DBZAOTA482 wrote:Lord Beerus wrote:DBZAOTA482 wrote:
It ain't over till it's over.
It's not just the ratings or search rankings though. It got headlines from major publishers (in fact, it was the first anime on the Wall Street Journal), it's VHS and DVD were top-sellers (it's in fact the best-selling anime brand in the United States), the video games sold like hotcakes, and it generally hit mainstream Western culture like a truck.... particularly since it was most people's introduction to the world of anime. It may not have sold as much as Pokemon, Power Rangers, and possibly Yu-Gi-Oh! in merchandise... but it definitely has the mass appeal to back it up.
Also, the Rugrats franchise made far less in merchandise than Dragon ball and I doubt it's sales are exclusive to America so I don't see how a DBZ movie can't measure up to the Rugrat movie money especially when the last DBZ movies (well past the pick era) did so well.
It's kind of contradictory to say that Dragon Ball Z had mass appeal and yet other franchises, some of which didn't have the same amount of exposure that Dragon Ball Z did in the West in its peak era, made much money that Dragon Ball Z did on a yearly basis. If Dragon Ball Z truly had the mass appeal that you are referring to than it would have reflect in profit, because ultimately, that is the most telling indication of just how much people know about a franchise, or at the very least, are invested in it. And the numbers don't lie, people were more willing spend money on Digimon, Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh than they were willing to do so on Dragon Ball Z. Whether that is an indication of quality is irrelevant in this scenario. Children, teenagers and adults were ultimately more drawn into by those franchise than they were for Dragon Ball Z, despite what the ratings and internet trends at the time indicated.
Speaking in terms of the how well it was performing in the West, as I mention constantly in regards to the context of popularity, yes, the Rugrats was making much more money than DBZ was. The Rugrats was
a billion dollar franchise* by the time Dragon Ball Z got its foot in the door in the US (1999) and nothing indicated that Dragon Ball Z generated anywhere near that same amount of money during its absolute peak in popularity in the West (2000-2003).
Also, the videogames did moderately well, but they weren't selling like hotcakes.
Dragon Ball Z Budokai sold just over 2 millions copies in the US, and that remained the best a Dragon Ball videogame did in terms of sales in the US until Xenoverse was released more than a decade later. And those sales itself were a drop in the ocean compared to how well many other videogames were selling at that time. Is sure as hell didn't sell anything close to the top ten highest grossing games of that year. And in regards to VHS sales,
Pokemon at the time (2003) was also doing much better.**
* Page 46: "An estimated $1.4 Billion dollars or Rugrats merchandise has been sold from dolls to toothpaste."
** "From a video released May 2003 - Over 25 million videos sold! #1 for kids Top-rated shows for boys 6-11!"
It's not a contradiction at all. I even brought up The Simpsons to show that merchandise sales aren't everything as there's nothing indicating it was making that kind of money per year during that stretch in it's merch or does it sell like the Pokemon franchise as a whole. Like
Cure Dragon said, you're comparing fads to the mainstay knowledge of Dragon Ball. Besides, it's not just ratings and internet trends... it also made major press that specifically talked about it's popularity which no way would happen if the show was some niche cartoon.
Again, it took Rugrats almost 10 years to make just over a billion dollars in merchandise and it's almost certainly based on global sales. Dragon Ball already over twice that in merchandise worldwide and within a similar timespan so no... Rugrats wasn't making more money than Dragon Ball.
A video game needs to sell at least about 500,000 units worldwide to be a commercial success depending on how big the budget it is and these games obviously don't have the same money invested into them like bigger titles. The major DBZ games were selling over a million units per game in North America alone which is actually
very impressive especially for a licensed game franchise. It's obviously not as big as some bigger titles but those numbers aren't anything to scoff at all.
The DVD releases of Dragon Ball Z sold over 25 million units in the US alone... implying it sold a lot more worldwide making the #1 best-selling anime brand according to FUNimation's Catalogue. This probably doesn't include VHS sales though but they frequently ranked high in the billboard records for VHS sales. It's card games were also top-sellers during a time the market was dominated by Pokemon trading cards.
Pokemon video releases may have made over 25 million units but most of it was during the whole Pokemon fad.
On yearly basis, at least from 2008, yes,
The Simpsons makes a hell of a lot of money. And speaking strictly in terms of popularity, yes, Dragon Ball Z was, by all means a fad as well. The franchise exploded in popularity in the early 2000s in the US, but it's never reached that same level of status since. Some major publication took the opportunity to put the spotlight on the show because it was one of the "big things" for a short time. Much like with the Pokemon anime and how Pikachu basically became a cultural icon in the West. I mean, Pikachu was ranked as the "second best person of the year" by Time magazine in 1999 (and even specified the franchise's profits for the year as "the reason for the ranking", behind singer Ricky Martin but ahead of author J.K. Rowling), appeared in a "Got Milk?" advertisement and a Pikachu balloon has been featured in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade since 2001. Yeah, Dragon Ball videogame every year, but they are mostly forgotten in the public eye very soon after. Some people may have an attachment to Dragon Ball Z, but the nostalgia that the public has for the Pokemon anime runs much deeper. The English Pokemon theme for the first season of the anime, which was already very iconic in it's own right,
exploded in popularity like you wouldn't believe when Pokemon Go took off in July last year.
If that doesn't show how much the original Pokemon anime is still recognized and adored, I don't what will. I mean, no offence, but has any kind of extensional Dragon Ball (Z) material, or the anime itself, had a resurgence or retroactive recognition like that in the West? The best case you make is Battle Of Gods, Resurrection F and maybe Kai. But that really doesn't match up to much all that well to how much the essence of the Pokemon anime catapulted itself back into the worldwide eye last year in the summer.
The only videogame that really seemed to make a name for itself since Budokai 1 in 2003 was Xenoverse... more than 10 years later. And videogame sales for Dragon Ball (Z) actually cooled down a lot in the US after Budokai 1. And in amazing bit of irony, Japan and Europe was really were the interest in Dragon Ball games really started to show. In fact, after doing a little bit of digging, I found out from Burst Limit and an onward, Dragon Ball games were not even managing to shift over a million copies in total worldwide. Tenkaichi 3 was actually the last Dragon Ball (Z) games to sell over a million copies worldwide. Everything else after that until Xenoverse occurred actually did
worse in terms of sale than Tenkaichi 3.
Do you really think the even a fraction of a fraction of the 3 billion dollars in profit that Dragon Ball generated from 1986 to 2000 came from the the West or the US specifically? 95% of that money came from Japan, because that was where Dragon Ball was a household name in that period. Japan was where all the videogames, movies and merchandise was initially released and where the show garnered its best ratings on television. And much like the the Rugrats in America, Dragon Ball in its native county (Japan), from the 1980s to the 1990s, was where the largest core fanbase of the show was and where most of its money was made. That's not to say that the show wasn't known in other countries, but its popularity in other countries just didn't compare at all to how well the show performed in it's native country of Japan.
Think about this context: It took fourteen years (2000 - 2014) for Dragon Ball to reach the 5 billion dollar threshold of profit worldwide. It took 14 years for Dragon Ball total franchise worth to be raised by two billion dollars. Pokemon can make the same amount of money, if not even more, in one year. Two years tops. If Dragon Ball was going as well as it was in its peak period, I'm sure that number (5 billion dollars) would be have actually been much higher by 2014.