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NEWS: Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War Anime Part 2 Ends With 1-Hour Special on September 30

Ooof! That's a month away, but I'm patient enough to see how they are going to animate the next part.

I've never understood why they call things like this a "1-hour special" when it's really just 2 new episodes airing back-to-back. I might understand if it were a 2 part episode, but it's just the final two episodes of the second cour. When I hear 1-hour special, it makes me think, "Instead of a numbered episode, it sounds like we're getting an OVA," or something like, "This numbered episode is getting double the runtime of a normal episode." In fact, I've already come across a few people who think the final numbered episode of this cour will be an hour long (which is incorrect for multiple reasons), so this feels like a misleading claim. A frequently used marketing tool, yes, but misleading all the same.

MyMasterMatthew wrote:

I've never understood why they call things like this a "1-hour special" when it's really just 2 new episodes airing back-to-back. I might understand if it were a 2 part episode, but it's just the final two episodes of the second cour. When I hear 1-hour special, it makes me think, "Instead of a numbered episode, it sounds like we're getting an OVA," or something like, "This numbered episode is getting double the runtime of a normal episode." In fact, I've already come across a few people who think the final numbered episode of this cour will be an hour long (which is incorrect for multiple reasons), so this feels like a misleading claim. A frequently used marketing tool, yes, but misleading all the same.

Two things, traditionally Japanese anime bought their airing block rather than the channel buying the show (except for some of the largest shows with prime time slots) so having a bigger slice of air time was more significant as it was an investment decision, it was often a production company itself creating the marketing rather than the broadcaster. Secondly the specials would get a lot of marketing promotion with adverts to promote the date and the broadcast would often be accompanied by short 5/10 minute interviews with the cast or inserts to play during the add breaks which if your outside Japan you wouldnt witness and arent normally released by licensers (outside asia).