>>37346428>Besides, a show's success in Japan isn't decided by TV ratings anyway, but rather on the sale of their merchandise.This is a common misunderstanding created by the fact that it applies to most of what western weeaboo watch. Ratings don't matter for late-night anime, which is most otaku-type stuff, because it's Paid Programming, like infomercials. The animation studio just buys the timeslot and is free to air whatever they want there, hoping to recoup the money with merchindise sales rather than sponsors. You can always identify these kinds of shows because the commercial breaks will be almost nothing but ads for other products from the creators (they do sell leftover commercial time for some extra money, though). Shows like Pokemon, One Piece, and other anime that air during daylight hours function the same as western television, where companies buy advertisement time and pay more to advertise for popular shows. TPC does buy a decent chunk of Pokemon's ad time though, so it's a bit of an unusual case.
