Pixiv Statistics

For the number of images favorited by over 1000 users, in the following categories, at the current time:

Original: 747 Images
VOCALOID: 877 Images
Panty and Stocking (< 1 year old since debut): 159 images (8 pages)
K-On (several years since already): 110 images (7 pages)
Gurren Laggan (>3 years old, obviously had remarkable popularity afaik): 1 image

I don't even want to bother with Touhou.

Note that these are only images where over 1000 users had added as their favorites, and obviously that number doesn't reflect the total number of fanart on Pixiv (many of these same categories hold images in the ten thousands, 100 thousands (probably vocaloid) or even millions (I think, maybe for original)) but its still amusing to see how some supposedly well-distinguished trends and fads do not necessarily correlate to fan artists drawing amazing or stunning art for it (or just the other fans not liking the drawings that much). As shown in Vocaloid vs Original, I think it helps to have some kind of basis or trend to go along in producing an concept of an image that will appease the fanbase looking for images on Pixiv, but just because it seemed popular doesn't mean drawing fanart of it will make you popular.

I think in the end though it presents a reasonable idea of what genre people look for when they go to Pixiv, therefore the general distribution of trends in the Pixiv population. What exactly gets popular is still a mystery; we have weird concepts like Hetalia, Touhou, and Reisz from Seiken Densetsu 3 that just seemed to "be" popular... for no apparent reason... what separates them from other trends? THAT's a research topic worth looking in to. :V

EDIT: I also forgot to add, popular artists have IMMENSE power in governing over what gets popular. If you have a guy with a bunch of touhou images that at least 1000 users have favorited, most likely many of those same users have that artist bookmarked and will favorite almost ANYTHING s/he comes out, whether it was popular at the time or not.

...I think this was the only reason that one Gurren Laggan pic got over 1000 favorites (it doesn't even look that great imo :V).