Du coup ça lève la question du "pourquoi". Parce qu'animer ça coute cher? Certes, mais non, ce n'est pas suffisant. En effet, bien des séries américaines dû au cast extremement cher à payer coutent beaucoup, beaucoup plus cher par épisode qu'un épisode d'anime (qui lui a essentiellement le coup de production sans se soucier du cast de star excepté les seiyuu).
Alors, parce que c'est niche, et donc que pour compenser le petit nombre de personne achetant, faut monter les prix pour arriver à faire du benefice? On se rapproche. Cela dit; lorsqu'on voit que beaucoup d'anime ne se vendent qu'en moyenne à 2k exemplaires, il y a bien plus de fans d'anime que ça au japon. Alors, quoi? J'ai trouvé une explication en anglais intéressante sur le phénomène autour de ces prix, que voici.
The Anime Economy a écrit : To a Westerner, the Japanese DVD market seems horribly overpriced. With the average disc running over ¥7,000 (US$92) and only containing 2-4 episodes of a series, the cost of collecting a single show can easily run several hundred dollars -- more than many American fans spend in a single year.
The prices actually stem from a business practice we used to have in America, too: rental pricing. Basically, back in the dawn of the home video business, the industry was constructed in a way where "niche" releases were only meant to sell a few thousand copies, mostly to video rental shops. Prices were high (typically $89.95 in America), but video shops benefited from having a wide and semi-exclusive selection of movies that normal people would never pay for. At those prices, only a few thousand sales could mean over a million dollars of revenue. Initially, video industry people didn't think there was much of a market in selling to collectors.
But the fans proved them wrong. Otaku of all kinds (not just anime fans) started buying the videotapes and laserdiscs, and they bought them at those high prices that were intended just for video stores. There was no reason to lower it. In fact, there were a few experiments to drop the price to a more affordable amount, but that usually resulted in a slight increase in sales -- not enough to make up for the drop in revenue.
When you think about it, that makes sense. Most Japanese people live in much smaller homes, and with many more people than their Western counterparts. In most cases, it simply doesn't make sense for Japanese consumers to build a big home media library. Only the hardcore fans of a particular product will usually want to bother owning a tape or DVD, and everyone else relies on rental shops. Media is a specialty market, not a mass-market one, so prices have stayed astronomically high.
The Japanese Otaku's desire to own anime even at high prices had an unexpected effect: as the rest of the economy tanked and video stores stopped buying every new video release, the otaku kept buying pretty much everything that got released. Before long, the few thousand fans that bought anime DVDs were supporting nearly the entire budget of a show. Even as the rest of the Japanese home video industry lowered their prices to varying degrees, anime stayed at the same high price. It's simply the only way most shows can ever make a profit.
Opinion?
Durant mon séjour au Japon, j'ai pu effectivement constater que la pratique d'aller au rental shop pour se faire une soirée film était extrêmement répandu (et je l'ai fait à plusieurs reprises de fait avec les gens qui m'hébergeaient et leurs amis). Le rental ne coute pratiquement rien là bas, là où acheter un dvd ou BR coute une fortune.