Kemono Friends have been a hot topic in the Japanese web recently when the news of its BD sales dropped. According to the official twitter account as well as KADOKAWA, volume 1 & 2 of Kemono Friends Blu-ray w/ official guidebook has sold a total of 120K copies so far, making the average per-volume sale of Kemono friends to be 60K.

Each volume only comes with two episodes, plus the official guide book. There’s still four more BD volumes to be sold, which means the total sales of the series is expected to be even higher.

Note that the cost of each the volume is only 3,780 Yen, which is almost half the price of a typical anime BD, so the number is a bit inflated.

Even still, this is one of the highest sales figures for an anime BD sale. For comparison, the best performer of 2017 Winter season is vol.1 of KonoSuba season 2 with just 13K sales.

If we were to take the sale of Vol.1 of Kemono to be 60K, then it’s on-par with some of the biggest hits, like K-ON at 50K, Love Live at 60K, Haruhi at 79K, etc. Note that this number is expected to keep growing since there has been shortage of supply in most stores.

Highest recorded Vol.1 sales:

Bakemonogatari: 110K

Madoka: 80K

Haruhi: 79K

LoveLive: 60K

Kemono Friends: ~60K

K-ON: 50K

Despite having been quite a low budget production with minimal animation, it somehow managed to be a blockbuster hit and capture the hearts of the anime viewers in Japan.

I haven’t really seen Kemono Friends, and don’t really plan to, but it’ll be interesting to watch how the surprise success of Kemono Friends will impact the industry going forward.

source: ITmedia, Yaraon