That's why I think the concept of weekly-released anime episodes is the cancer of the entire anime section. It's their own fault when they waste their money with countless low quality filler-episodes and follow such release schedules. I won't excuse that.
The Naruto anime could be one of the best in the world, if the animators were better in managing their money and time. Why not making seasons with breaks in between? So that they have a fix number of episodes to cover each arc? We would have:
No fillers, more time to animate everything and overall better quality -> they have more money because less episodes to animate. The fans would just have to be patient, but that would be worth it.
Thats your opinion. Weekly anime is my fav type and for multiple reasons:
- Its consistently coming out
- Easier to follow
- Usually longer
But these are just my reasons for liking them and theyre not your concern so Ill move to why this type of anime is necessarry from a business stand point and why it is needed for the existence of anime at such a scale that is present today:
- efficency - weekly anime are almost always huge, lasting multiple years without breaks. Making them in seasonal bulks would be very unefficient from a marketing view as 20 episode seasons would barely cover one arc. Then youd have a hungry fanbase left with nothing for 1-3 years, 4 in worst case. Interest in the anime would drop dramatically and as such itd get less viewers
- money - making anime is a really expensive work. Making anime with top notch animation is hillariously expensive. I remember seeing a typical episode budget and I remember being shocked by the numbers. I cant link now cuz Im on my phone but the point is its expensive. There is a reason why seasoned anime takes so long to make and cuts in the budget are a necessarry reality just like with every other business. Also many studios are in a bad condition and the money they make is barely enough to cover the expenses that went into the production. Everyone would like to look at amazing animation and say "hey, I made that". Its just that very few can affort it.
- publisher interest - this one is related to both points above. If your anime takes too much to gather interests local networks will be suspicious about how good of an investment it is. If your anime is too expensive your local network may not afford it. If your anime is both of these your local network wont even look at it. In business you need to negotiate and sell your products at a reasonable price from whih both you and the other guy will have some profit. Sadly, in many cases the other guy takes more and you end up with less (cuz ur the one paying for your expenses) while the network will get its share from the amount of viewers it has. In the event you make a 10th season of an anime whose manga has already finished 3-5 years ago, even if the fans want it, the studio will have doubts about how much sense it makes.
These were what I find to be the main 3 marketing reasons for why such a thing is very hard to realize. When talking about state of the anime industry, however, we mustnt forget the ones actually making up the studio - people.
Japan is known to be a depressing place of working too much for too little in bad enviroments. This is true to an extent. Atleast for most animation studios. There was an interview with an american animator who went to work in Japan first scoring with a low level studio and then, interestingly, ending up at our dear Studio Pierrot. He gave some insight on how things look from the inside.
While he was working with the first studio his income was miserable. He worked a lot but barely earned anything at all. The studio was falling apart both financially and literally! After some time he went to Pierrot and while his working conditions and salary improved he still had to rely on his job as an English teacher to make a living.
Basically, if you're not a huge studio like Madhouse or Bones you will face a lot of limitations and will have to resort to cheapest and fastest if u dont want to go broke.
You cant expect much work from a depressed and underpayed individual. That said Pierrot is a decent studio with enough wealth to stay alive but too little to go top notch. They always produce good quality and never below. They have to make cuts tho so they let smaller studios cover the less important episodes while theyre cooking up something big. This is known as "outsourcing". Those smaller studios are uncompetent and cant make a good episode to save their life and are thus leaving us with crappy stuff.
Those are the main reasons for why ideal anime is rare and why such long anime as Naruto are made weekly with smaller budget rather than in seasons with large amounts of money.
With all the problems studios face and their potential demise looming over its really not fair of you to call them things like greedy bastards. They do what they do because they have passion for it despite many problems that stand in the way. If thats not dedication I dont know what is.