In a post last week, I described my anime DVD purchasing habits as follows: “I don’t buy much anime on DVD these days, mostly owing to the fact that much of what’s being licensed and released lately is of little interest to me.” Well, somewhere around mile one thousand, two hundred and twenty three driving through rural Nebraska yesterday, I got to wondering about the accuracy of that statement. So, this afternoon, I sat down and ran the numbers.
Generally, if I watch a show fansubbed from start to finish, it’s because I enjoy it. In other words, if I dislike a show, I’m unlikely to finish it. So, if I watched a show in its entirety, it’s at least “of interest” to me. Since the R1 licensing landscape began to change with the DVD market downturn of 2004, I chose to limit my data set to those shows which have aired since January of that year. That’s just under three years worth of new anime. So, let’s get to it…
Number of shows watched fansubbed, in their entirety, since January 2004: 59
Of those, the number of shows licensed (and announced as such) for R1 release: 19
Now, let’s look at the details for those shows which have been licensed. So far, 10 shows have either been released on DVD in their entirety or are in the process of being released. Of those shows, I have purchased or am in the process of purchasing 5 (Comic Party Revolution, Diamond Dust Drops (R2), Genshiken, Ichigo Mashimaro, and Koi Kaze). Now, of the remaining 9 shows that have yet to be released on DVD, I tentatively plan to purchase 4 (Mushishi, School Rumble, Shuffle, Suzuka). So, of all shows licensed, I have either purchased, am in the process of purchasing, or plan to purchase a total of 9 on DVD. Half, basically. The remaining 10 shows aren’t bad, by any means - I just don’t feel they have enough rewatch value to justify owning on DVD.
Now, the number of shows that remain unlicensed: 40
Twice the number of shows that have been licensed, basically, or nearly 70% of all shows watched. Of these shows, I have purchased a grand total of 1 on R2 DVD (Uta Kata). That leaves 39 shows unaccounted for. Of these, how many would I be interested in purchasing on DVD should they be licensed for R1 release? 20. That’s a lot of shows. Unfortunately, looking at the list, I won’t be holding my breath.
So, what’s the conclusion? Of the all the shows I’ve watched fansubbed in their entirety the past three years, roughly 30% have been licensed for R1 release. I own or am interested in owning half of those. Of the remaining 70% of shows that have gone unlicensed, I’m interested in owning half. Of all shows watched, licensed, and unlicensed, I own or am interested in owning, you guessed it, half.
Taking all of that into consideration, was my original statement accurate? For the most part, yes. It’s worth noting that, of all of the shows that have been licensed thus far, the vast majority aired in 2004. And it’s also worth noting that, of all of the shows that remain unlicensed, there are quite a few I’d consider personal favorites. Hear that, R1 distributors? I’m an untapped market!
Oh, and while I was at it, I calculated the value of my anime DVD collection: roughly $11,000.
Hey, it’s got to be cheaper than buying figures.
time is money, so the less time you spend, the more time you have to watch more anime.
Actually, figures are cheaper than DVDs. I pay about 30-40 US dollars for one figure. I have about 80 or so.
I’m with TJ actually. Thanks to the PVC revolution and popularization, it’s cheaper to own figures than to buy DVDs. At least, as they come out. It’s still cheaper to buy anime if you want 2 years, but even then it’s not even always the case.
Now garage kits….
Hmmm, My Classical music CD collection’s total value is roughly of similar monetary value to your DVD collection; yes that means the number is close to a thousand. The trouble is, most of mine are of rare historical recordings, thus much harder to replace in case they get damaged, compared to most Anime DVDs. Sadly, they don’t have much collection value neither, for most recording studios hate their existance for exposing the inferior quality of classical music performance of now days. I think this shows that, even though per unit cost may be less for certain items, I believe CDs cost about half of the DVDs, it is easy to make up for the difference by purchasing larger quantities, so I suspect that those that indulged in buying figures probably spent similar amount as Jeff had in his DVDs.
I dont have many anime DVDs, in fact I dont have any. As a youth I watched Digimon Adventures on Fox kids (before Fox Box or 4Kids,) and am always on the look out for stuff like collections.
I also watched Ultimate Muscle and Fighting Foodons. (any remember that?)
Ultimate muscle for the Fox Channel was very funny.
I dont have any dvd licenced but like Xocnil i have instead a lot of fansubbed and fandubbed series in DVD, so probably my statistics are much worsts than yours Jeff.
^_^
I decided to tally up my numbers, and the total of licensed to watched is currently 11/34, which is about 30%, which is almost idenitical to your number, even though I figured it would be higher. I’m in a different boat than you in that I’m looking at 8 of the 11 to be shelfed series (four are already), and I’m actually leaning on Gokujou Seitokai and Black Cat, even though I marked them both as non-purchases.
But I’m looking at 12/23 for remaining unlicensed series I’d purchase. It’s 50%, but considerably lower than the 70-90% of licsened series, so from my end, it looks like companies are licensing more series to my interest than they are you, even though we’re getting the same ratio of series licensed. It would been higher if I would’ve watched some of the shows I ended up watching on DVD fansubbed.
What series is this post’s image from?
Ichigo Mashimaro.