YOUNG MAGAZINE EXTRA ISSUE
SPECIAL EDITION 2
GUNDAM PHENOMENOLOGY
Who says “Robot Anime is a Kid’s Meal”?
Gundam gives the anime age its fill.
It’s the 80s first Young TV Anime!
[1] GUNDAM TV RATINGS FAILED TO BREAK THE 10% BARRIER
First, we would like you to look at the chart below. Although we had heard that it was low, the worst TV viewer rating for Gundam was an astounding 1.9% in the Tokyo area for episode 7! Sekioka, the producer of Nagoya TV, who produced it, says, “It went up to 17% in the Nagoya area, so we cannot say that it is all bad.” However, when the ratings rapidly declined from 13.8% for episode 1, 11.2% for episode 2, 10% for episode 3, and 6.6% for episode 4, he must have turned pale? We could just see the kids in front of their TVs with their deflating expectations for cool robot wrestling.
Gundam fans began to increase rapidly with young viewers during the summer of last year. Young viewers who were not interested in TV have started to become aware of “Saturdays at 5:30”, and the viewer ratings in the latter half of the year were showing a slight increase. The content of the 13.8% of the Nagoya TV first episode and the 17.4% of the final episode must be of a significantly different quality from kids to young viewers.
According to the ironclad rule that “demand creates supply!”, the focus will be on how the TV stations can respond to the demand of young viewers who seek a TV anime with a quality where they can get really into it. Fuji TV’s Bessho producer says, “The audience rating target for the production side is 15% for prime time and 10% for 5:30 on Saturdays.”
