Anime home video is thriving, even in the streaming era

polygon.com:

At the time of writing this, the anime film Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero sits above the blockbuster Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Shazam! Fury of the Gods, and the smash hit Top Gun: Maverick for most popularBlu-ray releases on Amazon. It all points to a larger phenomenon: In 2023, as so many studios and companies have pivoted to streaming services, home video releases of anime, namely DVD, Blu-ray, and box sets, are thriving.

It’s not hard to see why so many companies have pivoted to the streaming model. In the last decade, streaming service subscriptions have seen massive growth. Meanwhile, home video sales have steadily dropped — DVD and Blu-ray purchases declined almost 20% from 2020 to 2021. Even shows with massive fan bases that seem ripe for collectors, like The Mandalorian, remain disc-less in the United States. But anime home video appears to be bucking this trend, as fans and avid collectors still seem intent on taking home hard copies of their favorites.

Calculating anime home video sales is complicated. The market for it in Japan has been declining almost yearly for the past decade — coinciding with the worldwide move to digital platforms — but specific releases, like the first Demon Slayer film, can inspire greater interest. That movie has both the highest box office in Japanese history, and sold over a million copies on Blu-ray and DVD within the first three days of its release. To put that kind of success in perspective, only three American blockbuster films in 2022 sold more than a million copies throughout the entire year.

But the hunger for anime has only grown in the U.S., to the extent that in August 2022, Sony acquired Right Stuf Anime, a distributor established in 1987 that expanded