Ask John: Are There More Anime Fans in America Than We Think?

Question:
You always say that there aren’t enough anime fans in this country, and that’s why we don’t always get to see the good stuff. But is that true? I go to a high school in New Jersey, and there hasn’t been one day in which I haven’t heard someone mention anime. Everyone’s talking about it, and not just Cartoon Network’s shows either. If so many people in my high school like anime, doesn’t that mean that there’s more anime fans in America than we thought? Maybe Cartoon Network should conduct a poll and finally find out that we like anime more than Scooby Doo.

Answer:
Most likely this is a question of semantics rather than statistics. There should be little doubt that there is a tremendous amount of interest in and support of anime in America, however the support of anime in America is a very relative thing. There’s a very big difference between people that talk about anime and people that actually spend money to support the anime industry. While the current domestic anime industry is big enough and profitable enough to support roughly 10 different translation and distribution companies, including AD Vision, Pioneer and Media Blasters, and support the occassional entry of new companies into the field, such as Synch-Point, Image and NuTech, anime sales in America simply can’t even begin to approach the popularity of mainstream American fare.

Because the American anime distribution companies generally do not release sales figures to the public, it’s difficult to make direct comparisons, but a few figures should help illuminate a point. There’s probably little doubt that Akira has been the American anime industry’s best selling anime DVD, selling out of 100,000 copies of the limited edition even before it was released for retail sale, but one has to wonder exactly how many total copies of Akira Pioneer has managed to sell.

Titanic set the first American DVD sales record by breaking 1 million units sold. The Mummy Returns doubled that figure in its first week of availability. Star Wars Episode 1 sold 2.2 million DVD copies in its first week, and Shrek has reportedly sold 2.5 million DVD units and 4.5 million VHS copies in only its first week of release. The Lion King is the world’s highest grossing animated film having drawn in over $340 million dollars including over 30 million VHS copies sold in America alone. While Akira has sold well over 100,000 DVD copies, titles like AnimEigo’s dubbed Urusei Yatsura VHS volume 1 reportedly sold only 300 copies worldwide, Viz has admitted that new volumes of Maison Ikkoku only sell around 500 copies worldwide, and AD Vision’s planned City Hunter 2 DVD boxed set is still nearly 1500 orders short of its minimum production requirement of 2000 copies, even after being available for order for months.

In an American film industry dominated my multi-million dollar sales figures, most anime releases struggle to sell several thousand copies. When the CG animated Monsters Inc. has earned over $63 million at the box office in a single weekend, Princess Mononoke earned only $2 million in its entire American theatrical release.

There’s no doubt that there are a massive number of anime fans in America, but many of these young fans simply don’t have the financial resources to spend enough money on anime to have a significant, noticeable impact on the American entertainment industry. Seemingly by nature, anime fans tend to be vocal in their support of anime, and from the earliest days of American fandom, the rallying point of American fandom has always been, “support anime.” However, even the vocal mass is simply dwarfed by the complacent, silent but ever present and influential majority. Companies like Warner Bros. and the Cartoon Network are business entities. They don’t exist to provide altruistic service to anime fans or engender cross-cultural understanding and appreciation through popular culture entertainment. These companies exist to make money, and they’re very good at what they do. The fact that the Cartoon Network continues to relegate anime to such a small percentage of their broadcast schedule should suggest that the success and popularity of their other programming warrants such treatment for anime. A further example is Warner Bros. decision to replace Cardcaptors with X-Men Evolution during the important November Sweeps ratings period, suggesting that Warner’s financial analysis suggests that the American cartoon X-Men Evolution has a larger market than the Japanese Cardcaptors.

At the present time, if you stop an average person on the street, that person is very unlikely to know what “Spirited Away” or “Vampire Hunter D” or “Tenchi Muyo” is. That person is very unlikely to be interested in paying to watch “Japanese cartoons.” But that same person will almost undoubtedly be familiar with Powerpuff Girls, Shrek and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. So while there are certainly a lot of anime fans in America, that number is still not nearly enough to be significantly influential on the American market.