>>112096What you are doing is dividing franchise into individual portions of revenue and I can see that the way you see it is that as Manga is the largest individual portion(though that itself is arguable) that this means Manga is the most important part of the model and everything else is subject to it, everything is a commercial for it(though even if that were true I don't think x making less than y makes x a commercial for y, I would say that the LOTR film franchise and extended media have made more than the books did but that does not make the books commercials for the films).
But what this does is miss the way the franchise as a whole works and the way all of those topics interact with each other. So yes, merchandise, Pachinko and Live Services are not actually anime itself, however, they are still part of the anime ecosystem with people buying merchandise because of the anime and so it being a profit made by the anime existing even if it's not a purchase of the anime itself. It's about how something makes money.
And this effects manga too, manga itself will drive merchandise sales, manga itself could be seen in a way as a commercial for merchandise.
It would be very difficult to see what drives merchandise sales more however and one would also have to look at where the three pieces sit in the corporate structure and see who is making the merchandise, for what purpose, where the profits go and why. But what is telling is that it's listed in the market report under anime, not manga.
And it is quite important to remember what my source actually is, because it is a market report, it is something made with the intention of providing information to investors on potential investments for the future.
That relates to your point about the Japanese market being the focal point of the industry as well. Yes, it is, and yes over the years the overseas portion has been increasing in proportion of revenue. But as your source shows it always made up a large portion of the income.
The overseas growth of the industry shows what the industry is doing and putting effort towards and that can be seen in the movements Japanese companies put into selling to the overseas market now. Crunchyrole was made by a Japanese company with the intention of increasing western sales for example.
So yes, it revolves around Japan but no, it's not ind
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