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

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: Critical/Casual Slants

It’s one of the oldest conundrums in the anime fandom that the shows that get the most attention are often not the best-made shows, the ones that blow people’s minds when they see them. In a vaccum, that’s pretty confusing; shouldn’t we be giving the most attention to the shows we’ll enjoy the most? Why do some shows get high ratings and languish in the proverbial basement popularity-wise while others get abyssmal scores but receive tons of attention? I found a quick and dirty way to dig into this problem using my set of seasonal anime data and got a set of results that was equal parts depressingly predictable and pleasantly surprising.

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