listen to the stuff these guys wrote to see if their big pieces have common elements. Since music is more passive listening, it’s somewhat feasible, and is an important part of looking at what that junk stat means, if anything.

And speaking of articles delayed way longer than I expected them to be, game adaptations! While console game sales are somewhat reliably available via the numbers, PC VN data is not, so they can’t be reduced into a plottable stat in the same way that manga and LNs can (the latter’s data are still incomplete due to thresholds and long tails, but big gains are usually obvious because of there’s a baseline to compare them to). I eventually decided to start breaking them down as a two-number stat line; highest yearly rank on VN retailer getchu and console sales via vgchartz, both within one year on either side of the anime airdate. I hope that I’ll be able to start posting those 2011/2012 stat lines before Scottie Wilbekin wins me real money in my March Madness pool, both of which I have now successfully jinxed. Anyway.

This is the last individual/plot post I’ll be doing for the March US releases I’ve been tracking. The full sheet of data is available here. I’m doing tracking for several April releases as well, and will continue to do so so long as there look to be more questions worth the daily effort of collecting the figures. An analysis post, comparing some of the narratives I touched on earlier with the new data, discussing other points to attack with a sample that will continue to grow, and making very, very tentative factor-of-two sales estimates based on extrapolation from somewhat known low-end and high-end daily totals will (hopefully) be up sometime this week. Speaking of the low-end, here’s the last chart for the performance of that Aria the Natural release:

Aria-wk4Chart is date, rank, # in stock

Thankfully, I got the sale I needed this week. It seems like a single sale is enough to bump an item ranked 300,000th down under the 120,000th place no-sales line. Good to know.

Plots are posted after the jump.

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Fun With Numbers: Amazon Rank Progression for US Releases (March 18)

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Compared to last and next week, this slate of releases was a bit small, containing 3 rereleases (Zombie, Shana, To Love) along with 2 new releases (Upotte, Bleach set 20).

As before, here’s the rankings up to this week in Aria the Natural part 2, featuring one total copy sold and the majority of days spent ranked 120,000th or higher:

Aria-wk3

Chart is date, rank, # in stock

The decline in rank seemed to slow down this past week. I would guess that, once you get to the 200,000s, you hit a point where there are a lot more shows that haven’t sold in a while or at all, leading to a slower advancement. At this point, I’m mainly following the ranks to see if the series can drop back into the 70,000-80,000 range with the next purchase that gets made, or if the long drought will have significant effects on the post-purchase rank.

Plots are posted after the jump.

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Fun With Numbers: April 2014 Amazon Data (Initial Numbers)

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US amazon data may not be a perfect source, but it is a very interesting one, with a lot of organic components. I’m just about done collecting data for March releases (data for the 18th will be up when my schedule permits, data for the 25th still needs to be collected), and while these datapoints have managed to shed some light on a few of the narratives I pulled out of the February data, they’ve also raised still more interesting threads to be explored.

That means it’s in my best interests to continue collecting data both to broaden the sample and to give predictions a viable testing ground. All numbers posted here were collected on March 25th, via amazon’s upcoming anime releases page, one week before the earliest releases on the list.

Note: The price I note is the series’ MSRP price. If the series becomes listed at more than 50% off that price at any time during the amazon solicitation, I will note that both now and during the final analysis. The February part 1 release of Robotics;Notes had such a discount, along with Psycho-Pass and One Piece (all Funimation releases, which is probably noteworthy at this point).

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Fun With Numbers: Composers With Blockbuster Chops (Part 2: 2 Shows)

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Continued from this post, here’s the list of composers who have managed the very impressive feat of writing soundtracks for two non-sequel megahits.

Two Important Notes About The Classification: First, I only included non-sequel anime when looking for head writers. This means nothing with some manifestation of a 2 in the title. Ditto for Gundam or Macross franchise entries after the original. My rationale is that it’s a lot harder to make a prime-time anime from scratch, even with popular source material, than it is to continue living in a house someone else built. I count A Certain Scientific Railgun and Mononoke as spinoffs rather than sequels, as the series they spun off of are considerably less well-established franchises.

Also, I did not credit any composer if the credit was split 3 or more ways and I was unable to discern a clear head of the project. Notably, Jun Maeda, Shinji Orito, and Magome Togoshi split music credits for Little Busters, Air, and Clannad 3 ways. Not crediting stuff like this is tough, but giving solo songwriting props to all of them feels like over-distributing credit.

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Fun With Numbers: Composers With Blockbuster Chops (Part 1: 3 or More Shows)

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Good sound is terrifically underrated. Compared to the people who make the visuals in anime,* composers are significantly lesser known. There are individual names that people know for individual big works (Iwasaki Taku, Yoko Kanno, Yuki Kajiura), but by and large the majority of people who write the bgm for anime tend to fly miles under the radar. Which is a shame, because good bgm (and good handling of said bgm) can be the keystone piece that takes an anime from good to great. In the interest of making the big achievers in original soundtracks a little more well-known, here are the composers who have written soundtracks for at least 2 10k+, non-sequel hit series.

Two Important Notes About The Classification: First, I only included non-sequel anime when looking for head writers. This means nothing with some manifestation of a 2 in the title. Ditto for Gundam or Macross franchise entries after the original. My rationale is that it’s a lot harder to make a prime-time anime from scratch, even with popular source material, than it is to continue living in a house someone else built. I count A Certain Scientific Railgun and Mononoke as spinoffs rather than sequels, as the series they spun off of are considerably less well-established franchises.

Also, I did not credit any composer if the credit was split 3 or more ways and I was unable to discern a clear head of the project. Notably, Jun Maeda, Shinji Orito, and Magome Togoshi split music credits for Little Busters, Air, and Clannad 3 ways. Not crediting stuff like this is tough, but giving solo songwriting props to all of them feels like over-distributing credit.

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