Anime!Anime! investigated the anime viewing trends of Spring 2019 based on about 210,000 points of viewer data provided by ToshibaTV・REGZA (REGZA), in order to see which shows were viewed by people the mostseen by the most people.
This time, we focused on the factors other than the pure ranking result obtainedthat can be seen by simply analyzing the viewer data of the Spring season, looking especially at, the external factors that affected the popularity of anime.
The analysis results in particular,In particular, the analysis results in order to understand “In what form did you watch it?” and “What about it do you think made it popular?” if you want to get a greater understanding of anime, please enjoy this article.
■Investigation Method
Target Area: 211,755 receivers installed in Tokyo, Kanagawa and Saitama
Applicable Channels: Terrestrial Digital Broadcasting 8 channels (NHK, NHK E-tele, NTV, TBS, Fuji TV, TV Asahi, TV Tokyo, MX)
Targeted shows: 38 shows
Applicable period: April 1-July 14, 2019 (after the last episode of all shows)
Counting method: Will be counted afterCounting when watching over 1/3 of the program broadcast time in real time or recording.
■Anime Surveyed (in no particular order)
**Monogatari Series Selection**, **BAKUMATSU Crisis**, **Fairy Gone**, **KING OF PRISM: Shiny Seven Stars**, **MIX**, **RobiHachi**, **The Idolm@ster Cinderella Girls Theater CLIMAX SEASON**, **Karakuri Circus**, **Carol & ‘Tuesday’**, **Kono Oto Tomare!**, **YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love at the Bound of this World**, **Sarazanmai**, **JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind**, **Strike Witches: 501st Joint Fighter Wing Take Off!**, **Dororo**, **NAMUAMIDABUTSU! -UTENA-**, **Why the hell are you here, Teacher!?**, **Hitori Bocchi’s ○○ Lifestyle**, **FutabAnime**, **Fruits Basket**, **We Never Learn**, **One Punch Man Season 2**, **Isekai Quartet**, **Mobile Suit Gundam THE ORIGIN Advent of the Red Comet**, **Demon Slayer** **Magmel of the Sea Blue**, **Wise Man’s Grandchild**, **The Rising of the Shield Hero**, **Afterlost**, **Midnight Occult Civil Servants**, **Attack on Titan Season 3**, **The Helpful Fox Senko-san**, **Washer!: She and I in the Women’s Bath!?**, **August’s Cinderella Nine**, **Operation Han-Gyaku-Sei Million Arthur** and **Bungo Stray Dogs** are all the 38 surveyed works.
Long-running series such as **Chibi Maruko-chan** or **Sazae-san**, as well as, continuous series such as **Pretty Cure** will be excluded. Shows for kids, rebroadcast shows, shows that are currently airing and works under 14 minutes will also be excluded.
※FutabAnime’s shows **Over Drive Girl 1/6**, **Joshi Kausei**, ** Mr. Nobunaga’s Young Bride** as well as **Senryuu Shojo** and
**Ao-chan Can’t Study!** will count as 1 out of the 38 shows due to their short time frame.
■What opportunities can we see from this large sample of anime?
Firstly, let’s take a look at the 38 series, and their overall rankings announced in the TOP 10 last time.
Although the title of the work is hidden, the TOP 10 are as announced in the previous article.
The visual shows orange bars and green bars. The “Percentage of people who watched more than 70% of the program (Orange)”, and the “Percentage of people who watched the program at least once (Green)” respectively.
The graph shows an orange bar, that is, the ranking in order of the number of people who watched the program relatively well (70% at least).
What is the first thing that caught your attention when viewing this graph? Many people will probably have noticed the longest green bar that stretches to the right, the seventh bar counting from the top.
It representsthe original anime **MIX**by Mitsuru Adachi that is currently being aired. What does this mean?
MIX” (C) Mitsuru Adachi / Shogakukan / YomiUri Television / ShoPro
You may think that “It was a work that had a lot of people who left it after only watching it for a short while and only few continued to watch it.” But is that really the case?
However, there are other reasons for this result. Among the 38 anime surveyed this time, all the other anime are either night or late-night broadcast programs, whereas **MIX** is the only evening band broadcast at 17:30.
In the evening, you and your family may be in front of the TV and contend for channel rights.
In the case of living alone, if you have turned on the TV without deciding which program to watch, you may switch between channels one after another.
Because of these factors, it is easier to get the “Seen at least once” data and the green bars will increase as a result.
Another factor may be that the TV is turned on more often in the evening than at midnight.
For this reason, evening programs often tend to be more visible to viewers than late-night programs. It is thought that this is the main reason that only **MIX** stands out among all the shows surveyed this time as many viewers will flick through it.
A small side note in regards to this survey, the latest trend is that new anime are often broadcast in the late night TV slot, however, until about the middle of the 2000s, hits such as **Mobile Suit Gundam SEED** and **Fullmetal Alchemist** and other animations were broadcast in the evening.
Even though there are still anime broadcast in the evening, many are for popular and ongoing/stable series such as “Detective Conan” and “Pokemon”.
I hope that the evening anime time slot will be revived, so that new national anime can emerge.
■The works that were true dark horses of the Spring 2019 season …!?
Now let’s return to the main subject; There is one more point of interest in the previous graph, let’s look at the four long green bars located in the center, as shown in the image below.
These shows above are; **Sarazanmai**, **Senryuu Shojo**/**Ao-chan Can’t Study!**（※Set broadcast from the “Animeism” slot), **Carole & Tuesday** and **Hitori Bocchi’s ○○ Lifestyle**. What was the reason for this result?
“Sarazanmai” (C) Ikuni Rapper / Siri Commanders
These four anime were all in the TOP 10 in Anime!Anime!’s web questionnaire conducted in April.
1st ** KING OF PRISM: Shiny Seven Stars**
2nd **Demon Slayer**
3rd **Bungo Stray Dogs (3rd Season)**
4th **RobiHachi**
5th **Fruits Basket**
6th **Carol & Tuesday**
7th **Hitori Bocchi’s ○○ Lifestyle**
8th **Attack on Titan Season 3 Part.2**
9th **Isekai Quartet**
10th **Sarazanmai**
10th **Senryuu Shoujo**
10th **Diamond No Ace Season 2**
**Sarazanmai** and **Carol & Tuesday** were both original anime created by famous directors, and the anticipation from anime fans were sufficient. Therefore, its success was due to the fact thatthere were many people who thought “Let’s check it out first”.
**Carole & Tuesday** (C) Bonds, Shinichiro Watanabe / Carol & Tuesday Production Committee
**Senryuu Shojo**/**Ao-chan Can’t Study!** as well as **Hitori Bocchi’s ○○ Lifestyle** are all original manga works, but all the original works are relatively “well- known”. As it is a fresh show and not a series, many anime fans may have decided to look at it once in order to watch something fresh and close to the original manga.
**Hitori Bocchi’s ○○ Lifestyle**(C) 2018 Katsuwo / KADOKAWA / Lonely Production Committee
From this analysis, it can be assumed that these four works had relatively high expectations before and after the start of the broadcast (of course, other factors such as advertising and tie-ups may have also played a greater role).
In addition, regarding highly anticipated works, such as **Attack on Titan Season 3 Part.2** and **JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Golden Wind**are not included. If you were to distinguish them, they do not fall into the “Dark Horse” slot, this is mentioned to avoid any confusion as to why they were not mentionedlater on.
In addition to the aforementioned four works, there is also **The Rising of the Shield Hero** (4th place) and **Wise Man’s Grandchild** (8th place), which were the only two from theof the top 10 which were not long-term series. In this sense, these shows could also be regarded as part of the “Dark Horse” slot.
**The Rising of the Shield Hero**(C) 2019 Aneko Yusagi / KADOKAWA / Shield Hero Production Committee
[Reference] [Spring 2019 anime, viewed shows] Best 10 overall
1st **Attack on Titan Season 3 Part.2**
2nd **JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Golden Wind**
3rd **One Punch Man**
4th **The Rising of the Shield Hero**
5th **Demon Slayer**
6th **Mobile Suit Gundam THE ORIGIN Advent of the Red Comet**
7th **MIX**
8th **Wise Man’s Grandchild**
9th **Dororo**
10th **Fruits Basket**
By the way, “Wise Man’s Grandchild” was not included in Anime!Anime! previous TOP10 web questionnaire, however it did come thirteenth alongside **Kono Oto Tomare!**, **The Helpful Fox Senko-san** and **One Punch Man (2nd Season)**.
On the other hand, **The Rising of the Shield Hero** was outside the TOP20 ranking. It can be said that the true “Dark Horse” of the Spring 2019 anime season was **The Rising of the Shield Hero**.
→ Next page: What are the external factors that influence the popularity of a show?
■What are the external factors that influence the popularity of a show?
As youcontinue to analyze the data, you may see something else.
See the figure below.
Above is a ‘fan set correlation diagram’ that shows what other shows viewers of “The rise of the shield brave” tends to see.
The horizontal axis of the graph is “The percentage of **The Rising of the Shield Hero** viewers who watched the show”, and the vertical axis is **The Rising of the Shield Hero** compared to the overall average regarding “How many times has the work been watched?”, The size of the circle represents the approximate number of viewers of the work.
The number ‘1.3’ on the vertical axis is a guideline indicating that “there are 1.3 times more than the whole, and it can be viewed that that the tendency to watch those particular anime together is relatively strong.”
In other words, if the vertical axis is 1.3 or more, the more you go to the right and the more you “tend to see” the work that viewers of **The Rising of the Shield Hero** “tend to see”.
What is interesting is that more than 45% of the viewers of **The Rising of the Shield Hero** are also watching the “Wise Man’s Grandchild” which was ranked 8th overall, On the opposite, those that ranked in the top three **Attack on Titan Season 3 Part.2**, **JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind** and **One Punch Man** are not so strongly correlated.
**Wise Man’s Grandchild**（C）2019 Yoshioka Go・Seiji Kikuchi/KADOKAWA/ Wise Man’s Grandson Production Committee
All the works are relatively on the right side of the graph, however, it is difficult to say whether they are correlated because the total number of people watching them is large.
In other words, not everyone sees the shows that everyone else sees, however, the shows that are preferred according to the attributes of said show’s fans are different.
**The Rising of the Shield Hero** and **Wise Man’s Grandchild** both share the novel posting site “Shosetsuka ni narou(Let’s become novelists)”. It is reasonable to think that there were many fans that came from that source.
In addition, “Isekai Quartet” is placedlocated slightly above the center of the graph, although it was a crossover with popular characters from the four shows; **The Saga of Tanya the Evil**, **Overlord**, **KonoSuba: God’s Blessing on This Wonderful World!** and **Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World-**, these works are also all original works of the novel posting site “Let’s be novelists” as well as “Arcadia”
Which means that viewers of “The Rising of the Shield Hero” will think “Let’s see this as well”.
Isekai Quartet （C）Isekai Quartet／KADOKAWA（C）Isekai Quartet/KADOKAWA
In fact, these three works have very similar results in the ‘fan set correlation diagram’. Let’s compare below.
**Wise Man’s Grandchild** shows almost the same shape as “The Rising of the Shield Hero”, which means that the viewer’s tendency to watch other such shows is very similar.
“Isekai Quartet” has a similar shape, but compared to other shows, **The Helpful Fox Senko-san**,**We Never Learn** and **Strike Witches: 501st Joint Fighter Wing Take Off!** the correlation is much stronger.
These three works and **Isekai Quartet** havesomething in common which isthe existence of multiple unique heroines,the key to the work anda strong comedy vibe. It seems that the fan base is slightly different from the other two shows, despite the similarities.
Of the 38 works surveyed this time, only the above 3 works were actually that style of anime. Since the three works are ranked 4th, 8th, and 11th (**Isekai Quartet**), respectively, it can be said that the anime that has a simple is popular.
Recently, one or two new animations will be broadcast in 13 episodes (1 course), some anime fans will say “This style again?”, however from a business perspective, this is a very original choice, and it can be seen that fans are actually enjoying their work.
By the way, **The Rising of the Shield Hero** and **Wise Man’s Grandchild** have one more common point. They were broadcast on the same day.
**The Rising of the Shield Hero** was broadcast every Wednesday night from 22:00 on AT-X since January 2019, and **Wise Man’s Grandchild** was broadcast on AT-X from April at the same time from 23:30 on the same day. It was. **The Rising of the Shield Hero** is a dual course show, so the first half of the second half was broadcast **Wise Man’s Grandchild** one hour after the broadcast ended.
Therefore, it is highly likely that viewers of **The Rising of the Shield Hero** followed by watching **Wise Man’s Grandchild**.
“I don’t think it’s natural to have a strong correlation if it was broadcast on the same day,” but I can’t say that. The above-mentioned **The Rising of the Shield Hero** was broadcast on the next slot of the same channel as the **The Helpful Fox Senko-san**.
**The Helpful Fox Senko-san** (C) 2019 Rimokoro / KADOKAWA / The Helpful Fox Senko-san Production Committee
If the audience of **The Rising of the Shield Hero** was watching TV until the **Wise Man’s Grandchild** started, **The Helpful Fox Senko-san** should be strongly correlated. However, there was actually no strong correlation as shown in the figure below.
This is because there are many people who are watching **Wise Man’s Grandchild** one hour later without watching **The Helpful Fox Senko-san** just after the broadcast ends, also **Wise Man’s Grandchild** and it are considered to have a particularly deep and overlapping audience.
Broadcasting on the same channel at the same time on the same day may have created a synergistic effect, and as a result, both of them were able to break into the top rankings.
If “Isekai Quartet” was also broadcast on the same day, a stronger synergistic effect could be created, and it would be possible that the three anime series would have a higher ranking.
As in the case of **MIX**, there is the possibility that; not only the internal factors such as the quality of the work, but also the external factors such as the relationship with its broadcast date/time and the broadcast time of other programs influenced how much the show could be viewed.
In other words, the numerical value does not show the content of the work, that is, it cannot be said that it is an anime with many people who watched it or a sold anime or a high-quality anime.
We as Anime!Anime! often announce the popularity rankings of works, but keep in mind that the ranking does notrepresent the quality of the work. The value of the work is subjective to each and every viewer.
→ Next page: What is the element of “You can expect something fromthis work with confidence!”
■”You can expect a trustworthy work!” What is the element?
Here is another interesting result related to the external factors of anime.
The following two graphs show **Why the hell are you here, Teacher!?** and **Washer!: She and I in the Women’s Bath!?** It shows the ranking order of the viewers of both shows.
Both of these two works have very similar themes, which are the sexy routes within the anime with the full scenes removed. (A slight digression, but **Ao-chan Can’t Study!**does not have this in common).
23rd place **Why the hell are you here, Teacher!?** comes from the original manga serialized in “Weekly Young Magazine”, and 26th place **Washer!: She and I in the Women’s Bath!?** “is an electronic comic original work serialized on ComicFesta, an electronic comic distribution site.
**Why the hell are you here, Teacher!?** (C) Sohyo Law, Kodansha / Why the hell are you here, Teacher!? Production Committee
Considering the difference in the original media, **Washer!: She and I in the Women’s Bath!?** can be said to be doing quite well in regards to female viewership. Above all, the lowering of the F2 class (female 35 to 49 years old) and the F3 class (female over 50 years old) is particularly noticeable.
This work is not specifically designed for women, but why did you get support from women over the age of 35?
One of the factors is considered to be in the broadcast frame of this work. This work was broadcast for 5 minutes from 1 o’clock Monday night of TOKYO MX, but this time zone is the same as that of a sexy route anime from April 2017, **On a Lustful Night Mingling with a Priest** as such this slot is known as a the “Priest” time slot.
**Washer!: She and I in the Women’s Bath!?** itself is rather a work made for a male audience, but as it is in the “Priest’s” time slot, until now, It has been broadcast mainly on works in genres for teens love and relatively women, such as **Sweet Punishment: I’m the Guard’s Personal Pet** and **Yubisaki kara no Honki no Netsujou: Osananajimi wa Shouboushi**. Therefore, it seems that there were many female anime fans who thought “Let’s see this work”.
**Washer!: She and I in the Women’s Bath!?** (C) Toyo / Suiseisha Inc.
Speaking of the anime slots that have been branded with names, Fujita’s Noitamina, which is initially developed around the F1 class (20 to 34 years old women) and has an feel of “high-quality anime frames”, is famous. As with Noitamina, it seems that it is becoming a brand frame that can be expected with certain works with a focus on women who are F2 or higher.
Thus, the broadcast frame is also considered as one of the external factors that influence the number of viewers of anime.
■Anime becomes more interesting through data analysis!
This time, through the viewing data of anime, we examined the influence of external factors on the work’s popularity, such as the broadcast time, the broadcast slot, and the effect of works with overlapping fan bases that were broadcast in a similar time/slot.
By looking at the data, it is difficult to understand just by looking at the work itself, and you can see how the work was viewed. If you want to enjoy more anime, please try it.
As part of this project, we will also publish articles from time to time for course (serial) works in several steps. Please look forward to it!
