What does "anime franchises" mean?


I've seen many anime but faced with a word I could not find the meaning of -
anime "franchises" such as _Fate/Stay Night_.

What does "franchises" mean in this context?




Definition #11 of ["franchise" at
en.wiktionary](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/franchise#Noun) is what you
want:

> The loose collection of fictional works pertaining to a particular universe,
> including literary, film or television series from various sources.

I would dispute the notion that this sense of "franchise" necessarily involves
"an authorization granted by a government or company". This is certainly true
of franchises in the legal sense (the McDonald's sense), but in common
parlance today, we would refer to _Fate_ as a franchise even if all of its
component works were produced by the same corporate entity (Type-Moon, say).

I would say that a defining feature of a "franchise" in this sense is the
existence of a wide variety of media constituting the franchise. For example,
it would be odd to describe a standalone novel as a franchise, but if there
was also an associated manga or anime or something, it would be more
"franchise-esque".

