I’ve just been wondering what titles for Sentai sells the most. I want to know what their cash cow is.
I would say Highschool of the Dead in recent times.
The thing about Sentai is that they are somewhat more diversified, then say Funimation with Dragonball, is in this aspect.
This helps as a failure to sell up to expectations for any one license won’t be detrimental to the company overall.
Mark Gosdin
High School of The Dead is definitely the biggest. Angel Beats, Clannad, Demon King Daimao, and Appleseed have also done really well.
I’d throw Infinite Stratos in there as well, though Cody and Mark have pretty much hit the nail on the head.
I thought that one as well, but since it’s relatively newer I was a little hesitant. Of course, since Sentai sells primarily through online retailers, I guess they don’t have to worry about retailer returns as much. Those sometimes took a show that looked like a sales success, and ultimately made them loose money.
So, can I blindly say that any of their titles that are on blu-ray sell well for them?
Wasn’t this question asked at the AnimeBoston Sentai panel, or am I misremembering?
Yes, it was asked there. Dragonrider_cody pretty much quoted Sentai’s response, though Sentai said Clannad (how could I forget that?) was a top seller too.
I also don’t think that Sentai has a cash cow, pretty much echoing what Mgosdin said. Didn’t Princess Resurrection and Guin Saga do well too?
[quote=“dlw”]David Williams (Sentai Filworks @ AB2012)
15:09:51 <bay|AB|Sentai> Q: What has been sentai’s best selling title? A: High school of the dead, nothing beats boobs and zombies
15:10:00 <bay|AB|Sentai> angel beats, clannad and demon king are some of our others best sellers[/quote]
I would presume anything they spend the time to dub they at least expect to sell well.
We don’t know if Guin Saga did really well or not. It was primarily re-released on bluray because Sentai had already acquired rights and announced it, before Aniplex made them delay it. We know Princess Resurrection did well enough for them to go back and dub it.
As far as cash cows, I don’t think there really are such things in anime anymore. Even DBZ had it’s blurays discontinued due to high costs and low sales. Even the DVD sets aren’t selling like they once did.
As far as Sentai is concerned, I would say High School of the Dead is about as close to a cash cow as you can come in anime these days. We won’t ever get exact sales numbers, but “gang busters” has been used and we know it topped both the anime and horror bluray sections on Amazon for months (and is one of the most actively reviewed anime releases there in the past two years.)
To Vata, I wouldn’t assume that everything they put on bluray is an automatic best seller. It does indicate that they have higher expectations for it. It could also indicate that international partners like Manga, MVM, or Siren are helping with costs. I’m sure that they have had titles that didn’t do as well on bluray as they would have liked.
Well, they have 5-7 years to make up the cost of the titles. I don’t expect any title to sell well enough in a few months to make up the cost.
Well, that is true, but the majority of sales come from the first 6 months or so. Very few titles are “evergreen” or continual strong sellers. They also have potential re-releases as well, but generally they want to break even on the first release and things like digital copies and merchandising.
I personally didn’t know about Sentai until the end of 2011, when my friend let me watch High school of the Dead…sort of wish I knew the damned thing was one step to porn or I wouldn’t have watched the damned thing.
I have like 5 titles I want, it’s just so hard when I have no job and with each blu-ray costing around $40-60, it’s a lot in my books. Or at least I want them for now, I need rent the first disc to make the final choice. I blindly bought Tears of Terra as it was fantasy series, I lucked out that I enjoyed it, but I can’t really afford to it a lot.
Some of my favorite series came as blind buys, which is one reason why I miss the old days of singles. It was a lot easier to take a risk on part of a series, if you can get it for less than $20. Now you’re lucky if you find something under $40.
You know really it depends on what you consider a big seller. I’ve heard in recent years anything that meets a certain what would have been consider a flop number 5 years ago they consider a hit now. I think times change as things go on so that one time hit might not pop years from now. Plus really when you look back at what was considered great years back you start to realize stuff is not as great as it once was. You start looking at storylines , characters , etc etc and just start thinking “is there something wrong with me or are am I the only one not seeing this as great anymore?” . You also start to notice the stuff of today is like simple plot wise sometimes or tries to hard to be better then what came before and usually only winds up confusing or putting people off. Looking forward I wonder at times what 5 more years will bring as the next hit and if by then I’ll be moved on from Anime or will I at least be buying 1 or 2 titles every so often that strike my fancy.
That all said I find it kind of funny that what sells now was a big flop years ago and it made companies leery about picking that type of stuff up even to this day. Yet because of them being leery they sometimes let titles slip through their finger then another company grabs it and looks like the hero. Then everyone props them up on their shoulders cheering to they mess up one time and then throws them to the wolves.
I also know that failed animes in Japan normally do better over here. I heard Trigun failed there, but is a big hit over here…it’s strange. I know Needless failed there, but a hit here. And since it was a bad title in Japan, Sentai got a deal on it.
Sometimes. There are shows that fail everywhere. There are also shows that are huge in Japan and don’t do well here, and ones that do well in both markets, like Eva. You can’t really generalize, as it just depends on the title and how it’s marketed.
Another way to tell what is doing well, or at least what they expect to do well, is to see what series they repeat over and over on VOD. HOTD and Angel Beats have each been run several times already.
Sadly, I only have dial-up, so I wouldn’t know about this stuff…I rent, which is limited or was until I started up with RentAnime.
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