Digimon Xros Wars (Season 6) - Talk it Up!...Again!

[Aoi Kurenai]

Can always hope for him to do a movie theme.

Personally I think it would be cool to get an opening by AiM and an ending by Wada.

 

[garfield15]

Here's some info you guys might like. It's the staff writers for each episode.

Head Writer:
Riku Sanjo (1-3, 10-11, 16, 18-19, 22, 25)

Staff Writers:
Reiko Yoshida (4-6, 15, 23-24)
Shoji Yonemura (7-9, 12, 20-21)
Mutsumi Ito (13)
Masashi Tanaka (14)
Kenta Iishi (16)
Daisuke Kihara (17)

Holy crap, every episode Sanjou has written I've loved. Why aren't he and Yoshida just the only people on the show?

And seriously Yonemura. Just stop. I really hope Dust Zone was the last one you've worked on.

 

[Sentinel King]

Here's some info you guys might like. It's the staff writers for each episode.

Head Writer:
Riku Sanjo (1-3, 10-11, 16, 18-19, 22, 25)

Staff Writers:
Reiko Yoshida (4-6, 15, 23-24)
Shoji Yonemura (7-9, 12, 20-21)
Mutsumi Ito (13)
Masashi Tanaka (14)
Kenta Iishi (16)
Daisuke Kihara (17)

Holy crap, every episode Sanjou has written I've loved. Why aren't he and Yoshida just the only people on the show?

And seriously Yonemura. Just stop. I really hope Dust Zone was the last one you've worked on.

Very informative, thank you.

 

[Lynxara]

Not always, but most of the time with shows that have two opening and ending themes in the course of 50 episodes, it's because the show wasn't doing too well and they wanted to rebrand it and make it seem new again to draw in viewers.

It's not always a sign that a show is doing poorly, it depends more on how the show was planned. Sometimes year-long shows are planned to have two (or more) openings and endings to reflect changes in the storylines. For instance, mecha shows liked doing two OPs in the 90s so the mid-season upgrade robots could be promoted in the new opening song's video.

In Savers's specific case, the show was probably planned to have one OP and then got overhauled mid-season. It's the overhaul that's the bad sign. If a show is planned then it usually sticks to the plan unless it's not meeting the producers' target goals-- or is exceeding them so wildly that the producers want to throw out the original plan.

 

[Aoi Kurenai]

Annnnd I thought these would be interesting for anyone wanting to know:

http://i55.tinypic.com/nyv4nl.jpg

 

[garfield15]

What is it?

 

[Aoi Kurenai]

Earnings report for last year. (and the previous years as well) For reference, Frontier made 45 billion yen by the time its run had ended.

 

[Lynxara]

The holy grail of speculating about merchandising shows, sales charts!

The top chart shows the top four franchises and how many millions of yen in product it sold for Bandai in Q2 from fiscal 2007 to fiscal 2011. The 2011 figures are probably based on current product orders.

EDIT: Actually, this might be Toei licensing fee information instead of Bandai information. Curse my inability to read these kanji! The same caveats otherwise apply.

Which period of time this report considers Q2 is hard to tell. Different businesses handle their fiscal years differently. A quarter generally accounts for a three-month period, though.

The bottom chart shows top franchises and how many millions of yen in product it sold for full fiscal years, from 2006 to 2010.

The take-away from the chart for a Digimon fan... well, you can read these charts one of two ways.

The positive way would regard Xros Wars as doing a good job of relaunching the Digimon brand after its abrupt death in 2008. By Q2 2011, Xros Wars has moved enough merchandise to displace Kinnikuman as Toei's #4 brand. It stands a good chance of cracking 200 million yen in sales for fiscal 2011. That would be eminently respectable.

The negative way would regard Xros Wars as a complete bomb. If Digimon Savers was considered an underperformer and it moved 170 million yen of merchandise in Q2 2007, Xros Wars is doing even worse if it can move only 54 million yen of merchandise.

There's caveats to both ways of looking at these charts. We don't know what Toei's expectations for Digimon are, so Toei may not be happy with the 54 million yen of sales in Q2.

We also don't know how much of the merchandise from fiscal 2007 had anything to do with Savers. Back in 2007, there was still plenty of non-Savers Digimon merchandise exploiting affection for the original four shows coming out. If, say, Savers was only responsible for 100 million yen of the 2007 total, then Xros Wars is already well on its way to being much more successful.

 

[Lynxara]

Earnings report for last year. (and the previous years as well) For reference, Frontier made 45 billion yen by the time its run had ended.

That's probably 45 million? 45 billion for a single franchise seems unlikely when this chart has all of fiscal 2006 pulling in 3.8 billion yen (unless I am reading it utterly wrong, which is possible).

If Frontier really pulled only 45 million yen in a single year... man, no wonder it killed the franchise. Xros Wars has beaten that in a single quarter despite constant pre-emptions.

 

[garfield15]

It looks like there's only one way to settle this.

If they're making season 7 by the end of the Spring season, it's probably doing well. If not, we're screwed and we won't be getting a movie.

Also, rumors of XW moving to a morning timeslot have surfaced as the current season of Stitch (comes on before XW) is supposed to be the last one and whatever is replacing it won't mesh with Digimon. This is also probably the explanation for those tickers in episode 25. Again, these are merely rumors (minus the Stitch thing).