Bandai announced at Anime Expo yesterday that they have licensed K-ON!, which is both a good thing and possibly a bad thing, depending on your point of view. As someone who watched K-ON fansubbed and liked it, I'm happy that it's finally getting a DVD release in North America and plan to buy it. The downside is that it might end up being a sales failure for Bandai, which is something they probably can't handle at the moment.
Moe, otaku targeted shows don't seem to perform very well here, with the exception of Haruhi Suzumiya. Lucky Star didn't turn out to be the success Bandai wanted it to be, as evidenced by the fact that they cancelled the Limited Edition release of the sixth volume, and didn't dub the OVA when they released it. Without access to sales figures I can't say for certain if it was a failure in sales, but it seems obvious that it didn't perform as well as they wanted. Despite my personal feelings about Lucky Star, I still would have been happy if Bandai could have had success with it, but it seems like they lost money on it.
As to why these shows don't sell, well there could be several reasons for it. The main reason would be that these shows really have no lasting appeal. Most don't have any real plot to them, and just feature cute girls doing cute things for however many episodes the series lasts. Without a story there isn't much reason to ever give the series a second watch. If everyone's already watched the series fansubbed then really they have no reason to buy it and watch it again. It doesn't help that the mentality of most of the fans of these shows is to immediately move on to the next one once the one they're watching is over. Bandai released Lucky Star about eight months after it finished airing in Japan. Was anyone still talking about Lucky Star eight months after it aired? Maybe a few diehard Lucky Star fans, but for the most part people would have moved on and forgotten all about it. The same can be said for K-ON. If it hadn't gotten a second season I doubt many people would still be talking about it.
K-ON suffers from the typical problems of a moeblob show to a degree. It's almost entirely devoid of plot, and having tried watching it a second time I can honestly say I lost interest after the first episode. It just doesn't have much re-watch value, and in a market where everyone has seen everything months before it ever comes out here re-watchability is a necessity for something to be successful. Mainstream appeal would also help, which K-ON doesn't necessarily have. It certainly has more than Lucky Star, which was a show that no one outside of otaku would understand, let alone enjoy. I don't see K-ON being something that a person will see on a store shelf and decide to buy. Perhaps if Bandai markets it by playing up the musical aspect, essentially lying to consumers, they might be able to squeeze a few sales out of the mainstream crowd. But Bandai will most likely play up the moe aspect of the series and chase away any potential buyers outside of the otaku crowd.
I don't want to sound too negative though. Like I said, I am happy it's being released here and plan to buy it, but I do worry about what will happen if it doesn't do well. I don't want to see Bandai failing and eventually shutting down. We'll have to wait see what comes of this. Hopefully they can find success with this one like they've managed to do with Haruhi, because I really don't want to see another company closing already.
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