I dunno, it just strikes me as odd that the millions of anime fans outside of Japan would have a negligible impact on sales. They'd be less likely to buy things than fans in Japan proper, but to the point where those numbers can be ignored? That would be very strange.
I've certainly never heard any indication of western success being more than an interesting and validating trivia for content creators. Your incredulity is the first insinuation I can ever remember hearing about western economic behavior being relevant in any way (aside from the persistent myth that a crunchyroll subscription supports the studio).
Incredibly strange, considering that many large bookstores in the United States sell manga (and less commonly other anime merchandise), not to mention hobby and specialty stores.
That money goes to the licenser, who pays a flat fee to the publisher, who has already payed a flat fee to the studio, and by this point may well be no longer actively dealing with them.
And of course we all have access to the world's greatest bazaar, the Internet.
Yes, on the internet we can lay the blame for a lack of sales figures at the general lack of business competence of the studios. If BDs were commonly sold on English sites (or available shipped to the US and Europe at all, without going through a Japan-based intermediary) there's no doubt that there would be significant western sales, especially if the studios were to contract with some fansub groups. The fact that this doesn't happen is, perhaps, due to inertia and culture. The studios, after all, are typically not engaged in business directly - this is why they have publishers. But it's also a Japanese thing in general; video games do only marginally better at this and the game development is much more directly engaged with the market.
[previously mentioned crunchyroll myth]
This money does not go to studios. It goes to Crunchyroll, who uses it to license from assorted publishers, pay their own operating costs, and line Peter Chernin's pockets. Since it's private, we don't know what the ratios of those things are, but regardless, the portion that goes to license fees is determined by negotiations, not by anything specific to crunchyroll's success at using the IP later. In other words, it's a flat fee agreed upon ahead of time. And that fee is paid to the publisher.
the rising age and income of the typical western anime viewer, meaning more people prefer to pay rather than pirate.
I think there's a flawed assumption here. Steam and Gaben have demonstrated clearly that what people pay for is a quality service, and while paid streaming is better for that than free streaming, it's still not better than just using the fansubs. For adults with a stable connection, it's equally convenient to just use RSS to download stuff and have it waiting when you get home, and only slightly less so to XDCC if you're getting something on a whim, but the quality is consistently substantially better. While it's certainly possible that age is related (a subscription does presuppose a stable income) I think you're oversimplifying this case.
Why do people care so much about the highest charting animes?
Generally if you like something, you'd like a second season, or at least more well-funded stuff from the same studio. And it's nice to think that the people who made something you enjoyed are going to be able to afford a decent meal this month.
Why does person care about that. The main discussion was actually about how people are bringing up data like pre-order sales, but then cherry-picking - high pre-order sales for shows they like are proof that it's a good/popular show, but high pre-order sales for shows they don't like are suddenly "misleading data". Very convenient that. Obviously that has nothing to do with the actual pre-order sales and everything to do with touting a show someone likes: it's expressing a personal opinion about which is the best show, and trying to use an external source to claim it's "objectively" the best show (it's an appeal to authority).
I don't care about the pre-order sales at all, but I do get annoyed when people cite sources in a misleading way or cherry-pick their sources.
You seem to be assuming ill intent where there isn't any. Why not relax? There's no agenda here.
One Punchman was the last parody I saw
While this might be disputed on the internet as it has parodic elements, OPM is not a parody according to the author.
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Topic: I like anime, do you like anime? (Read 3066922 times)