As we have previously mentioned, Blu-ray/DVD sales are no longer a determining factor in whether a series will have a second season. Thanks to the emergence of streaming platforms, access to audiovisual content has become much simpler and more direct, which is why Blu-ray/DVDs became items exclusively for collectors. However, it is still a reality that buying Blu-ray/DVDs is a direct way to support animation studios in Japan, so fans continue to buy them to show this support.
Besides, Blu-ray/DVDs are also a way to access unreleased benefits of an anime production, such as uncensored versions of the episodes (either showing nipples or scenes that had to be cut for television broadcast), and other production materials such as books with concept art, interviews with the production team, and so on.
And it goes without saying that Blu-ray/DVD sales are still an indication to praise or humiliate an anime production, depending on how high the numbers are. An example remains “Chainsaw Man“, the super-production of the MAPPA studios that It only added 1,735 copies sold with its first Blu-ray/DVD in its first week. To this day, this number remains a way to make fun of “Chainsaw Man” on the Internet, even though their fans continue to claim that sales through the MAPPA Store are not counted in the figures, which is convenient for them because there is no way to verify it.
Anyway, why are we talking about all this? Well, it turns out that the anime adaptation of “Mahou Shoujo ni Akogarete (Gushing over Magical Girls)” managed to sell 5,660 copies of the Blu-ray, 1,498 copies of the limited edition Blu-ray, and 956 copies of the DVD. This means that the series added 8,114 copies sold for its first Blu-ray/DVD in its first week in Japan, the largest figures of the Winter-2024 season so far.
With this figure and in the same period of time, “Mahou Shoujo ni Akogarete (Gushing over Magical Girls)” outperformed other releases such as “Sousou no Frieren (Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End)” and “Kusuriya no Hitorigoto (The Apothecary Diaries)”, as well as “Boku no Kokoro no Yabai Yatsu (The Dangers in My Heart)” and “Mashle: Magic and Muscles – The Divine Visionary Candidate Exam Arc“.
In the list we can also see that productions like “Solo Leveling“, “Shangri-La Frontier“, “Undead Unluck” and “Oroka na Tenshi wa Akuma to Odoru (The Foolish Angel Dances with the Devil)” do not have figures, which means that they had such low sales that they did not make it into the sales ranking.
And why is the story of the abused magical girls dominating the Blu-ray/DVD sales chart? This first Blu-ray/DVD was released on March 27 and includes a booklet with illustrations and different content, as well as the episodes with “less censorship” than the least censored version on television. In addition, the limited edition also includes a scale figure and other must-see content for fans.
And of course, there was no shortage of comments:
- «I see that a romcom like “The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You” didn’t even reach 1000 copies sold, how is that possible?».
- «Even with more than 8,000 copies sold, it still doesn’t seem like much to me».
- «I really wait for the next few weeks to know the number that “Mahou Shoujo ni Akogarete” reaches.».
- «The total of “Mahou Shoujo ni Akogarete” for the first volume is about to reach 10,000 with the second week stack and the second printing».
- «MASHLE and Blue Lock are doing better than expected. I guess they were too competitive at the end of the month and down in the standings.».
- «Didn’t the series easily reach 10,000 copies sold? I wonder if the second week numbers will be enough for this?».
- «It’s definitely a pretty high number for an ecchi series. I wonder if the other series of the genre will do this well?».
- «8,000 copies sold, that’s quite a lot for an ecchi series. They had said that something like 6,500 was the upper limit for the genre».
Fountain: Yaraon!
