Highlights for
Ru's 6th Annual Rec.arts.anime.*
"What are we like?" Fan Survey
- the Web Edition
August 2002

The 5th annual "What are we like?" survey closed late Wednesday night, with 137 returns, from 71 last year. That's right in the same ballpark as some of the returns I got early in the history of this survey.

And, erm, it turns out, I think it was actually the 6th annual survey. With the mix of semi-annual surveys, I think I've been miscounting my "annual". How embarrassing.

I'm going to post the actual compiled results in rec.arts.anime.misc and rec.arts.anime.fandom separately after this message. Alternatively, it should be accessible through my survey web page (which also links to previous survey results):
http://www.oocities.org/ruigarashi/Surveys/fans/
or directly
http://www.oocities.org/ruigarashi/Surveys/fans/fan0208/results.html

Thanks to everyone that participated, and thanks for the comments. This year we are up to 137 returns from 71 last year. As usual, some of the newer questions were flawed, and I simply hadn't added enough null options to some of the old ones. One big bungle was the CD track translation question, where I should have had something like "I don't bother with track titles". The education question suffered from my lack of exposure to other education systems (sorry folks), though I'm still not sure what they are. It also suffered from a wording problem, particularly missing an explicit "completed", though I think I'll use "part of, or completed", next time. It was pointed out that at least one of the older questions dealing with number ranges had a gap (e.g. the age one made 11 year olds non-persons). I've got to try to remember to rename "mail order" to "special order" on the purchasing questions; the term has gotten too archaic for the younger generations. There was even one comment from one goofball chastizing me for not having any Nuku Nuku stuff in the survey. Your comments were valuable as always to help improve the questionaire for next time. Thanks also to the many that gave me encouraging comments. I'm sorry I didn't respond to many of them, and I want you know that they were much appreciated.

This is the first year I used a web form for survey forms, and it seemed to work out fine for the most part. The Geocities forms engine was perfect for what I needed in this survey, so I'm hoping to continue with Geocities, and perhaps even run some other surveys. The only problem's I've run into are that it's harder for users to comment on specific questions (and you see above how much I need them), and that I'm a bit more reluctant to respond to comments because of that, too. Despite that, from now on, I'm going to use the web format exclusively.

One thing I was curious about outside the questionaire was the degree of delineation I could expect if I were to truly extend the survey beyond newsgroups, that is, how do I separate newsgroup based submissions from others. Assuming respondents are truthful, this survey showed I can expect a very high degree of separability with the questions I asked. So with the next survey, I'm going to also try to ask some of the anime news sites for a little web exposure, and see what comes of that.

Anyways, here are some highlights.

• there's been a definite upward shift in length of time of being a fan. The 1 - 2 years bunch has been fairly steady, which means we have a steady influx of new readers. Barring older readers disappearing from here, of course the population's age will shift upwards, ru. I may have to add a "11 to 15 years" option in the age question!
• internet downloading of anime is definitely now prevalent. Last year it was down at around 15% for "first full length viewing", this year it skyrocketted to 45%. Video files on computer went even further, with a 70% representation in media type owned.
• I think I'm seeing a decline in all forms of anime news reading, hardcopy and web. The hardcopy readership has dropped from 55% a couple years ago, to 45%. But it was the web magazines that just haven't made it, going from 60% down to 25% in a couple years. Even the news services show a possibly slight decline. We'll have to see next year, as the question has only been on the survey twice.
• manga reading is slightly down yet again to about 75%. It was riding a highpoint approaching 90% in the late 1990's. Manga purchases show the same effect.
• Gee, any surprise that 60% of us carry anime music around with us?
• Most of us like to at least occasionally sing along with OPs or EDs, and knowing what we are saying often doesn't matter. Music certainly is universal.
• there's been a slight shift in sub vs dub ownership preference towards the dub, it's only a few percent, but it's noticeable. DVDs and the increased quality of dubs probably have a lot to do with this. The latter would have to be necessary because most of the readers here still consider the audio to comprise either 25% or 50% (split half and half) of the total artistry of a show.
• Back in 1997 to 1998, tape reigned supreme, with nearly 100% ownership and 60% medium of choice. But the wish for it was down at 10%, and DVD was on that wish list at 45%. DVD was practically at zero ownership. But 1999 saw DVD go up 20% across the board, and early in 2000 it passed tape in the prefered media category. DVD purchases were also starting to nip at tape percentages. In 2001, tape took a nosedive and DVD skyrocketed. And today, VHS is out of the picture. Looking back at the data, that crash is spectacular. This apparently was by choice, as nearly 80% did not go to DVD due to a lack of other formats. One of these days, I'm going to plot the trend against DVD-only announcements.
• Once again, here's what we wish for company policies
  • we don't want credits cut
  • we don't want credit translations overlaid or rolling over the original, and viable options are to roll the translated credits later, roll them in available space, or for DVDs, use the alternate angle feature.
  • we don't want "Next episode" trailers cut
  • we don't want eyecatches cut
  • we would like as much of the production credits translated, but barring that, at least give us the voice actors and main creative talent.
  • we would like to know which DUB voice actors played with character (though, I'm sure most of us would be understanding if there was a union issue involved... hmm, need to put that on the next survey).
  • some folks like seeing previews before the main feature, but the majority prefer them afterwards.
  • 3 previews seems to be a common preference, but frankly there are more that don't really care (given the above).
  • many prefer translations of signs and similar graphics shown nearby the graphic (overlay is definitely not wanted), but with DVD the use of alternate angles would be welcome, and some are flexible as to the means of dealing with Japanese graphics.
  • half of us want dub actor interview bonuses
  • we definitely want japanese cast interview bonuses
  • we want creditless OP/ED bonuses, along with subtitled song translations and romaji subtitles
  • we want picture and sketch gallery bonuses
• for broadcasters, most of the changes you do are not good, and often you are making too many changes.
• video rental shops seem to be slow to pick up anime DVDs, but at least the retail stores have a good percentage of their anime in DVD format. The latter is a complete reversal from the situation last year.
• the anime-related products that seem to have noticeably dipped are manga and CDs
• 60% of us don't think bootlegs should be sold at cons
• 1/3 of us think trading sound files is ok, and another third pretty much don't care. About 15% think there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. The anti-bootleg camp is not going to be pleased with this. This is odd, because 55% of folks say they avoid purchasing pirated or bootleg anime-related products, and 25% sometimes do; and 60% think it is wrong to some degree to distribute fansubs and similar of licensed anime. I'm guessing it's a matter of one standard for purchasing and another for trading?
• membership in a club is definitely down in the past couple years compared to previous years. We used to see about 40% of folks were members of an anime club, but that figure is now closer to 25-30%. It's not necessarily due to lack accessibility, either.
• all anime newsgroups except .misc have taken noticeable dips in readership in the past 3 or so years, at least as groups of primary interest.
• as usual, an overwhelming majority of readers want warnings of spoilers, usually in the form of a subject tag (like [SPOILER]) and a warning in the text with lots of dummy or empty lines (I have to change that wording for next year).
• even more readers don't want FA/FS/FT in any rec.arts.anime.* newsgroups except r.a.a.marketplace, at 80%. Folks, if you have something to sell or trade, don't advertise in the other newsgroups. And do try to list all your items in one posting rather than one posting per item.
• for the longest time, the assumption has been that newsgroup readers tend to be either have higher than grade school education or are technophiles in order to explain the discrepancies between preferences in the newsgroups and the rest of the world. That's not an unreasonable assumption given what it (used to) requires to get access to newsgroups. So it comes as no surprise that most of us are university or equivalent educated and to a lesser extent consider ourselves technophiles. However, I'm going to have to distinguish "computer literate" from "technophile" next time. But at least, that isn't an assumption anymore, at least in the newsgroups.
• I still find it interesting that only the order 50% of responders have participated in this survey before. That's quite a turnover rate.

Enjoy. (Go to The Results)