We’re almost halfway into the season now, so let’s review Stalker’s latest v1wk1 estimates.

Already Released



Points so far Estimate Unpenalized Est Rls Date Days to Rls Solcit Date Pts/Day Series

Upcoming Releases



Points so far Estimate Unpenalized Est Rls Date Days to Rls Solcit Date Pts/Day Series 5,616 7,797 2017/11/29 21 2017/09/08 95 THE IDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls Gekijou 2nd Season 1,995 2,568 5,278 2017/11/29 21 2017/03/10 8 Mahoutsukai no Yome 637 918 2017/12/02 24 2017/08/23 8 Dream Festival! R 1,199 2,562 2017/12/13 35 2017/10/09 43 Himouto! Umaru-chan R 2,315 4,501 2017/12/13 35 2017/10/08 80 Kekkai Sensen & Beyond 83 247 2017/12/20 42 2017/10/05 3 Urahara 1,672 3,327 5,627 2017/12/20 42 2017/10/07 56 Yuuki Yuuna wa Yuusha de Aru Season 2 132 245 2017/12/20 42 2017/10/07 4 Ousama Game The Animation 44 135 2017/12/20 42 2017/10/12 2 Sengoku Night Blood 626 1,286 2017/12/22 44 2017/10/04 19 Code:Realize: Sousei no Himegimi 305 681 1,535 2017/12/22 44 2017/10/07 10 Dies Irae 380 1,339 2017/12/22 44 2017/10/13 16 Just Because! 12,178 20,740 2017/12/22 44 2017/10/10 451 Love Live! Sunshine!! 2nd Season 3,475 7,728 2017/12/22 44 2017/10/03 102 Osomatsu-san Season 2 532 1,131 2017/12/22 44 2017/09/22 12 Konohana Kitan 69 165 613 2017/12/22 44 2017/10/06 2 Two Car 875 1,769 3,521 2017/12/22 44 2017/10/01 24 Kino no Tabi: The Beautiful World (2017) 368 786 2017/12/22 44 2017/10/06 12 Boku no Kanojo ga Majimesugiru Sho-bitch na Ken 149 294 711 2017/12/25 47 2017/09/02 2 Animegataris 683 1,592 2017/12/27 49 2017/10/10 25 Wake Up, Girls! Shin Shou 3,645 9,205 2017/12/27 49 2017/10/07 122 THE iDOLM@STER SideM 664 1,719 2017/12/27 49 2017/09/29 17 Blend S 482 1,142 2017/12/27 49 2017/10/04 15 Juuni Taisen 824 1,724 4,625 2018/01/17 70 2017/09/07 14 Hoozuki no Reitetsu 2nd Season 461 1,442 2,452 2018/01/24 77 2017/09/29 12 3-gatsu no Lion 2nd Season 113 359 2018/01/24 77 2017/10/04 3 Osake wa Fuufu ni Natte kara 457 1,875 3,270 2018/01/24 77 2017/10/06 15 Shoujo Shuumatsu Ryokou 2,174 5,491 2018/01/24 77 2017/10/02 62 Gintama. Porori-hen 35 135 588 2018/01/24 77 2017/10/13 1 Inuyashiki 113 359 2018/01/24 77 2017/10/05 4 Osake wa Fuufu ni Natte kara 97 238 908 2018/01/26 79 2017/09/12 2 Kujira no Kora wa Sajou ni Utau 256 932 2,289 2018/01/26 79 2017/09/20 5 Imouto sae Ireba Ii. 27 78 2018/02/23 107 2017/10/07 1 Love Kome: We Love Rice 2nd Season 29 105 504 2018/02/28 112 2017/10/06 1 Dynamic Chord 660 1,117 1,689 2017/12/08 30 2017/08/02 7 Net-juu no Susume

Solicited Too Recently, no estimate yet



Points so far Estimate Unpenalized Est Rls Date Days to Rls Solcit Date Pts/Day Series 2018/01/31 84 2017/11/07 UQ Holder

The above columns show, in order

• Stalker current wk1 points as of November 06, 3AM JST

• Stalker final wk1 estimate as of November 06, 3AM JST

• Stalker final wk1 estimate as of November 06, 3AM JST for high price items, with penalty removed

• Release Date

• Days until release (counted in terms of # of days Stalker will add points)

• Solicitation Date

• Points per day, calculated as (CurrentPts / (RlsDate – SolicitDate))

• Show title

Comments

Points per day vs Days to release

Points per day is useful for ironing out discrepancies in current points (Why does X have more than Y when Y has a better final estimate), while days until release helps give context to discrepancies in final estimates (Why does X have a higher estimate than Y when Y is currently far ahead). Obviously a title 10 days out will have a smaller relative gap between current and final estimates than a title 40 days out.

Penalized vs non-penalized estimated

I’ve gone over this countless times so you probably already know the drill, but you see two estimates for some shows because Stalker tracks two numbers for “high price” items, i.e. anything with an MSRP over ¥10,000. The first number is the estimate with a heavy penalty applied, the second estimate is with no penalty applied at all. The rationale for this is that more expensive items have inflated rankings on Amazon, both due to MSRP potentially factoring into Amazon’s rankings and also the fact that the more expensive an item is, the more likely buyers will use Amazon, as they tend to have the highest discount. There’s no way to know which estimate the Oricon number will be closer to, but it’s usually in the bottom half of the estimated range, and virtually always above the minimum estimate. Of course this varies depending on how a title is ranking outside of Amazon. Because the penalized estimate is the one Stalker makes most visible, I always use it as the default. But it’s worth making the unpenalized estimate more visible to reduce confusion.

Seasonal Top 10 Guesses

This season is being incredibly cruel to sequels in a year that’s already been cruel to them, which makes guessing at the rankings even more difficult.

• LLS2 is the obvious #1, though unless the Stalker estimate is unusually low, even it may be in for a sizable drop. While it has !six! concert event tickets lined up, I think the way it’s spread 3 events over 6 volumes means the tickets aren’t quite as individually valuable as some of the biggest tickets of previous season.

• After that, there’s no clear #2. Osomatsu-san s2 should be the obvious #2, but since it might be on track for a Shingeki-level collapse, who knows. I don’t think it’ll be quite that bad, especially since the release has been so slow to announce new details. Just today we learned a few more things: confirmed 2 cour, short bonus eps in v2 and v4, and v5-8 were solicited. That’s given it a bump. But it does not look like we’re going to get a huge event on the level of s1. v1-2 do have event tickets, I realized just today, but it seems like a fairly minor event, hence not much impact on the sales.

• SideM looks like it may perform around B-Project level, possibly a bit higher depending on how the event ticket goes. That wouldn’t be a massive smash hit but would make it the second best selling male idol show (at least until Idolish7 hits). And I think that’d be an unqualified success, considering there was no reason to expect it to sell at 30k Animas/Deremas levels. And while I’m pretty cautious about ascribing sales to competition or the lack thereof, the instant #1-14 sweep Idolish7 just pulled on Animate today does, I think, make it clear what the bigger of the male idol franchises is!

• Cinderella Girls Gekijou isn’t getting the same kind of event as season one (which had the flagship yearly live), so it looks like it’ll have much more normal sales this time around. Remember that s1v1 sold over 40k! That is definitely not happening this time without an equivalent event. The average isn’t likely to be much more than 10k, which would still be amazing for a short.

• Yuyuyu might do okay compared to s1, but it’s hard to tell with the way half the show is a re-cut of the films and only the second half (which hasn’t started yet) is new material. Keep an eye on how it starts ranking once ep 7 airs. Note that Stalker is tracking both the Wasio Sumi and Yuusha chapters as separate v1s. I’m only reporting the Washio Sumi chapter here, as

• Mahoyome is, I think, the potential dark horse of the season. Not in a 20k sense, maybe not even 10k sense, but it’s had consistently “ok” Amazon rankings coupled with surprisingly impressive Animate rankings. By the way its points per day is screwy because it was solicited ludicrously early, way back in March.

• Needless to say, the shows I care about most (Konohana Kitan and Urahara) are Dead As Shit. Thus it always is, and always shall be.

Also, a quick note that Net-juu no Susume is staying in the Upcoming Releases table for now, since the BD box in December is where most of its sales will be, not these DVD singles. The estimate is DVD single v1 + BD Box. The first DVD barely ranked at 121 discs sold.

01. Love Live! Sunshine!! 2nd Season

02. Osomatsu-san Season 2

03. The iDOLM@STER SideM

04. THE IDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls Gekijou 2nd Season

05. Kekkai Sensen & Beyond

06. Mahoutsukai no Yome

07. Yuuki Yuuna wa Yuusha de Aru Season 2

08. Gintama. Porori-hen

09. Hoozuki no Reitetsu 2nd Season

10. Kino no Tabi: The Beautiful World (2017)

Maybe I’m giving Osomatsu-san too much credit but I just can’t believe it’ll fall below 10k when all is said and done… but we’ll see. Not a single sequel coming out this season looks like it’s going to escape without at least a somewhat bad drop, for a variety of reasons. Yuyuyu might not, but it was a sub-10k series in the first place anyway.