[Kid Ryan]

Originally Posted by Krono

Well, thinking about it a bit more, they're apparently treating the timeslot change as the start of season 3. Which makes a certain amount of sense seeing as that seems to have become the renew point for the series, and the arcs are being structured with that in mind. If they defined season 2 as 48 episodes long like season 1, that'd make it 49 to 96, which would end the "season" right at the start of the Tenrou Island arc, then run them into a similar problem for a potential 48 episode "season 3" ending in the middle of the current filler arc.

So what it looks like they're doing instead is keeping it how it worked out in Japan, with "season 1" being 48 episodes, "season 2" being 24, "season 3" being 52, and "season 4" also likely being 52. Yeah, one season ends up being short, but they keep things in logical story telling blocks, and avoid ending anything in the middle of an arc.

So given a choice between licensing a 24 episode block, or licensing a 74 episode block to get a release that doesn't end during an arc, they opted for the 24 episode block. Probably aided by the likelihood that when they say to the Japanese companies that they want to license season 2, the Japanese end likely thinks of that as "season 2" themselves. And since they're buying fewer episodes at a likely similar per episode price point to season 1, they go ahead and spend the money to grab and announce the rights to the movie at the same time to help keep fans of the series from being disheartened at the shorter season length.

Huh yeah, that makes total sense now that I think about it, thanks alot for giving us such a detailed explanation !