Highest yearly Japanese home video sales since at least 1991; also tops Evangelion 2.22's records

Disney's Frozen film sold 2,269,477 of its Blu-ray Disc/DVD "MovieNEX" sets to top Oricon's yearly Japanese home video ranking chart for 2014. The movie set the all-time record for yearly home video sales since Oricon began reporting these charts in 1991.

Frozen surpassed the previous record-holder, Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli's Spirited Away DVD. That 2002 film sold 2.039 million copies in 12 months, 12 years ago. Spirited Away still holds the all-time record for most cumulative home video copies sold in Japan with 2.403 million. Oricon's charts have covered not only Blu-ray Disc and DVD sales, but videotape and LaserDisc sales as well.

Ranking a distant second in Blu-ray Disc sales for 2014 was Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie Part 3: Rebellion with 154,042 copies. The seventh Mobile Suit Gundam UC volume was #6 with 118,997.

Frozen not only topped 2014's ranking chart in raw unit sales, but also in yen spent (9.8 billion yen or about US$81 million). It also ranked #1 in the animation film category of Blu-ray Discs for its third Blu-ray Disc sales crown of the year.

Disney Animation works (including Pixar works) have only ranked #1 three times in yearly Japanese home video sales since 1991: Beauty and the Beast in 1993 with 153,000 videotapes, Finding Nemo in 2004 with 162,000 videotapes and 1.565 million DVDs, and now Frozen this year. Finding Nemo was the Disney animated work with the most sales in one year until now.

Frozen also holds the records for highest number of home video units sold on the first official day of sales and in the first official week of sales in Japan. Frozen was the fastest to sell 2 million copies in Japan — in just four weeks, compared to Spirited Away's 11 weeks.

In its first day of sales on July 16, Frozen had already topped Evangelion: 2.22 You Can (Not) Advance's cumulative total of 465,000 Blu-ray Discs sold to date. Evangelion: 2.22 You Can (Not) Advance had held the all-time record for Blu-ray Disc sales in one year with 450,000 copies in 2010, but Frozen broke that record as well.

Oricon's 2014 home video ranking charts cover sales surveyed from December 9, 2013 to December 7, 2014.

Source: Oricon