>>3795017I don't trust Abema or other streaming platform rankings at all. Did you see how high that making money in another world thing was? It's the cheapest isekai I've ever seen and all the interactions are as if it were written by aliens approximating how humans behave. The other series I'm big on the fandom of right now ranks almost as low as Trigun for viewership, but its status in Japan can be summed up as two hotel collabs, an aquarium selling out of ship themed pseudomerch, several pop up shops and cafes, cosplay meets at pilgrimage sites, dominating twitter trendings on airing days, and an entire doujinshi event for a single pairing. That series is free to stream a week late on Nico, where it's getting higher ratings than other sites. If something ranks highly I'll always question if it's the best or only place to access the show.
I don't think streaming figures have solved the gap left in preorder numbers, nor do book sales seem to be reflecting the appetite for merchandise. Nothing is selling discs as visibly as it used to, and popularity is harder to determine by weight of fan content (is it a cult hit or mainstream?), but Orange staff are aware of the response across English, Korean, and Chinese speaking territories, and that one teruteru mascot is a beacon of appreciation for Stampede. Being popular in Japan doesn't matter if the publisher can break even on international sales, and the Studio of course took its commission already. A second cour may have been brokered many months ago with more care to the cost of set modeling hours than "how much product do we move". I can't say any of this on /a/, because you know how salesfags are. Anime profits are way more complex than home releases, if a show has no merch and sells less than 200 discs maybe you'd worry and check the broadcasting arrangements, but there's no one income stream. The absurd cost of discs has always been based on laserdisc rental store standards to put things in perspective.
