Dissecting Anime Sols

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Anime Sols launched in May of 2013 with the promise of crowdfunding releases of older anime series, such as works from Osamu Tezuka.

Sadly, it hasn't gone well. As of July 2013, while a few series are still a few days away from completing, it's looking grim across the roster:

That is sorted by percentage pledged vs. the goal. Only one series leads the pack, and that's only half-funded.

Interestingly, the project with the most pledges is a magical girl series, something aimed at girls. The successful crowdfunded anime series so far have been shonen/seinen titles like Kick-Heart and Time of EVE. The next two series in our list, Black Jack and Tobikage, are both shonen. Are women entering the crowdfunding world? I hope so.

Tezuka's name--he created Black Jack and Blue Blink--doesn't seem to help much, though his works are at least higher in the list.

Now, it's easy to dismiss this by saying that anime fans don't want to watch older shows. But we're seeing a trend today in anime licensing towards super-fans paying large amounts for releases, so the (relatively few) fans willing to pay for the $200 box set support the release. We're seeing Vertical sell (relatively) obscure Tezuka manga in hardback to those fans who care.

And these pledge goals are not crazy; far less than the hundreds of thousands pledged to Kick-Heart and Time of EVE. We're talking a thousand fans each pledging $20 or so, which looks aggressive but sane to me.

Clearly, the super-fan market segment is small. They may buy a Tezuka manga, and they may support a big release, but they're not willing to pledge much for Tobikage.