26 Episodes A Year?

[Carnage]

I've been thinking, and several shows have seemed to work out well with only 26 episodes a year, kind of like seasons. Code Geass R1 and R2, Gundam 00!, Hajime No Ippo New Challenger! had a good run with only 26 episodes last year as well. And I've come to wish they would do the same with shonen shows we all watch, Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, etc. What do you guys think? If they had 26 episode seasons every year, then each episode would be guaranteed around 2 chapters worth an episode, ad we wouldn't have to deal with shitty fillers. And each anime would be half as long, no one would have to sift through lets say, 400 episodes of One Piece. It would be 200 episodes of good ol' canon material.

[Kraco]

The long running shounen shows operate a bit differently compared to the usual shows. It's their function to be there (nearly) every week of the year for the kids to enjoy them while eating their cereals (or whatever they eat in Japan). It's an integral part of the way they are commercialized, marketed, and how the bigger business around them rolls.

[Carnage]

Yes, but it can work by only airing new episodes for half the year then doing re-runs. It worked pretty well for Saturday Morning cartoons here in America.

[Ryllharu]

Yes, but it can work by only airing new episodes for half the year then doing re-runs. It worked pretty well for Saturday Morning cartoons here in America.

But if you show re-runs, how do you sell 5000 yen DVDs with two episodes per disk?!

[animus]

One Piece is actually lucky, they don't have that many episodes of filler compared to the other 2 big Shounen.

They can't do 26 episodes a year, because they're staples of the market and need to run pretty much all year.

Ideally it'd be great if they did do less episodes, which would mean more for the animation quality and content in one episode, but the same can be said I guess for other view that certain chapters which require a whole episode, get cut short.

[Carnage]

but the same can be said I guess for other view that certain chapters which require a whole episode, get cut short.

No there'd be room to spare, because there aren't 52 chapters a year due to holidays.

[DarthEnderX]

I would certainly rather watch Naruto/One Piece/Bleach half the year if it meant I never had to see filler again.

[SilentSnake]

It is a good idea quality-wise and for anybody who actually cares about content (more mature viewers).

In real life, though, they want money, kids don't see/care about the difference in filler and manga anyway, so... even though it IS a good idea, it will never happen.

Have to admit, though, that if they did this I'd care enough to go back to watching Naruto again (I gave up after yet-another-wave-of-fillers :P )

[Archangel]

I dunno, fillers can be enjoyable too, just look at bleach

What it sucks is like with naruto where bits of filler are inserted in every episode and little by little absolutely maim a perfectly good chapter

I say One Piece has it right, do 1 chapter per episode and that's it

[Carnage]

I say One Piece has it right, do 1 chapter per episode and that's it

That can only work in One Piece because there is so much content per chapter of One Piece, it is abnormal. And even then, the pacing isn't perfect.

[Kraco]

A single One Piece episode also has slightly reduced content due to the very lengthy OP/intro/recap block.

[DarthEnderX]

The superlong One Piece opening is somewhat offset by the fact that there's no end credits in One Piece.



But yeah, they tried the same thing with Dragonball Z, doing one chapter per episode and that was a disaster(Dragonball Kai rocks btw!).