KAT-TUN 2 Me

I may have graduated from college, but I still enjoy playing with numbers. And what numbers could be more fun to someone like me than Oricon Sales Figures? Behold, graphs!

This first graph shows the average yearly single sales of all the currently active Johnny’s groups. Average meaning that if a group produced three singles in a given year, I added up the total for those singles, divided by three, and plotted the resulting number on the graph. I couldn’t find the numbers for many of V6’s early singles, unfortunately, so they are not included in the beginning portions of the graph. Also, no SMAP because I’m missing some of their early numbers too, and they threw the whole scale off with the Sekai ni Hitotsu song selling like 2 million some copies. Besides, they’re only barely members of Johnny’s now a days anyway.

I thought that graph looked a bit messy around the end, so I redid it with only 2002 on . There are a few interesting things to notice on these charts, like how Arashi’s overall line is kind of bowl shaped, with gradual decline in popularity followed by a gradual increase. KAT-TUN has a big drop at the beginning due to Real Face being such a smash hit, but they’ve leveled off above the other groups, and recent single sales have been on the increase for them. Oh, and I made these graphs before DUES, but I don’t think that would change things too much at this point. I’d say the Kinki Kids have had the harshest decline, retaining decent popularity, but falling A LOT from where they started. If I had the figures for V6 I suspect they’d show a similar pattern. Tokio has sort of scooted along the bottom, slowly and steadily for a long long time. NewS may have been surpassed by Arashi lately, but it’ll take a few more singles before I’m totally convinced of that. Kanjani seems to fall in the middle, with some gains in popularity in the last year or so. Finally, Tackey and Tsubasa tend to be on the lower side of things in terms of the Johnny’s, but they’re still consistently pulling in singles close to the 6 figure range which is quite good for any JPop artist.

Don’t let the downward sloping trend lines on either of these graphs fool you. Johnny’s is still very much on top of things as far as sales numbers go, and most of the lowered numbers that you see reflect the decline in CD sales in the Japanese market in general. The Jimusho is far from being in decline. In fact, if we just look at KAT-TUN for this year, there has been a grand total of 1 single released so far that currently has higher numbers than Lips and DUES (KAT-TUN’s singles for 2008 so far) that being ‘Soba ni Iru’ by Aoyama Thelma ft. Soul Ja, at 435,209 copies, and it’s certainly possible for DUES to end up pulling ahead since it’s only had two weeks of charting so far and 412,892 copies have already been sold. The next closest competition for the year is that Shuuchishin song at 362,406 copies, falling behind KAT-TUN but ahead of many of the other Johnny’s acts. Aside from those two singles, the only groups that have even come close to KAT-TUN’s numbers are other Johnny’s, such as Arashi. Here are all of the weekly winners of 2008, from lowest to highest, as reported by Oricon. In order, I’ve listed song title, artist, release date, and 1^st week sales. Those with a purple star belong to Johnny’s.

“Mirage”, AAA, 1/9, 25,333
“60’s 70’s 80’s”, Amuro Namie, 3/19, 38,162
*“Ore ja Nakya, Kimi ja Nakya”, V6 20^th Century, 3/26, 38,898
“Purple Line”, Tohoshinki, 1/16, 40,033
“Soba ni Iru”, Aoyama Thelma, 1/30, 47,409
“Beautiful You”, Tohoshinki , 4/23, 62,139
“Anata ga Koko ni Itara”, Porno Graffiti, 2/13, 63,529
“Order Made”, Radwimps, 1/23, 73,130
“Drink it Down”, La’Arc en Ciel, 4/2, 94,086
*“No More”, Maizu Tsukasa aka Domoto Koichi , 4/30, 110,538
* “Sono Mama”, SMAP, 3/5 115,100
“Burn Fumetsu no Face”, Bz’s, 4/16, 141,562
“Mirrorcle World”, Hamasaki Ayumi, 4/9, 145,576
*“Dreams Come True”, Hey!Say!Jump, 5/21, 181,064
* “Wahaha”, Kanjani, 3/12, 194,304
*“Summer Time”, NewS, 5/8, 201,266
* “Taiyou no Namida”, NewS, 2/27, 230,186
* “Step and Go”, Arashi, 2/20, 324,223
* “Lips”, KAT-TUN, 2/6, 351,294
*“Don’t U Ever Stop”, KAT-TUN, 5/14, 381,672

Notice who’s clustered at the top there? Correct me if I’m wrong here, but I don’t think there are any weeks this year that a Johnny’s group released a single and it didn’t get 1st. However, I know that first week sales aren’t everything, so let’s look at total reported sales of those same singles, again, from lowest to highest. Keep in mind that most of the more recent releases are still charting, so these aren’t the final totals for some of them. I’ve also added in Shuuchishin, which is not a weekly winner, but a monthly winner, so I thought it ought to be included.

“Mirage”, AAA, 1/9, 32,234
“Purple Line”, Tohoshinki, 1/16, 47,303
*“Ore ja Nakya, Kimi ja Nakya”, V6 20^th Century, 3/26, 50,011
“Beautiful You”, Tohoshinki ,4/23, 79,897
“Anata ga Koko ni Itara”, Porno Graffiti, 2/13, 85,545
*“No More”, Maizu Tsukasa aka Domoto Koichi , 4/30, 110,538
“Order Made”, Radwimps, 1/23, 116,465
“Drink it Down”, La’Arc en Ciel, 4/2, 122,919
“Burn Fumetsu no Face”, Bz’s, 4/16, 125,335
* “Sono Mama”, SMAP, 3/5 158,837
*“Dreams Come True”, Hey!Say!Jump, 5/21, 181,064
“Mirrorcle World”, Hamasaki Ayumi, 4/9, 188,047
* “Wahaha”, Kanjani, 3/12, 228,463
*“Summer Time”, NewS, 5/8, 243,086
“60’s 70’s 80’s”, Amuro Namie, 3/19, 279,851
* “Taiyou no Namida”, NewS, 2/27, 291,447
“Shuuchishin”, Shuuchishin, 4/9, 362,406
* “Step and Go”, Arashi, 2/20, 374,449
*“Don’t U Ever Stop”, KAT-TUN, 5/14, 412,892
* “Lips”, KAT-TUN, 2/6, 421,902
“Soba ni Iru”, Aoyama Thelma, 1/30, 435,209

A few switch-ups, but still a very strong showing for the pretty boy factory.

May their Reign be Long and Prosperous,

~Celestia~

Disclaimer: Yes, I am using Oricon numbers, and yes I know they don’t count online sales and they don’t poll every single store and blah blah blah, so it might not be perfectly accurate, but it’s the best thing we’ve got, and I do believe that it gives a good picture of where one song stands relative to another, even if the overall numbers for both are lower than they should be. If you don’t trust Oricon or whatever, fine, but please don’t comment here to lecture me about that, k?

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