By Tadashi Sudo

[Peaceful 2007]
The year 2007 has been a relatively peaceful year for Anime business. Box-office profits of especially series works did fairly well and thus the situation remained stable.
TV broadcasting was on a decline from golden-time but business that is on the assumption of this tendency is being put forward.
Probably the biggest topic is DVD market. The scale of the market as a whole has been stable but number of unprofitable individual works increased. Moreover, sharp growth of　video-sharing site and increase in contribution of unauthorized Anime works made cautiousness of Anime production staffs bigger.
Nevertheless, sense of crisis is smaller compared to overseas where Anime DVD market is falling down, because today in Japan, there is no sign of decline in the total sales of Anime DVD. Therefore, there is a speculation that if number of works produced decreases, profit will be able to be collected.

[Anime DVD Business is Facing its Limit]
DVD troubles that are occurring in overseas started around 2000 when the Internet became high-speed and number of exchange of illegal file fansub increased greatly. The initial aims of fans using illegal overseas broadcasting were to be able to watch movies for free and in advanced to the legal version. It is taking fans away from watching legal DVDs.
However, the fundamental problem is that it made many Anime fans fall into the habit of watching Anime on their PCs.
Overseas Anime fans today are satisfied with Internet image. Since their Internet is standard, they do not think about buying DVD and watch its high-quality image on television.
In Japan, the rapid growth of video-sharing site in 2007 is taking Japanese Anime fans to the place where overseas Anime fans were in 2000. Therefore, if Japanese young viewers get used to watching on PCs, they will not consume DVD in future. The collapse of Anime audio-visual package business seen in North America and in countries of Asia might occur in Japan as well in the near future.

[Growth and Reality of Online Business]
If so, how about replacing the main ground of Anime business to Internet? If users consume time and money on Internet, it is reasonable to develop business using Internet.
In reality, business by Internet Anime programs broadcasting companies such as BANDAI Channel and Toei Animation looks favorable. Also, there are companies that actively develop business in the world of Internet and mobile like Kadokawa Group Holdings and GDH.
On the other hand, as online business gets bigger, we can already see its limit in online broadcasting business. BANDAI Channel did pay broadcasting of 16 million stories in 2006 and greatly increased its profit. They must have made a further increase in 2007. However, this result was achievable because BANDAI Channel owns 500 plus works and 7000 plus stories. The profit made by selling 500 works merely equals to production fee needed to make two or three TV Anime series in a year. In other words, online broadcasting can be only performed by companies that own huge library like BANDAI Channel and Toei Anime as additional profit to their achievements.