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Are there set periods of time in which seasons start and end? In America,
generally, TV shows begin in the Fall or the Summer. Many shows will start
within a week or two of each other. Is the same true for anime? If not, what
controls when anime seasons start/are released?


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2013-07-09T13:15:05.203
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2013-07-09T14:02:17.857
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anime-production
How are anime seasons released?


It's the same as Japanese Television seasons (or sometimes referred to as
"cours"). There are 4 of them each year and each one lasts roughly 13 weeks.
The Wikipedia page for [Japanese Television
Drama](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_television_drama) says:

> Japan has four television seasons: Winter (January–March), Spring
> (April–June), Summer (July–September), and Autumn or Fall
> (October–December). Some series may start in another month though it may
> still be counted as a series of a specific season.

So while the seasons themselves have a fixed start and end, the shows
themselves can sometimes start in the middle month of a season and thus spill
over into multiple seasons (given that it's a 13 episode/1 cour show), but it
is still considered part of the season that it started airing. There's obvious
advantages to always starting at the beginning of a season, the main one being
that shows lasting 12 or 13 episodes can continue to fill a time-slot
throughout the calendar year without having breaks.

For example, here are the "Summer 2013" shows and their air-times:

  * 07/01 22:25 (AT-X) - **Recorder to Ransel Mi♪**
  * 07/01 25:00 (Tokyo MX) - **Inu to Hasami wa Tsukaiyou**
  * 07/02 19:30 (AT-X) - **BROTHERS CONFLICT**
  * 07/02 25:35 (TV Tokyo) - **Senyuu. (Season 2)**
  * 07/02 25:40 (TV Tokyo) - **Gifuu Doudou!! Naoe Kanetsugu -Maeda Keiji-gatari-**
  * 07/03 21:30 (AT-X) - **Tamayura ～More Aggressive～**
  * 07/03 24:30 (Tokyo MX) - **Free!**
  * 07/04 25:28 (TBS) - **Tokurei Sochi Dantai Stella Jogakuin Koutou-ka C3-bu**
  * 07/04 25:35 (MBS) - **Dangan Ronpa no Gakuen to Zetsubou no Koukousei The Animation**
  * 07/04 25:58 (TBS) - **Rozen Maiden (New Series)**
  * 07/04 26:05 (MBS) - **Ren-Ai Lab -Love Lab-**
  * 07/04 26:35 (MBS) - **Senki Zesshou: Symphogear G**
  * 07/04 26:43 (Nippon TV) - **Kitaku-bu Katsudou Kiroku**
  * 07/04 27:08 (ABC) - **Servant x Service**
  * 07/05 22:30 (AT-X) - **Rou-Kyuu-Bu! SS**
  * 07/06 20:30 (AT-X) - **Kiniro Mosaic**
  * 07/06 20:30 (ABC) - **Genei wo Kakeru Taiyou -il sole penetra le illusioni-**
  * 07/06 23:20 (Nico Nico Douga) - **Fate/Kaleid Liner: Prism-Illya**
  * 07/06 25:00 (Tokyo MX) - **Monogatari Series: Second Season**
  * 07/06 25:00 (Tokyo MX) - **Genshiken Nidaime**
  * 07/06 25:30 (Tokyo MX) - **Kami-sama no Inai Nichiyoubi**
  * 07/06 27:28 (MBS) - **Fantasista Doll**
  * 07/07 20:30 (AT-X) - **High School DxD NEW**
  * 07/07 22:27 (Tokyo MX) - **Teekyuu (Season 2)**
  * 07/07 22:00 (Tokyo MX) - **Uchouten Kazoku**
  * 07/07 22:30 (Tokyo MX) - **Hakkenden -Touhou Hakken Ibun- (Season 2)**
  * 07/07 24:30 (TV Kanagawa) - **Blood Lad**
  * 07/07 25:05 (TV Tokyo) - **Makai Ouji: Devils and Realist**
  * 07/08 25:35 (TV Tokyo) - **Kami Nomi zo Shiru Sekai -The World God Only Knows- (Season 3)**
  * 07/08 26:05 (TV Tokyo) - **Watashi ga Motenai no wa dou Kangaete mo Omaera ga Warui!**
  * 07/11 24:45 (Fuji TV) - **Gin no Saji: Silver Spoon**
  * 07/12 22:00 (BS Animax) - **Hyperdimension Neptunia: The Animation**
  * 07/12 25:58 (Nippon TV) - **Gatchaman Crowds**
  * 07/13 22:00 (Tokyo MX) - **Futari wa Milky Holmes**
  * 07/13 23:30 (TV Tokyo) - **Kimi no Iru Machi -A town where you live-**

So, like you said, everything happens around the same time, the first week of
July, then we have a few outliers that start during the second week. It's
worth noting that **Silver Spoon** is only 11 episodes, and **Hyperdimension
Neptunia** , **Gatchaman Crowds** , **Futari wa Milky Holmes** , and **Kimi no
Iru Machi** are all 12 episodes, so they'd end right at the end of the season.

The real outliers from last season, Spring 2013 (though some sites attach
these 2 shows to the Summer 2013 season), would be:

  * 06/08 23:45 (NHK-BS Premium) - **Kingdom 2**
  * 06/14 17:55 (Disney XD) - **Yuuto-kun ga Iku**

In some cases, certain channels will start a show in the middle or near the
end of a season, sometimes because of a timeslot that needs to be filled.
**Kingdom 2** is a 39 episode historic drama on a pay satellite channel that
doesn't have any other anime, and the other is a 5 minute-per-episode young
children's after school show. These are shows that are typically outside of
the usual late-night anime demographics.

See also this question: [What defines one "season" of
anime?](https://anime.stackexchange.com/questions/1971/what-defines-one-
season-of-anime/1972#1972)


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