When Clannad's first week sales numbers went public, the entire anime world was stunned.
Around 3,000 copies was the break-even point. Around 5,000 meant a show could be called a hit. Over 10,000, and it was a certified popular anime.
An anime selling twenty to thirty thousand copies was in the running for annual champion.
2006 was already halfway over, and aside from Clannad, only one other anime had broken ten thousand, barely scraping past the line.
Everything else was under ten thousand, and quite a few shows had managed a pitiful few hundred copies at best.
In other words, unless some masterpiece dropped out of nowhere in the second half of the year, or Starfall somehow shot itself in the foot, Clannad had the annual sales crown pretty much locked down.
Starfall was a tiny studio that had only been around for two or three years with zero notable works to its name. Nobody had believed in them at first. They had been publicly shamed online, and they had produced this monster hit anime while carrying the weight of all that pressure on their backs. It was nothing short of a miracle.
What made it even crazier was that while Clannad leaned heavily on its heartwarming and emotional elements, at the end of the day, it was still a bishoujo anime.
Even though bishoujo shows still had a market, the audience for that genre was limited. When people said "there's a market for it," they were thinking somewhere in the five to ten thousand sales range. Maybe just barely cracking ten thousand at the absolute ceiling.
Who could have imagined a bishoujo anime pulling twenty to thirty thousand in sales?
It was almost unbelievable.
Overnight, tons of people who had never given Clannad a second look started watching it.
Industry insiders, especially producers at major studios and executives at planning companies, analyzed and discussed the show endlessly, trying to figure out why its sales numbers were so high.
As for the fans who had already been watching and had bought the DVD, they were just as fired up as the staff at Starfall when they heard the numbers. They cheered and celebrated, feeling a genuine sense of pride. The sales figures also gave them more ammunition to evangelize. More and more people were being told they had to watch this show.
Clannad's popularity and ratings had already been sky-high, and with a fresh wave of new viewers jumping on board, the buzz climbed even higher.
TBS was over the moon. If it weren't for the fact that Arcane was handling distribution, they never would have given this anime a time slot on their network in the first place.
Who could have guessed it would turn out to be a mega dark horse?
The voice actors working on Clannad were probably grinning in their sleep.
Most of them had been relatively unknown before this. Mei Shirayuki, the voice of the female lead, had been a complete newcomer. For any other hit anime, they might not have even been invited to audition, let alone landed a main role.
Just getting cast had already been a win.
But then the anime nobody believed in exploded in popularity, and their own profiles skyrocketed along with it. Anyone would be thrilled.
Of course, not everyone was sharing in the good fortune.
While Clannad was riding high, Lumen's Love Academy was having a miserable time.
Both were bishoujo anime. Clannad's first week sales topped twenty thousand. Love Academy's first week sales were barely over two thousand. Roughly a tenth.
Two thousand in the first week meant Love Academy's final average would probably land around three thousand. It definitely wasn't going to break four thousand.
They probably wouldn't lose money outright, but there was basically zero profit.
The show had been funded by Aniflex, and when Aniflex saw the writing on the wall, they went straight to slashing the budget.
They also suggested adding more fanservice scenes to attract certain viewers into buying discs.
In reality, Love Academy wasn't a bad anime aside from being a bit formulaic. The reason it tanked was largely Genma Wasabi's fault.
But Genma considered himself a director with standards.
So when Kaito told him about the budget cuts and the demand for more fanservice, he pushed back hard, and the two of them ended up in a massive blowup. Kaito felt wronged, because he was just the producer. He was only the messenger. He wasn't the one who wanted to cut the budget or add fanservice.
Long story short, the two of them had a falling out. The end result was that Love Academy completely went off the rails from that point on.
...
By late June, a batch of anime from the spring season had wrapped up, and July brought a new wave of premieres.
Yuta was busy as ever, but he still found time to check out what this world's anime landscape looked like.
The first July anime to air was The Secret of Natsukoto.
It was a school-set, slice-of-life romance. Unlike Love Academy, which was basically a harem show masquerading as a romance, this one was a genuine love story.
The premise kicked off with an ordinary male lead stumbling onto the school goddess Natsukoto's secret, and the plot would presumably revolve around that secret as it pushed the two leads' relationship forward. Romance anime had always had a market, though in 2006, that market wasn't especially big yet.
Of course, "not big" didn't mean "nonexistent."
If the anime itself was good enough, it could absolutely blow up.
Unfortunately, The Secret of Natsukoto clearly didn't have that kind of firepower.
It reminded Yuta of an anime from the other world called Haruka Nogizaka's Secret. The hook and the opening setup were very similar, though the actual story went in a completely different direction.
The second show to air was Eternal Warriors, produced by NovaLine Studios. NovaLine Studios was a powerhouse, and Eternal Warriors was a mecha anime that had been generating serious hype before it even premiered. Too bad the script was weak.
After watching the first episode, Yuta had no idea what the show was even trying to say.
Not very interesting.
After Eternal Warriors, Yuta skipped several shows in a row. Some were genres he had no interest in, and others looked like they'd been made on a shoestring budget just from the PV alone.
Nothing worth watching.
But Black, which premiered on July 8th, actually caught his attention. It was a manga adaptation, an urban action thriller, though "crime drama" was probably more accurate.
The protagonist was an ordinary office worker who got dragged into an incident and was forced to join a criminal organization to survive. From there, he found himself on one heart-pounding "adventure" after another while being shaped by the criminals around him.
It reminded him a bit of Black Lagoon from the other world, though once again, only in general concept. The actual content was completely different.
Worth noting: the director and scriptwriter for this anime were the same person, though unlike Yuta, this director hadn't also taken on character design, music, and producer duties.
In the other world, both seasons of Black Lagoon had aired in 2006 as well, and if he remembered correctly, both had broken ten thousand in sales.
If Black was done well, sales wouldn't be a concern. But this kind of genre had a limited audience with a low ceiling. Breaking ten thousand would be seriously impressive. More realistically it would land around seven or eight thousand. There was absolutely no way it would hit twenty thousand.
Regardless, the July anime market was still under Clannad's reign. Not a single contender could hold a candle to it.
_______________________
Give some power stones and leave a review if you like it!
Support me at patreon.com/CulturedOne and read 50 Advanced Chapters