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Sailor Moon Crystal is "airing" (online) every 1st and 3rd Friday of the
month. Not only is this not every week, but not every other week.

Why is this?


CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-09-08T04:15:13.003
13876
2014-09-09T04:36:36.080
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question
sailor-moon
Why does Sailor Moon Crystal not air weekly?


Sailor Moon Crystal is not expected to make money among the Japanese (its main
hope to turn a profit is to make it available to viewers outside of Japan,
such as by selling a license to stream it). (Please also see my answer to a
similar question, which Toshinou Kyouko linked in the comments, for details on
why.)

Airing episodes weekly would mean that either 1) the series ends after only 26
weeks, or 2) that the animation company would need to animate 2 to 3 times as
many episodes to run for the same number of weeks. Since it is not necessarily
profitable to produce the series, animating more episodes would be too costly.

Only the first 2 episodes were made available to view for free on NicoNico
Douga in Japan; to see all subsequent episodes, Japanese are required to buy a
subscription to NicoNico. Spreading out the episodes more sparsely over time
forces the fans who buy a subscription for the sole sake of watching Sailor
Moon Crystal to pay for about a year's worth of subscription, rather than only
26 weeks' worth. The number of such fans is probably low, but the company
needs to milk the amount of money it can get from them. Stretching it out also
can provide a longer time frame in which said fans could decide to buy some
collectible merchandise before it ends and they move on to avidly watching
another series.


CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-09-09T04:36:36.080
13901
2014-09-09T04:36:36.080
8134
13876
answer