Ask John: Did Girls Cause America’s Anime Bust?
Question:
It might be politically incorrect, but would it be inaccurate to attribute the early-to-mid-2000s domestic anime bubble -and its subsequent bursting- to wishy-washy American fangirls who treated anime as a fad, rather than a hobby? You know, the ones who, one minute, are into the Power-Puff Girls, the next, Lizzy Maguire and Hannah Montana, and now, Twilight and The Hunger Games. Hana Yori Dango, Full Moon O Sagashite, Kodocha, and Marmalade Boy. All shoujo-oriented anime which bombed over here to the point that they were never completed. Or, they just barely got to the end and still suffered from low sales. American fangirls generally only jump on whatever has the most buzz. As soon as the hype fizzles, they move on to the next fad. Thus, the only reason anime sold as well as it did in the beginning was because it was being touted as the “next big thing.” As soon as it became too “mainstream,” they stopped buying into it. So an inevitable market correction ensued. So, did fickle fangirls cause the anime crash of ’06?
Answer:
In a word, “No.” America’s 2008 anime industry collapse was caused by a number of interconnected circumstances, but fickle female anime fans were not one of those factors. In order for female otaku to have significantly destabilized the domestic anime industry with a sudden emigration, they would have had to have been a substantive supporting audience in the first place.
During the heyday of American anime home video distribution, less than a dozen shoujo titles ever got released to completion on domestic home video: Hana Yori Dango, Fushigi Yuugi, Utena, Card Captor Sakura, Marmalade Boy, Princess Tutu, Ultra Maniac, Fancy Lala, Pretear. St. Tail just barely limped to a complete DVD release. (I think the shoujo status of the Rayearth anime remains debatable.) Full Moon wo Sagashite, Corrector Yui, Kodocha, Sailor Moon, and Ojamajo Doremi never saw their final episodes reach American DVD. Mew Mew Power (Tokyo Mew Mew) didn’t even get a promotional or partial American DVD release the way Ojamajo Doremi did. The sum total of all shoujo anime titles licensed for American release from 1998-2008 constitutes a tiny fraction of the total number of anime titles licensed for domestic release during that time span. The very reason why the American industry tried so hard to court the female consumer market is because America’s anime distribution industry never did fully capture the female consumer audience.
Looking even beyond the shoujo genre, the massive majority of female consumers in the American anime community from 1998 through 2008 did not purchase DVDs, and most of those who did only purchased a limited number of DVDs. Even the most successful of all shoujo anime DVD releases during the boom years, arguably Sailor Moon and Card Captor Sakura, were never the blockbuster hits that shows like Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, Tenchi Muyo, Rurouni Kenshin, Evangelion, Outlaw Star, Dragon Ball Z, and Pokemon were. Even Sailor Moon, the most popular shoujo anime ever in America, only had its first two seasons released on domestic DVD in edited, dubbed DVDs and uncut but incomplete limited edition boxed sets. Certainly female fans did contribute significantly to the popularity of Gundam W. But it wasn’t predominantly female consumers that were buying tens of thousands of DVD copies of titles like Dragon Ball Z, Cowboy Bebop, Evangelion, Tenchi Muyo, Yu Yu Hakusho, Trigun, Excel Saga, Outlaw Star, Lodoss War, and Berserk. And the domestic industry didn’t crash because female consumers stopped buying DVD releases of UFO Maiden Valkyrie, Yumeria, Gasaraki, Project Arms, Trouble Chocolate, Initial D, Brain Powerd, Battle Athletes, Hyper Police, Patlabor, Geobreeders, Betterman, Otogi Zoushi, and countless other titles because it was never female consumers that were buying these titles on DVD and sustaining the domestic industry in the first place. In effect, there was never enough shoujo anime invested in nor released in America from 1998-2008 to make the genre a weight-bearing pillar that could have crumbled and brought the entire distribution industry down with it, nor were female DVD collectors ever such a major market force that their exodus could have deflated the industry.
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“The very reason why the American industry tried so hard to court the female consumer market is because America’s anime distribution industry never did fully capture the female consumer audience. ”
That’s not entirely true. They were one of the biggest consumer groups at the beginning of the bubble. And American comic book publishers still wish they had that kind of interest in their own libraries.
“Even Sailor Moon, the most popular shoujo anime ever in America, only had its first two seasons released on domestic DVD in edited, dubbed DVDs and uncut but incomplete limited edition boxed sets.”
Well, DiC and Toei are to blame for how it was handled. And obviously the show was still an underperformer if no one wants to pay the licensing fee to bring it back. You can tell the difference between it and DBZ, where the latter’s license at FUNimation will probably never expire. But at the same time, they were hyping Sailor Moon as big as DBZ here.
“because it was never female consumers that were buying these titles on DVD and sustaining the domestic industry in the first place. ”
Well, they were buying *something*, because they were emerging as a key demo during that time.
” But it wasn’t predominantly female consumers that were buying tens of thousands of DVD copies of titles like Dragon Ball Z, Cowboy Bebop, Evangelion, Tenchi Muyo, Yu Yu Hakusho, Trigun, Excel Saga, Outlaw Star, Lodoss War, and Berserk.”
Enough of them were buying just about everything on that list but Excel Saga, Outlaw Star, Lodoss and Berserk. Or at least talking/blogging about it. Or drawing fan art for it. Which again might prove the point of this article.
” In effect, there was never enough shoujo anime invested in nor released in America from 1998-2008 to make the genre a weight-bearing pillar that could have crumbled and brought the entire distribution industry down with it,”
Well, yes, but when you pay a higher fee for certain “in-demand” shoujo titles, and they underperform, and they’re sold in singles and/or at higher MSRPS than nowadays [Marmalade Boy], it’s obvious some sort of correction is around the corner. As soon as Viz and FUNimation tried to sell Kodocha and Full Moon in singles, and Viz tried to do the Shoujo Beat thing, the market went bust. There is a correlation.
“nor were female DVD collectors ever such a major market force that their exodus could have deflated the industry.”
And yet Viz has openly admitted they lost sales to YA books.
Also, even if the actual number of shoujo shows is in fact smaller than the bulk of anime released during that period, that’s still a lot of unsold discs rotting on shelves and losing money.
This question could be considered offensive, but in a broader sense, it has some merit. In my experience, there seem to be as many, if not more female anime fans (based on convention attendance) than males, but the males tend to buy home video releases, and in greater bulk. Our biggest video sales almost always involve males. Female customers prefer manga and plush, while males go for the DVDs and figures. Female customers tend to only go for specific DVDs (romance or with a bishie in lead) and don’t tend to spend too much per set. This is a generalization, but it’s fairly accurate.
Male fans tend to be into collecting more than female fans, and are willing to spend more. Female fans seem to prefer showing their fandom through cosplay, fan art, and other expressions which don’t mean dollars directly into the industry coffers, while the males are more likely to throw money right in. It’s a stark divide on the term commercial art!
As GATS mentioned, the industry was shifting out of the individual release model and into series sets at about the time the bubble burst, thanks to ADV’s loose policy in release sets when the series was still coming out on individual discs. The time of the excess of fill-your-own art boxes and cheap collectibles was over, and the industry was forced to shift into a more practical, less-is-more mindset, which is allowing it to tread water in an age of legal and illegal free anime.
Sure, the fans could have supported the industry then, but it’s really hard to expect folks to pay twice as much for a series when they can “just wait for the box set.” Around the end, loyal fans who still purchased the individual volumes were rewarded with ab incomplete release or, even better, $200 aftermarket prices for that final volume.
As the question stand, no, this is not true, girls didn’t ruin the home video party they were invited to because they never really wanted to come. Were fair-weather fans responsible for the crash? Sure, but it’s not like there weren’t bad business models in place back then discouraging purchases, and it’s hard to rally people over a cause they have no obligations to have anything but a fleeting interest in. Will these types of fans endanger the industry with it’s YouBits and TubeTorrents? Same answer.
It’s not like there are a limited number of fandom spots and flighty fans are taking up precious real estate. There just weren’t enough actual customers to support all of those releases.
Pocky: So, basically, you want to say, “Yes”, but you’re too afraid to wade into this “controversial” mess of a question and piss off potential customers. So you’ve settle for “sort of, but that’s not the whole story”. Am I right? 🙂
“As GATS mentioned, the industry was shifting out of the individual release model and into series sets at about the time the bubble burst”
Though my point was that the shift happened, not solely because of consumer tastes. Rather, it was because they had to resell the hits in order to offset the losses from the singles aimed at girls.
“As the question stand, no, this is not true, girls didn’t ruin the home video party they were invited to because they never really wanted to come. Were fair-weather fans responsible for the crash? Sure…and it’s hard to rally people over a cause they have no obligations to have anything but a fleeting interest in.”
You can’t have it both ways, though you’re trying to do so. You either admit that the faux fangirls tried to spin themselves as bigger supporters than they really were, thus confusing industry reps, and convincing them to make bigger bets than they normally would. Or you can try to blame the industry at large, even though it was, as I pointed out, successful in that arena in the beginning.
“Sure, but it’s not like there weren’t bad business models in place back then discouraging purchases,”
These models worked for quite a while. It’s only after they specifically targeted the female demo that they stopped working.
“and flighty fans are taking up precious real estate.”
Well, that’s how the market was assessed, unfortunately. The YA movie fad is probably next.
“There just weren’t enough actual customers to support all of those releases.”
I agree with you there, but again, there were a lot of customers in the beginning.
I think the point that John was trying to make, and to some extent PockyBox as well, is thus:
Anime fangirls never spent a lot of money on anime DVDs to begin with. They continued to not buy DVDs throughout the bubble. They still didn’t buy DVDs after the bubble. The bubble was caused by a lot of people *spending a lot of money on anime*, and then suddenly NOT spending a lot of money on anime. Since anime fangirls never significantly entered the market, they could not have caused the market to crash.
You could argue that fangirls somehow “promised” to buy anime (either literally or unintentionally by showing a great interest in anime), and then “betrayed” that promise by not spending the amount of money that industry reps had predicted. But you can also argue that industry reps simply made a bad call by investing a lot of capital in an audience that, turns out, wasn’t interested enough in the product.
I don’t claim to know exactly what was going on with the national anime market back in ’06… But I do have some personal observations to share. At the time, I was a high school senior. I had carefully spent months saving my babysitting money to buy the entire Outlaw Star series on DVD for $150 (only to have the entire series come out on a thinpack for a third of the price a few years later, damnit). Later, my parents spent a ridculous $200+ to get me Serial Experiments Lain (which is only 13 episodes!!) for Christmas. Outlaw Star and Lain were the only DVD series I owned for several years because–like all of my fellow anime-loving friends, both male and female–I was in high school and later college and not making enough money to buy anime DVDs at $25 a disc or hundreds of dollars for a box set.
Personally, I think it is not just anime fangirls to blame, but fanboys as well. The entire fan community as a whole, regardless of gender. We all loved anime, but none of us were able to afford it at a price that was viable for the industry at the time. The industry seems to be slowly recovering, which may be due to the early fan community finally reaching an age where they have an income to support their hobby. However, young fans that love anime but don’t have cash is a problem that appears to continue to this day (case in point–an anime con that occurs in my city each year has a pre-reg cost of only $20 for the entire weekend… and we STILL get a ton of people on the Facebook page complaining that it is too expensive, that they can’t get the money together before pre-reg ends, etc.). Well, that’s how things look to me. Like I said, I’m not an industry insider, just speaking from personal experience.
tsun: Well, fanboys are buying *something*, if shows like DBZ and Naruto are still around. And if it were just about disposable income, or lack thereof, then that wouldn’t explain why they’re still lining up for new consoles and other pricey gadgets.
Gats,
You can buy an entire season of either DBZ or Naturo for less than $30. If those shows were still being sold at bubble-age prices, I doubt their sales would be as high (although I question how good the sales are even currently–how much of a stupendous profit is really being made on these “top” shounen shows in America?).
Either way, the point being made was that since female fans made up such a tiny share of the bubble market that the effect of their buying or not buying anything was negligible next to the effect of the male anime consumers. So yes, in 2006 male fans bought more anime because THERE WERE MORE MALE FANS in the first place.
Now to get a little off the male vs. female fan topic and onto talking about why the industry failed, or continues to limp along–
Look around the dealer’s room the next time you are at a convention, and count how many vendors sell DVDs versus any other kind of merchandise (I think there were about 3 out of 125 at AnimeBoston last year). Even stores that do usually have DVDs in stock don’t often bother bringing them to conventions to sell because they are not worth the shelf space.
I live near a college which boasts one of the largest (nearly all-male) anime clubs in the country, yet all of these supposed-loyal fans can barely sustain a single local anime store. The owner of said store has stated many times that the only thing keeping his store afloat is manga sales–not DVDs by any means. Heck, there are DVDs that have been sitting in the clearance bin of that store so long that they probably couldn’t even give them away.
Selling anime DVDs is difficult. I still think that the American anime fan community at large simply does not spend enough money to support a large licensing & distro industry, which is why the industry eventually collapsed down to the fewer companies we have today. Why does the community not spend money? Well, income does seem to be a factor considering the demographics of the fanbase being strongly in the “pre-college-graduate” age. Another factor could be the prevalence of free fansubs and legal-but-much-cheaper streaming sites. I don’t know for sure. All I know is my own experiences, and what I see the fans around me doing. And to be honest, what they are not doing is spending big bucks on anime like they do on the latest PS4 or what-have-you.
“You can buy an entire season of either DBZ or Naturo for less than $30. ”
Yeah, you can do it *now*, because there’s no one else left to buy the extras. But they were among the few shows that have been successful at full MSRP, as well.
“(although I question how good the sales are even currently–how much of a stupendous profit is really being made on these “top” shounen shows in America?).”
Enough to be one of the few anime tv shows that they’ll put out on Blu-Ray here. And if they can find a way to make that happen, Blu-Ray 3-D.
“So yes, in 2006 male fans bought more anime because THERE WERE MORE MALE FANS in the first place.”
Well, yes, but female fans drove the market into that bubble in the first place. We would not be seeing Kodocha on DVD, if Fruits Basket wasn’t a hit.
“Look around the dealer’s room the next time you are at a convention, and count how many vendors sell DVDs versus any other kind of merchandise (I think there were about 3 out of 125 at AnimeBoston last year).”
Yes, but those are generally the busiest vendors.
“I live near a college which boasts one of the largest (nearly all-male) anime clubs in the country, yet all of these supposed-loyal fans can barely sustain a single local anime store. ”
That’s because American anime stores have the problem of over-diversification, which they can get away with in Japan, but not here. The comic stores basically already have the bulk of people who want to buy books and associated merch. And American comic book fans are not necessarily-in fact, rarely-anime fans.
“The owner of said store has stated many times that the only thing keeping his store afloat is manga sales–not DVDs by any means. ”
Well, the internet’s killed the viability of brick-and-mortar stores in general. So unless that dude has something which helps him stand out, he’s in trouble.
“Well, income does seem to be a factor considering the demographics of the fanbase being strongly in the “pre-college-graduate” age. ”
Again, I’ve brought up how people can buy overpriced iPads. And they also can support a 30-minute sequel to a witch anime on Kickstarter. [Not to mention Aniplex rip-off DVDs and Blu-Ray sets.] And then there’s the elephant in the room. Fans going to conventions, which are only “cheap”, if you’re not traveling out-of-state to be there. So income is clearly not as problematic as you claim.
“Another factor could be the prevalence of free fansubs and legal-but-much-cheaper streaming sites.”
Yes, but there are shows which are pirated which people do pay for legally.
Gats,
A majority of shows are coming out on Blu-ray now, including some decidedly shojou titles (such as Black Butler & Host Club) and a lot of titles that are equally appealing to both sexes (such as Fairy Tail & Natsume). I have never seen a DVD vendor at a convention be busy, certainly not as busy as the dozens of vendors selling figures. There are a handful of comic book stores in our city, but none are as close to the college (and car-less college students) as the anime store which is less than a mile away. Hardly anyone who comes to our local convention is from out-of-state, it is not large enough to attract that kind of attendee. I’ve seen attendees at many cons, large and small, not own any smart phones let alone ipads, not have enough money to feed themselves during the con, pile 10 people to a hotel room floor because they could afford the gas to carpool across a few states but not their own rooms, etc. I am not sure where you and your neighborhood of well-off anime fans are living, but it is apparently not near me.
I think we are going to have to agree to disagree on this. Obviously nothing I have said has swayed your opinion at all, and in turn you have not made any arguments that I find convincing. So before things get ugly, as they tend to do with internet debates, I am going to stop. I bid you good night!
Before you leave, FYI, Black Butler is not shoujo.
“May be politically incorrect” Thanks for the laugh. He came up with a crackpot theory where girls could be blamed.
I first learned about anime in the 90s by watching Sailor Moon on TV and Vampire Hunter D that a friend owned. I was pretty excited to learn I could buy anime in certain stores – we had two at the time, a comic book store that sold everything, and a more anime focused store. When I went to check out the selection, I was shocked at the expense. $30 on average for a 3 episode disc. Plus, no way to determine if I’d like the anime before I bought it since I didn’t know any avid collectors, couldn’t rent them, and the internet was not a household commodity yet. I determined the cost benefit was not worth it, and moved onto other things.
Two decades passed, and I rediscovered anime about six years ago. The whole world of anime has changed. I can read manga and stream anime before I buy it. I go on Amazon and find great deals, usually paying $30-35 for a whole season of anime, rather than the $120 it was before. This is totally worth it to me.
In specific for girls who like anime….one of the biggest things we discuss that we don’t like is how it portrays girls in many shows (I’m talkin’ ecchi here). Finding anime that has a good story, nice animation and sound, and isn’t just doing fan service is…frankly hard. So we aren’t as inclined to buy some series as others.