Just 4 days till the end of the year!
Rabbit → Dragon
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Today will be the last update of the blog this year!
Earlier in Autumn this year I caught a nasty cold and had some of the other staff fill in the blog for me, but even so… the blog was updated nearly every weekday this year once again! A big thank you to everyone who reads the blog!
The last article for the year is of course…!
The 2011 Good Smile…
Product Ranking!
This year was GSC’s 10th Anniversary and we put a lot of work into approaching the overseas market as well! So today I’ve split up the rankings into ‘Japan’, ‘Overseas’ and a combined ranking of both!
First we’ll look at the ‘Japan’ and ‘Overseas’ rankings!
If you compare the two you can notice quite a few differences!
The ranking only includes products that have been released in 2011, so products still up for preorder don’t count!
– Japan Ranking – 1st: Nendoroid Miku Hatsune: Cheerful Ver. 2nd: figma Miku Hatsune: Append ver.3rd: Nendoroid Homura Akemi4th: Nendoroid Madoka Kaname 5th: Nendoroid Miku Hatsune: Absolute HMO Edition 6th: figma Homura Akemi 7th: figma Madoka Kaname 8th: Nendoroid Mami Tomoe 9th: Nendoroid Snow Miku : Snow Playtime Edition 10th: Nendoroid Kuroneko 11th: figma BRS2035 12th: Miku Hatsune: Lat-type Ver. 13th: Nendoroid Kirino Kousaka 14th: figma KOS-MOS ver.4 15th: Miku Hatsune: Tony ver. 16th: figma Kuroneko 17th: figma Kirino Kousaka 18th: Nendoroid Madoka Kaname: School Uniform Ver. 19th: Miku Hatsune 20th: Hitagi Senjougahara 21st: Nendoroid Kurisu Makise 22nd: Nendoroid Yui Hirasawa 23rd: figma Strength 24th: figma Mayoi Hachikuji 25th: figma Hitagi Senjougahara 26th: Monthly Anime Style Volume 4 : Ruri Hoshino 27th: Monthly Anime Style Volume 1 : Taiga Aisaka 28th: figma Black Gold Saw 29th: Monthly Anime Style Volume 2 : Nadia 30th: figma Shikinami Asuka Langley: Test Plugsuit ver. |
| – Overseas Ranking –1st: figma Miku Hatsune: Append ver.2nd: Nendoroid Madoka Kaname3rd: figma BRS2035 4th: Nendoroid Miku Hatsune: Absolute HMO Edition 5th: figma Homura Akemi 6th: figma Madoka Kaname 7th: Nendoroid Homura Akemi 8th: Nendoroid Ikaros 9th: Hitagi Senjougahara 10th: figma Strength 11th: figma Black Gold Saw 12th: Miku Hatsune: Tony ver. 13th: Nendoroid Kirino Kousaka 14th: Nendoroid Miku Hatsune: Cheerful Ver. 15th: Miku Hatsune: Lat-type Ver. 16th: Nendoroid Kuroneko 17th: Nendoroid Nymph 18th: Nendoroid Mami Tomoe 19th: figma Kuroneko 20th: Miku Hatsune 21st: Miku Hatsune: Append 22nd: figma Kirino Kousaka 23rd: figma Robocop 24th: figma Rei Ayanami: Plugsuit ver. 25th: figma Shikinami Asuka Langley: Test Plugsuit ver. 26th: figma Takanashi Yomi 27th: figma Hitagi Senjougahara 28th: Nadeko Sengoku 29th: Nendoroid Kurisu Makise 30th: figma KOS-MOS ver.4 |
It looks like BRS is popular overseas as well!! (*ﾟ∀ﾟ)=3
I’m pleasantly surprised to see figma BRS2035 at the third place position in the overseas ranking! There are also a couple that didn’t even feature on the Japan ranking, such as 8th place – Nendoroid Ikaros and 23rd place – figma Robocop! All-in-all though, I think we can say it was very much the year of Madoka Magica!
Right, now for the combined rankings!!
First we’ll look at 30th~11th place! We’re looking in reverse this time around!
| – Overall Ranking – 30th: figma Rei Ayanami: Plugsuit ver. 29th: Nadeko Sengoku 28th: figma Shikinami Asuka Langley: Test Plugsuit ver. 27th: figma Hitagi Senjougahara 26th: figma Mayoi Hachikuji 25th: Nendoroid Yui Hirasawa 24th: Nendoroid Ikaros 23rd: figma Black Gold Saw 22nd: Nendoroid Madoka Kaname: School Uniform Ver. 21st: Nendoroid Kurisu Makise 20th: Miku Hatsune 19th: figma Kirino Kousaka 18th: figma Strength 17th: figma Kuroneko 16th: Hitagi Senjougahara 15th: Miku Hatsune: Tony ver 14th: figma KOS-MOS ver.4 13th: Miku Hatsune: Lat-type Ver. 12th: Nendoroid Kirino Kousaka 11th: Nendoroid Kuroneko |
Of the 20 products here, 15 of them are figma or Nendoroid products!!
They are unparalleled in popularity it seems! But I guess that just goes to show that the scale figures that made it into the ranking must have been impressive to beat some of the Nendoroids and figmas in sales.
| – Overall Ranking – 10th: figma BRS2035 9th: Nendoroid Snow Miku: Snow Playtime Edition 8th: Nendoroid Mami Tomoe 7th: figma Madoka Kaname 6th: figma Homura Akemi 5th: Nendoroid Miku Hatsune: Absolute HMO Edition 4th: Nendoroid Homura Akemi |
Nothing but names from Madoka and Miku!! :P
I’m personally very happy to see the posable Nendoroids – HMO and Snow Miku so high up in the ranking! I hope we’ll see more posable Nendoroids in 2012! (Just my personal hopes, though :P)
Anyway, let’s move onto the top 3!
3rd Place  Nendoroid Madoka Kaname |
We received so much lovely feedback about this one as well! The lovely Nendoroid Madoka takes third place this year!! When I first uploaded a picture on twitter of this Nendo, I remember refreshing the page to see the view count jump up each time – it was incredible! It was a great product, and the included QB was just too cute!
2nd Place  figma Miku Hatsune: Append ver. |
Append Miku takes the 2nd place seat! Even as a figma, she featured gradient painting, clear parts and lovely extras! Also an incredible product overall!
Plus those lovely bare feet!!! (*ﾟ∀ﾟ)=3
1st Place Nendoroid Miku Hatsune: Cheerful Ver. |
Miku ends 2011 as the best selling product of the year!!
Not to mention that this Cheerful Ver. of Miku was sold to raise funds to help those affected by the earthquake and tsunami. Thank you so much to everyone who purchased her. I hope those in the affected areas are on their way to a full recovery!
Last but not least, let’s get Aki’s opinion on the 2011 Ranking!
| ■ Ranking Trends & General Overview The figma and Nendoroid series were once again a great success this year, all thanks to all of you. These two series have been great sellers for four or five years now. To think they started out at a hobby market a few years ago… I think that’s just a great example of how the support of hobby and figure fans have grown. I am so very glad that we work on products from so many different series to bring figures from those series to life for the fans. Looking through the rankings I can once again see Miku’s popularity stands out incredibly this year, along with the popular Madoka Magica series. Over these last few years it’s been more and more common to see the series of a specific year appearing on the top rankings the same year the series is produced – this is mainly because we have started working on figures before series even begin to air, which helps us to complete the long figure making process much faster and release the figures closer to the time the series air. I think that compared to in the past, figures have gained a much more important role in supporting the series they come from. This is of course all thanks to all the figure fans over the world. One of the most amazing things about this ranking is to see that Nendoroid Miku Hatsune: Cheerful Ver, as a charity product, managed to reach the number one spot in sales this year – the first in an ongoing set of charity figures that is still going strong. Cheerful Miku alone managed to sell over 74000 figures worldwide, allowing us to donate an amazing 740 million yen to help relief efforts. In total this year, the Cheerful project has managed to raise well over 1.5 hundred million yen. A big thank you goes out to all the licensors that allowed their products to be sold as charity products, but even more of a thank you needs to go to everyone who actually purchased the products. It makes me proud to see a charity product selling so well. We announced the overseas ranking this time around. I personally found the differences between the Japan ranking and the overseas ranking to be very interesting. The overall ratio of local to overseas purchases increased again this year, but in particular the following products were very popular overseas: Nendoroid Ikaros, figma BRS2035, figma Black Gold Saw, Nendoroid Nymph and figma Strength – in that order. Over 20% of Nendoroid Ikaros’s sales were made overseas, which really shows you that ‘Sora no Otoshimono’ is very popular overseas, particularly over the rest of Asia. We could also tell from the number of units sold that Miku Hatsune, Madoka Magica and Black Rock Shooter are also very popular overseas. We’re looking over the year of GSC just based on sales rankings here, but 2011 was filled with a lot more than just that for us – it was a year with lots of change for us. Ever since the disaster in March, I tried my best to stay strong and keep busy with work, which lead to the establishment of a GSC Shanghai division, a lovely new cafe in Akihabara as well as another in Taiwan, being a part of the new contents management support company, ‘Hitube’ as well as the creation of ‘Ultra Super Pictures’, a new anime production studio. It has put a lot into place for some great things to happen in the coming year! It’s amazing to have reached the 10th year as a company, and still be surrounded by great, reliable people to work with each and every day. Another amazing part of the year was of course the 4th Super GT for Good Smile Racing – where they managed to become the champions for the very first time. 2012 marks the start of the next 10 years for Good Smile Company. Thank you to everyone who has supported us this year, and I hope that the coming year will be a great one for all of you! |
That brings the 2011 product ranking to an end!
I was happy to bring you all loads of figures once again this year! I hope you all enjoyed reading the blog, and I hope to see you all again next year as well!
And with that…
Mikatan Blog 2011 has come to an end!
It’s all over! This year brought a lot of bumps along the way, but we managed to get over all of them! But that’s mostly thanks to everyone’s continued support! Thank you very much to everyone who supported us this year in any way whatsoever!!
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━━━━━`ー──ゝィｿﾉー‐ヾy＿ﾉー─”━━━━
Thanks to everyone who reads the blog!
Thanks to everyone who sends in letters! (I read them all!)
Thanks to everyone involved with the blog!
Thank you all so much!!
But that’s all for today!
Everyone be careful not to catch a cold, and enjoy the last few days of the year!
The next blog update will be on the 6th January (Friday)! (`･ω･´)ゞ
(GSC starts work again from the 5th :P)
I hope to see you all again in the new year!!
(C) Magica Quartet／Aniplex・Madoka Partners・MBS
(C) Crypton Future Media, Inc.