That’s how many copies Redline sold in it’s first week on sale in Japan – blu-ray and DVD combined, indications are that it sold a mere 3134 copies. That must be a bit of a downer for the staff who’ve spent the last seven years crafting possibly the most visually resplendent animated movie Japan has ever committed to film. I really don’t get Japan sometimes.

If I’m coming across as being anti-moe or anything, that’s not really my intention here – if nothing else, it’d be enormously hypocritical of me given that my own copy of the movie is shipping alongside a couple of iDOLM@STER CDs. I can’t help but feel that this is really sending out a message that I don’t necessarily like, however. When Welcome to the Space Show bombed sales-wise earlier in the year, it was easy to write that off as being a case of them making an arguably averaging movie with no clear audience. Now that we have our second lavishly-produced original movie tanking, it sends out the message that there’s really no point in trying unless you’re Ghibli. It’s really rather disheartening, and it’s making me curious to see how next weeks release of the first Mardock Scramble (which, admittedly, is an adaptation of a popular novel) will do.

Coincidently, I do wonder if the fact that 644 of those Redline BDs are the Standard Edition is any kind of indication of just how many people outside Japan bought it. It’s uncommon for a Standard Edition to chart first week unless there’s Tiger and Bunny-esque shortages. It does rather beg the question of why they didn’t just lead outside of Japan with Redline. Clearly, it’d seem that reverse importation is barely an issue here, and there’s clearly more interest in the picture outside of Japan than in it’s home territories – heck, I think it’s even played more widely theatrically in the UK and US. The problem they now have is that, well, nothing dampens purchasing enthusiasm like three months of prior availability through piracy channels.

For what it’s worth, whilst I can see why it wouldn’t be for everyone, Redline was far and away my favourite movie of last year. I don’t just mean anime movie, but rather just movie in general. Don’t take that as an indication that I didn’t see many movies last year either – those who follow me on Twitter will probably be aware that I see something just about every week. You probably should take that as being an indication that I’m a sucker for spectacular animation, though.

(Urrr, yeah, I realise I’ve not posted much recently. I’ve been busy. I’ve not even drawn anything in the last couple of months… comics are going to be rough when I get around to resuming…)

-update- Huh, the numbers on ANN actually place Redline a smidgen over 4000 – the listing I was looking at failed to list the DVD-CE. Not that, in the grand scheme of things, it makes a huge difference…