Each year close to 150 new anime hit the airwaves in Japan between normal terrestrial stations, cable networks and satellite. For the most part these releases follow an established schedule. Here's a breakdown of how that works and the efforts the companies behind the shows go through to make sure it's viewers are aware of when to tune in.
Japanese broadcast TV is split into quarterly portions called cours. The word is directly taken from French for 'course'. While this system is not universal it is the standard for anime. A cours is a maximum of 13 weeks in length, equaling to 4 cours in the year. Starting at the beginning of the year is the Winter cours, which begins the first week of January. This is followed by the Spring cours which begins the first week of April. The Summer cours begins the first week of July and is typically the least important one. The year wraps up with the Fall cours, beginning the first week of October.
To begin a show outside of the first two weeks of the beginning of a cours can and will cause major scheduling problems for consecutive cours. Generally a series will do everything it can to fit as many episodes as possible in a cours. If a series will only take up a portion of it there will be a similar series waiting to fill in the slot, to run out the rest of the 13 week schedule (see Tabimachi Lateshow for a current example). If the production of an anime is falling behind schedule the studio will piece together an episode mostly comprised of material already shown, typically a recap, to buy more time. This can lead to a later episode unable to air on TV. These are then typically packaged as bonus disc's on up coming video or manga releases. So, if you see a recap episode odds are the artists or something else is falling behind schedule.
Each anime airs one episode per week in a set time slot, as much of normal broadcast television does. The time of day and even what day a show is broadcast in determines the target audience. For any show that is looking to pick up as many viewers in the general public as possible the coveted air time is Sunday in the early evening hours. Traditionally this is the one time each week that will have the highest viewership in the nation. The longest running scripted television show in the world, the slice of life anime Sazae-san, has aired regularly at 6:30PM on Sundays since 1969.
Shows aimed at children will typically air in the early morning hours and the adult orientated shows will air in what is known as the shinya time block. This occurs between 1130PM and 430AM, when content restrictions are significantly loosened by the governmental censorship standards. Prior to the mid 90's it was rare and deemed wasteful to have an anime air during the shinya block due to the minuscule viewership. Neon Genesis Evangelion, released in 1995, proved that an anime shown in the middle of the night could be incredibly successful. With the advent of programmable digital recording devices the time a show airs became less of a roadblock. Currently a large portion of the anime aired on terrestrial TV is specifically crafted to be shinya anime.
As anime is used as part of a larger package to generate revenue tied to someones creation the companies behind the shows do as much as they can to promote them. Leading up to the start of a show the production committees will release commercials, publicly announce what voice actors and musical acts are involved and promote when and where everyone can view it, building hype. They don't keep secret the details that are used as ways to boost interest in their product and fire up the per-existing fan base. During the broadcast, sometimes even with in the first episode, the release dates for the pending disc volumes will be announced, to make sure the viewers know when they can purchase copies of the show for repeated home viewing. They do every thing they can to promote the show through out its life span.
And it works, rather well in some cases. Typically DVD and blu-ray releases will see their highest sales numbers in the first week of availability. The most eager fans, already aware of the release date due to constant reminder during the show and in related advertising, will line up to buy the volume as soon as its available. Sales will be significantly slower in the weeks following its release until it drops off to a trickle and is no longer tracked by Oricon. There is a great English resource that historically tracks anime DVD and blu-ray sales as reported by Oricon as well.
So how does one keep on the same footing as the Japanese fans when the production committee's are solely focused on informing their home turf fan base? The single greatest English language resource that exists is Anime News Network. Generally if a press release or a news brief comes out in Japan, the staff at ANN will have it disseminated in English later that day. The website has one of, if not THE, most in depth and voluminous encyclopedia for anime and manga around. I have yet to find something comparable in Japanese. Odd's are if the information does not exist on ANN its not true. There are other fantastic English resources for news and release information as well such as Tokyo Otaku Mode and Otakureview.net.
As for Japanese language resources, they are plentiful but here are a few that I use. Otakomu.jp, otanew.jp and yusaani.com. Though for both English and Japanese one of the greatest and easiest way's to say on top of the news about anime, manga and everything related is via Twitter. Almost every production, distribution and animation company has active accounts that are more than willing to blast info to people who follow them. Artists and other producers of manga and anime are also prevalent and easy to find. This a typical morning on my Twitter feed.
Its pretty easy to find out when and where stuff will be available. Next time someone post's something online about a show you're eagerly awaiting check it out on the resources above to see if its legit or just horrible trolling.
Japanese broadcast TV is split into quarterly portions called cours. The word is directly taken from French for 'course'. While this system is not universal it is the standard for anime. A cours is a maximum of 13 weeks in length, equaling to 4 cours in the year. Starting at the beginning of the year is the Winter cours, which begins the first week of January. This is followed by the Spring cours which begins the first week of April. The Summer cours begins the first week of July and is typically the least important one. The year wraps up with the Fall cours, beginning the first week of October.
To begin a show outside of the first two weeks of the beginning of a cours can and will cause major scheduling problems for consecutive cours. Generally a series will do everything it can to fit as many episodes as possible in a cours. If a series will only take up a portion of it there will be a similar series waiting to fill in the slot, to run out the rest of the 13 week schedule (see Tabimachi Lateshow for a current example). If the production of an anime is falling behind schedule the studio will piece together an episode mostly comprised of material already shown, typically a recap, to buy more time. This can lead to a later episode unable to air on TV. These are then typically packaged as bonus disc's on up coming video or manga releases. So, if you see a recap episode odds are the artists or something else is falling behind schedule.
Each anime airs one episode per week in a set time slot, as much of normal broadcast television does. The time of day and even what day a show is broadcast in determines the target audience. For any show that is looking to pick up as many viewers in the general public as possible the coveted air time is Sunday in the early evening hours. Traditionally this is the one time each week that will have the highest viewership in the nation. The longest running scripted television show in the world, the slice of life anime Sazae-san, has aired regularly at 6:30PM on Sundays since 1969.
Shows aimed at children will typically air in the early morning hours and the adult orientated shows will air in what is known as the shinya time block. This occurs between 1130PM and 430AM, when content restrictions are significantly loosened by the governmental censorship standards. Prior to the mid 90's it was rare and deemed wasteful to have an anime air during the shinya block due to the minuscule viewership. Neon Genesis Evangelion, released in 1995, proved that an anime shown in the middle of the night could be incredibly successful. With the advent of programmable digital recording devices the time a show airs became less of a roadblock. Currently a large portion of the anime aired on terrestrial TV is specifically crafted to be shinya anime.
As anime is used as part of a larger package to generate revenue tied to someones creation the companies behind the shows do as much as they can to promote them. Leading up to the start of a show the production committees will release commercials, publicly announce what voice actors and musical acts are involved and promote when and where everyone can view it, building hype. They don't keep secret the details that are used as ways to boost interest in their product and fire up the per-existing fan base. During the broadcast, sometimes even with in the first episode, the release dates for the pending disc volumes will be announced, to make sure the viewers know when they can purchase copies of the show for repeated home viewing. They do every thing they can to promote the show through out its life span.
And it works, rather well in some cases. Typically DVD and blu-ray releases will see their highest sales numbers in the first week of availability. The most eager fans, already aware of the release date due to constant reminder during the show and in related advertising, will line up to buy the volume as soon as its available. Sales will be significantly slower in the weeks following its release until it drops off to a trickle and is no longer tracked by Oricon. There is a great English resource that historically tracks anime DVD and blu-ray sales as reported by Oricon as well.
So how does one keep on the same footing as the Japanese fans when the production committee's are solely focused on informing their home turf fan base? The single greatest English language resource that exists is Anime News Network. Generally if a press release or a news brief comes out in Japan, the staff at ANN will have it disseminated in English later that day. The website has one of, if not THE, most in depth and voluminous encyclopedia for anime and manga around. I have yet to find something comparable in Japanese. Odd's are if the information does not exist on ANN its not true. There are other fantastic English resources for news and release information as well such as Tokyo Otaku Mode and Otakureview.net.
As for Japanese language resources, they are plentiful but here are a few that I use. Otakomu.jp, otanew.jp and yusaani.com. Though for both English and Japanese one of the greatest and easiest way's to say on top of the news about anime, manga and everything related is via Twitter. Almost every production, distribution and animation company has active accounts that are more than willing to blast info to people who follow them. Artists and other producers of manga and anime are also prevalent and easy to find. This a typical morning on my Twitter feed.
Its pretty easy to find out when and where stuff will be available. Next time someone post's something online about a show you're eagerly awaiting check it out on the resources above to see if its legit or just horrible trolling.
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