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Studio Pierrot has worked on many huge anime series, and continues to do so. However, they have switched some of their tactics recently, if reports are to be believed. A major one was the switch from weekly anime to seasonal which a lot of long-running anime went through.
Studio Pierrot’s president recently made a comment about it.
Studio Pierrot’s Newly Found Success With Seasonal Anime
Studio Pierrot have animated many popular anime,most famously Naruto and Bleach. Those anime, among others, used to air weekly throughout the year. But now, the era of year-long anime is ending, and all the studios are opting to go down the road of seasonal anime, including series that used to initially be weekly.
The biggest example here is Bleach, which originally used to be a weekly anime. Now with the release of Thousand Year Blood War, the anime has turned seasonal, and fans can expect a set number of episodes per year, instead of one every week, all year long.
The president and CEO of Studio Pierrot had this to say on the matter:
“Pierrot’s new attempt was successful, I feel confident in future works. Bleach was well received in 2022 & 2023, with Bleach, we decided to work on an entirely new anime, not your typical sequel"
Apparently, this entire switch was heavily influencedby the Demon Slayer anime. The success of Demon Slayer has heavily shaped the anime industry in many ways, as seen with a switch to seasonal anime, and even when it comes to the anime movies released.
Why Seasonal Animes Work Better Than Weekly
Seasonal anime have become the norm, even for longer series, which used to almost all be weekly shows. Seasonal anime allows studios and animators a lot more time to work on their projects, as they only have, at most usually, 24 episodes to work on, and sometimes less.
This allows the final result to be a lot better in quality. Another important thing seasonal anime does is that it limits the number of filler episodes. Filler episodes are practically a non-issue with seasonal anime, but make up a very large portion of year-long anime. This is because studios have to fill in while the manga continues so as to maintain the gap. Pacing is yet another issue fixed by seasonal format.
