Why are there only thirteen episodes for anime nowadays?

[Drkz]

Originally Posted by totoum

Just wondering,how many of those are anime originals?
A lot of the objection against the concept of one cour isn't based on the idea that it's not possible to "tell a good, thorough story with solid character development in 13 or less 20-something minute episodes." (I've seen animes that can do it in 15 minutes and I don't even mind the idea of 5 minute episodes) , it's that there's animes that attempt to adapt a source that can't be told with just 13 episodes and that leaves the anime viewer frustrated (other's have already gotten into the whole "anime is just promotion for the source material" explanation so I won't).

So I'm just curious if there's any adaptations on that list,how long were the sources?

Anime originals are rare because if it flops the studio will be losing a lot of money. So they rather adopt because when you adopt something you already know even if it doesn't do well it has a fan base.

K, Dog Days, Valvrave, Un-Go,k, Star Driver, Gargantia and Psycho Pass? I'm just listening a few that came out recently. It honestly depends. It can either be 12 eps or 24 or whatever inbetween. All up to the studio and whether they rather split it into different seasons. If you asking how they come with the concept they either get pitched a concept or they hire someone to write the storyboard for them. Anime-originals usually get spin-offs, but these usually suck.

Take a important note. Anime, Manga, Light Novels, whatever. Its for the Japanese people. Japs usually don't give a crap about Gaijin. Its how they do business. For the most part Anime is for promotional value. Figures, Cards, Shirts, Towels, whatever. If you like the series than you might buy the original piece. You can use Horizon as a perfect example. Just the sheer volume size could rub people the wrong way. Add in the fact that most of the girls on the cover have J cup breasts most people would avoid the series altogether. Get sunrise to produce a Ok job series now the books sell like hot cakes.

Adapting a light novel, manga, a visual novel or a psp/ps3 game is different. Light novels tend to have more words. Meaning when they adapt it they need to dumb it, kill off a bunch of characters and so forth. A light novel adaption will never get technical, any side character deem unimportant they'll axe. Its just a wasted expense. Also pacing in light novels are usually different. You might find the start for the story midway in one novel or you'll find the actual prologue in volume 3. Anime has to make sense, you can't just dump someone in and expect them to understand whats happening. You basically need to spoon feed the audience. Mangas are somewhat easier, since they already have drawn panels you'll pick and choose what you want to animate. What the scriptwriter deems important and so forth. Visual novels and games. These are usually the easiest because they usually just follow one route. Its one route, but they'll add key flags from other routes to keep the audience guessing. This is mainly for people who played the game already.

Light novels usually get a 12-14 adaption. If they're popular enough or sell well they may get another season. If its something highly popular like Fate or Index you'll end up with 24 episodes, ovas and maybe movies. For visual novels and games in general its usually the 11-14 episode adaption. Thats pretty much the amount of eps they need to fully adapt a route.

Another important note time. Instead of getting cheaper its more expensive to animate than ever. And its pretty easy for people to analyze the video to see if your bsing or not. Your more likely to see 12-14 episodes in general. Its a rare occurrence to see anything more. Just because the expense is tremendous.

[synaesthetic]

One word:

Money.

[Xion Valkyrie]

Originally Posted by Triple_R

Honestly, I'm kind of with ArchmageXin on this.

In looking over my all-time favorite anime shows, quite a few of them were 13 episodes or less in duration. I think that many of those would have sacrificed plot tightness and felt overly dragged out/decompressed if they were two full seasons long.

You can tell a good, thorough story with solid character development in 13 or less 20-something minute episodes. It's just that you can't waste much time while you're doing it - You have to minimize fluff to what's essential, and avoid recap episodes. For most anime shows, I like the idea of minimizing fluff. For all anime shows, I like the idea of not having to put up with recap episodes.


Personally, I see a few trends/potential trends in the anime industry that are far more troubling then shifting to more one cour shows. Those are...

1) Airing low-quality pre-airs the entire way through (this really fractured the RDG viewer-base in a way that I think negatively impacted discussion on the show).

2) Multiple plot relevant episodes airing long after the weekly TV airing is done. This often can drastically hurt narrative momentum, as well as the momentum of online discussion.

3) The rise of shorts. Now this is what really cuts down on content. 13 20-something minute episodes feels like a wonderfully deep pool of content compared to 13 5-minute episodes.

I agree with this. There's quite a few 24 episode shows in my list that I thought could have been much better had they just trimmed out the middle. They started out strong and had good endings, but the entire middle section felt incredibly filler-ish and boring.

I finally got around to watching Gundam Seed (I had it in the background while I was doing other stuff) and was amazed at how draggy the first part of the series is. The first 30 episodes had 6 episodes of recaps, and was incredibly draggy and repetitive. Half the battle scenes consist of reused animations of Freedom doing his beam spam or the Arch Angel firing its Valiants and Gottfrieds. The whole thing could have been compressed to than 26 episodes without losing anything of value at all.

Of course that doesn't mean studios have stepped up to the challenge of making better paced anime, as there are still plenty of 13 episode series with terrible pacing and a lot of extra fluff.

[Tyabann]

Originally Posted by Drkz

Quality does matter. If the quality is garbage. People will drop it. No one will take notice of the series. Simple as that.

What matters is how appealing the series is to its target demographic; that can involve actual narrative quality or just endless fanservice.
If all the target audience wants is smut, then they'll invest in the franchise. Simple as that.

Originally Posted by Chaos2Frozen

What about follow up seasons?

Not that common unless the series was enough of a success to justify a second season to begin with.
Most adaptations never run through their entire source material.

[Chaos2Frozen]

Wait, how does that justify making lower quality Anime and say go buy the book? You'll have a better chance at success if you do a good job.

[backbone]

Because the worldwide economic downfall in recent years has hit Japan very hard, including anime industry. Harder times mean smaller budgets, and hence shorter series.

It's also one of reasons why there has been a growing trend for industry staples like moe and fanservice-related themes, which pander to the industry's most important consumers, the otaku.

[Tyabann]

Originally Posted by Chaos2Frozen

Wait, how does that justify making lower quality Anime and say go buy the book? You'll have a better chance at success if you do a good job.

Cheaper anime costs less money.
Also, nobody intentionally makes a bad show, but obviously talented staff are going to cost more to hire... which tends to make for something of lower-quality. But again, the only real measure of success for an adaptation is how well it performs at advertising the source.
Mondaiji, for instance, did relatively poorly, but more than doubled the sales of the light novel. Something similar happened with Date-A-Live, I believe.

Originally Posted by backbone

It's also one of reasons why there has been a growing trend for industry staples like moe and fanservice-related themes, which pander to the industry's most important consumers, the otaku.

You know that stuff like that has been around for a very long time, right?

[ArchmageXin]

In my opinion, adaptation from one source (VN/LN/ANIME/Manga) to another source rarely end well.

VN-Manga/anime-Cut too much stuff out, especially alternative routes.

LN-manga-Cut a lot of stuff out. Barely survived volume 1 or volume 2 of the book before the mangaka gives up. (SEE: Campion, Blade Dance, most of Baka's LN projects)

LN-Anime-About the same, slightly better, again, a ton of material "missed" from books.

Manga-Anime-People will complain useless filler garbage (See: Original Saint Seyia, Doramon)

Etc.

[specialy22]

In my Opinion,
I don't care how many episode they give to Us (The reader/watcher)
*Well, I prefer the "No Season" Anime, which mean the one that keep loading new episode in the same season (cause, im tired of waiting the break)
As long as they keep up the pace, and didn't skip any important scene from the story

For Example, SAO got too many missing scene
I Don't know why, but the scene that they cut is somehow important for the watchers, It does having a relation with the future story (I tho they will re-view the last arc for the scene that they cut)

Another Example, They make the story as if needed to be fast paced
I mean, it's not hurt to the normal pace one
Another watchers ofc don't want the Anime they like to be ended that fast (Even the slow pace, they still didn't want that to come to an end)

&Sound a bit selfish from me haha...
&Well, that's just my opinion
&Hope they will change their habbit about making so Short Episode (Fast pace) - Break - Short Episode (Fast Pace) - Break

&It's better to make the slow one

[ArchmageXin]

I think it might a generation gap thing.

I was borne in the 80s (god I am old), so I grew up with super filler stuff like Doramon, Saint S, DBZ, Innu Yasha etc that has a unlimited length that takes 2 months to settle a simple fight. Goku vs whoever would GRRRR power up for 4 episodes, then settle it with a punch, then GRRRR again...for 4 episodes. Or things like 1-shot episodes that never advance the plot (Lum, Doramon).

I think most people who complain everything is too short by begin their anime at least after 2000. Things like Witch Hunter Robin or fullmetal alchemist stopped with the filler crap.

And I quit anime after 2005, so...

[totoum]

Originally Posted by ArchmageXin

I think it might a generation gap thing.

I was borne in the 80s (god I am old), so I grew up with super filler stuff like Doramon, Saint S, DBZ, Innu Yasha etc that has a unlimited length that takes 2 months to settle a simple fight. Goku vs whoever would GRRRR power up for 4 episodes, then settle it with a punch, then GRRRR again...for 4 episodes. Or things like 1-shot episodes that never advance the plot (Lum, Doramon).

I think most people who complain everything is too short by begin their anime at least after 2000. Things like Witch Hunter Robin or fullmetal alchemist stopped with the filler crap.

And I quit anime after 2005, so...

You're not comparing the right things,you're talking about daytime shows,those still exist and you still have people complaining about them being fillerish ( for a couple examples just ask any naruto fan or any bleach fans when it was still airing)

This is more about late night animes where it seems the standard used to be 26 episodes 10-15 years ago but since then there's been a rise in the proportion of 13 episode shows.

[Guernsey]

Originally Posted by totoum

You're not comparing the right things,you're talking about daytime shows,those still exist and you still have people complaining about them being fillerish ( for a couple examples just ask any naruto fan or any bleach fans when it was still airing)

This is more about late night animes where it seems the standard used to be 26 episodes 10-15 years ago but since then there's been a rise in the proportion of 13 episode shows.

How did the standard fall from 26 to 13 for late night anime? I know that popular daytime anime like Naruto and One Piece never end until the manga does and even then it may never end.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by Guernsey

How did the standard fall from 26 to 13 for late night anime?

I'm not sure just how much of a "fall" the empirical evidence supports, but that notwithstanding one of the issues has been the scheduling of talented animators, who are dwindling and busy. This is why you have more "split-cour" shows over the last few years -- these are shows that may have been 24-26 in the past, but now are two sets of 12-13, split by a break. The extra time means that you need less people to do the work. And, as a consequence, they can also release the DVDs/BDs for the show as two separate 6-7 disc batches, which avoids the "sticker shock" of 12-14-disc releases (even though it's actually the same).

[CJ_Walker]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

AKB0048. The last of these has a sequel; the others do not.

We all know why that is too (:

But yeah I Just flat out refuse to watch new 10-13 episode series, unless they are of Madoka Magica/Kaiba caliber quality(or Level-E caliber comedies). Anything else is a huge waste of time.

[Tyabann]

Originally Posted by CJ_Walker

Anything else is a huge waste of time.

As opposed to 26-episode anime, regardless of their quality?

[RichardFromMarple]

I'm sure it's been mentioned before about the amount of existing source material when adapting a Manga, as often 2-3 chapters will be needed for 1 episode of a Manga.

[aohige]

Originally Posted by Guernsey

Those are some good points but with long running anime especially JUMP manga I don't see how thirteen episodes make sense.

.... exactly which manga are you talking about?
I can't recall any anime adaptations of Weekly Shounen Jump manga being 1 cour.
They are usually 2 cour at the least.

[totoum]

Originally Posted by aohige

.... exactly which manga are you talking about?
I can't recall any anime adaptations of Weekly Shounen Jump manga being 1 cour.
They are usually 2 cour at the least.

The only couple I can think of are Level E and Hatsukoi Limited but considering those were short series it's understandable.

[Westlo]

I actually wouldn't be surprised if Nisekoi joins that list with SHAFT doing it, I mean in between the about to air Monogatari 2 and Negima, you have a 6-7 year gap between these two cour series, and the Monogatari franchise is the king of the otaku aimed anime ones.

Originally Posted by ArchmageXin

You guys forgot a GLORIOUS benefit from 13 episode or less a season.

It actually force the writing team to "HURRY UP" and not use filler material.

Anyone remember Dragonball Z's infamous 3-episode power ups or Inu Yasha's 400+ Demons (Or however many pieces the magic ball shatter into?)

So therefore, less eps are a good thing, not bad.

*Makes claim that 13 episode series are a benefit (compared to 26)*

*Uses a near 300 episode anime as an example why*

/facepalm

[paulo.no.1]

Because it's difficult to battle those famous anime... For more info, please watch bakuman..