Daft Punk vs Anime

dual goals for moving into the 2000s were to continue to expand their exports, and to move into the young adult age bracket from the currently dominated under-­‐18 group20.

The film was certainly a success in the latter demographic regard, and album sales point to a success in the former international regard as well. Interstella 5555 was aired on the US on Cartoon Network’s “Toonami” segment, as well as on MTV, as predicted by an early industry review21. MTV’s target demographic at the time was the 18-­‐34 age bracket22, which is precisely the age range Toei hoped to begin targeting, and in their largest and fastest-­‐growing international market in the wake of Dragonball-­‐Z and Sailor Moon23.

With respect to the success of the film internationally, one metric may be to look at how the media mix’s appeal was able to push the album’s success to new countries and to higher places in the charts than had been attained by their last. The previous Daft Punk album, Homework, made it onto 13 countries’ charts, reaching an average top position of 33. Discovery, meanwhile, as a companion to Interstella 5555, made it onto 16 countries charts, and topped out at an average position of 9. To the criticism that the film had not yet been released at this time, it is worth pointing out that due to Matsumoto’s early work the individual scenes from the first few singles were being circulated shortly after the album’s launch. Thus, on both the international and the age demographic fronts, Interstella 5555 could be considered a rousing success by Matsumoto, Daft Punk and Toei Animations’ own goals, thanks in no small part to transmedia storytelling and the media mix.

20 Schwarzacher, Lukas. "Toons Animate Bottom Line." Variety (2001): A4-A8. Print.

21 Rooney, David. "Daft Punk and Leiji Marsumoto's Interstella 5555." Rev. of Interstella 5555. Variety (2003): 27. Print.

22 "MTV Music Television Profile." Cable Network Information. N.p., 30 June 2002. Web. 09 May 2013.

23 Schwarzacher, Lukas. "Toons Animate Bottom Line." Variety (2001): A4-A8. Print.