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Friday, September 22, 2017

The Majority of Good Anime Next Year will come from Top-10 Ranked Series:

This is just crazy.  If we have another full year's programming of Dragon Ball Super, One Piece, Pretty Cure, Bolt and Fairy Tail (which is what you would expect), plus half a year's worth of new Fate/etc, some Nanoha and Code Geass, you end up with 300+ episodes of new great anime to add to my rankings all from just my top 10 rated series.

Meanwhile, if you look at the production of all other ranked material that comes out in an average year and add it all together, you're unlikely to reach even 200 episodes.

Right now the top 10 rated anime accounts for ~33% of all episodes of great anime.  But next year that's apparently more like 66%.  Absolute dominance.  It makes the rest of the anime industry look pointless.  Like the Golden State Warriors.

Because anime is an industry of many years, the top ten dominating for just one year won't actually move the overall percentage of ranked anime that's in the top ten much.  But if this trend continues it could wreak havoc on the very concept of a 'top 200 anime' list.  What's the use when half the best anime can be encapsulated in just a top ten ranking?  2018 is just crazy.  I doubt this phenomenon will recur; and I hope it won't recur.  Anime needs to be bigger than just its biggest names.

Currently the top ten composers in my good music hall of fame account for over 50% of all good music, despite my having 198 eminent composers in my rankings.  This phenomena is by no means rare.  It's called the lotka curve, and it just keeps showing up whenever you try to rank anything.

But this is a world of over seven billion people.  Hopefully we can achieve a bit more than ten composers, ten anime, ten manga, ten video games, and ten books.  I know humanity has more potential than that.

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