Most of us here probably remember the olden days of anime, where you had about 4 shows to watch in a given season, and capping off with maybe about 20 new series a year.

Of course, you can easily double that annual output every twelve weeks now; one look at the upcoming seasonal charts will tell you that. Somewhere around the mid-aughts, something about anime consumerism (light novel adaptations I believe) caused the production pipeline to erupt with a never ending wave of new content.

Taking a step back, I was hoping to discuss the relatively recent advent of the seasonal format in anime. Years back, your favorite manga (or LN of you're a proto-weeb) getting an anime was trepidatious, especially shounen, as there was essentially one chance for the production studio’s management, the Japanese economy, and available talent to align just so and make a show as great as possible for as long as possible before its inevitable ending or cancellation. One and done. Your only hope for continuation was a reboot (FMA) or an entire separate series (I think Inuyahsa did this to conclude years later). Seasonal installments were unheard of, much less annualized. When do you remember this change happening or coming to your attention?

It shouldn’t be surprising, and other television had been doing this for decades to make production schedules… humane, but I still remember plenty of series in the early 2010’s simply running their twelve episodes and disappearing never to see the screen again…

Nowadays, shounen is benefitting the most, as the long form storytelling can be condensed into yearly doses, instead of padding out content to not catch up in a weekly year round format- One Piece and Black Clover being the only series currently attempting to, to my knowledge. My Hero, Attack on Titan, and Haikyuu alone are three examples of series who no doubt benefitted from this production leeway. Of course, other genres as well have benefitted from annual installments like Golden Kamui, Danmachi, and Slime isekai (of course not forgetting Teen Romcom SNAFU). Of course, some fare better than others- Blue Exorcist, I'm looking at you.

It looks like there are only upsides to seasonal partitioning, but do you miss any of the old long form ways of Anime? Do you miss anime original endings, or commitments to complete a story within a one or two cour run? Any particular casualties you'd like to raise a glass to?