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Answerman - Why Do Anime Change Studios Between Seasons?

Hmm, my impression has always been that a season is a more or less 12-month period, though I know they can vary a bit.

I think a season stands for "batch of episodes paid". Here is an example of an old show whose seasons never were close to 12 months:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocko%27s_Modern_Life#Episodes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpongeBob_SquarePants#Episodes

Lord Geo wrote:

The easiest way to think about them is that a cour is a specific span of time, while a season applies to an entire production as a whole. As others mentioned, a season can be any length that's deemed necessary, regardless of how many cours it takes to fully air.

Hmm, my impression has always been that a season is a more or less 12-month period, though I know they can vary a bit. Early seasons of The Simpsons were shorter than 12 months, but they settled on an exactly 12-month cycle after enough time (which I'm guessing is to ensure there is a Treehouse of Horror episode every season).

No offense, but The Simpsons is an American show - and anime is Japanese. The former is no guide to the latter, in fact it's completely irrelevant, because the two countries have radically different broadcasting culture.

But yeah, your definition of a season as "a group of episodes the network pays the stduio to make" makes more sense, thinking about it--they just usually happen to fall close to 12-month periods for most shows. A successful, long-running show would have multiple seasons contracted at once though.

leafy sea dragon wrote:

Lord Geo wrote: The easiest way to think about them is that a cour is a specific span of time, while a season applies to an entire production as a whole. As others mentioned, a season can be any length that's deemed necessary, regardless of how many cours it takes to fully air. Hmm, my impression has always been that a season is a more or less 12-month period, though I know they can vary a bit. Early seasons of The Simpsons were shorter than 12 months, but they settled on an exactly 12-month cycle after enough time (which I'm guessing is to ensure there is a Treehouse of Horror episode every season).

No offense, but The Simpsons is an American show - and anime is Japanese. The former is no guide to the latter, in fact it's completely irrelevant, because the two countries have radically different broadcasting culture.

Makes me wonder how contracting works for long-running, year-round anime -- your Sazae-sans and Dragon Ball Zs and Detective Conans. Like, if Shueisha decided Toei was going down the tubes, how far in advance would they have to make the decision to switch One Piece over to another studio?

extraordinarily messy production schedule

Gundam is partially owned by Sunrise, if not fully owned by them, so I don't think that would ever be able to change hands. At least not unless they sold the rights.

Though it was more of a reboot, I was thinking about the change in hands between the two series for Hunter X Hunter, and from that I figured the reason behind changes in studios was because anime studios are only contracted to keep making the show until some certain point, after which the production committee is free to pick someone else. Though I figure in rare cases, it's because the studio goes out of business and the production committee needs to find something to replace them.

Shay Guy wrote:

Makes me wonder how contracting works for long-running, year-round anime -- your Sazae-sans and Dragon Ball Zs and Detective Conans. Like, if Shueisha decided Toei was going down the tubes, how far in advance would they have to make the decision to switch One Piece over to another studio?

Bad example since Toei is in the One Piece and Dragon Ball Super TV series production committee. How about Boruto: Naruto Next Generation? Same thing, Pierrot is in the production committee. As for Sazae-.san, the info in ANN does not list an anime studio in charge, it seems Fuji TV hires everyone directly.

In Japan, a season is a broadcast period (Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall). In the West, a season is an uninterrupted broadcast sequence. In Japan a cour is a block (generally 13) of episodes, and the term is not used in the West at all. So for most shows, the terms can be used interchangeably, though it's not technically correct. For longer shows (like the currently airing Sakura Quest at 24 episodes), that's not quite correct because while it's a single season (in Western usage), it's two cour spanning two seasons (by Japanese terminology).

It's not a big deal, and only the most pedantic of nitpickers will call you on it.

Or is there even difference between the terms season and series?

@leafy sea dragon

In the US, back in the days when TV was ruled by three broadcast networks, a season started in September to loud fanfare. It lasted until May or June with only an occasional rerun. This not surprisingly matched the standard school year. The idea was that no one watched TV in the summer. Summer was reruns for the most part. Of course back then all TV, including the dramatic series were completely episodic.

Later, along came UHF stations, PBS and cable. Smaller networks found that there was a market for TV in the Summer (partially due to the absence of competition from the big three). Somewhere in there the big networks got a bit hyper about cancelling shows that didn't hit big immediately resulting in mid season replacements.

Basically the entire concept of a "season" of US TV has completely fallen apart. It basically means whatever a given "network" calls it. Most of the time it seems to mean a series of only slightly interrupted episodes of a given show. A hiatus of more than one or two weeks seems to demark a new season. Mostly.

peno wrote:

Or is there even difference between the terms season and series?

A series would be the show (or book, or movie) in it's entirety, unlike a season, which is just a chunk of the show (see above for arguments about exactly what a season is comprised of). Assassination Classroom is one series, made up of two seasons and four cours. The Harry Potter series is made up of seven books (or eight movies). It's slightly jarring when people use series and season interchangably, as a series is made up of all the seasons of a show.

it'd be interesting ot know if this happened with anime original shows and which ones (gundam?)