Anime Sales

by Jeremy Hull

This is far more of a lighthearted post compared to the last 3 posts I've made, but I find it to be pretty important. I was reading this about good animes that haven't been selling well in Japan.

The ranking (with the semi-official average sales figures for each volume of the disc release – “unknown” generally indicating sales so embarrassingly low that figures were never published):

  1. Kaichou wa Maid-sama! (1,707)
  2. Taishou Baseball Girls (1,392)
  3. Chihayafuru (Unknown)
  4. Kurenai (1,922)
  5. Kamisama Dolls (1,355)
  6. True Tears (2,079)
  7. Croisée in a Foreign Labyrinth (1,234)
  8. Kill Me Baby (Unknown)
  9. Princess Jellyfish (1,321)
  10. Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit (1,997)
  11. Sora no Manimani (1,231)
  12. Shiki (1,225)
  13. Softenni (783)
  14. Wandering Son (1,007)
  15. Sasameki Koto (Unknown)

I've put the anime that I have watch in bold just from some persecutive on them.

In my opinion the better animes of the list were Kaichou wa Maid-sama, Chihayafuru, Kurenai, and Kuragehime (Princess Jellyfish), but that doesn't make the others that I've watched bad, just compared to these four they where decent. Also there are a few up there that aired quite a while ago, like True Tears and Kurenai that I'm more surprise they haven't sold as much.

I'm not sure of the cause of these poor sales, but I can speculate and one this that is a possibility is just no one has heard of these anime. It's pretty common to have a good anime go under peoples radar and there just a small group of people that really liked the anime scratching their heads trying to understand why the titles get no recognition.

Another hypothesis would be this overrunning of "moe" anime that overshadow decent or even good animes with their bright art styles and lack of story. Not even going to lie, I have fallen for these types of anime a few times, but found some signs of the moeness and avoid them like the plague, but that another topic for another time.

So basically, I want people to give these anime a shot, but there are still quite a long list of anime that have been unappreciated by more popular animes.