I’ve decided to break my analysis of the post midnight anime into a series of smaller, more easily digested posts. You will be able to identify these by the prefix and tag “Past My Bedtime”.
There is a single driving factor behind this – TV Tokyo. As best as I can tell TV Tokyo’s approach to scheduling anime is this:
- Put a lot of it on TV.
- Hope someone watches.
While I believe it was they who started the boom in 1996 with Those Who Hunt Elves and have been the most prolific broadcaster of late night anime, there doesn’t seem to be an obvious strategy or particular audience they are going for. It’s going to take a lot of breaking down to try and make sense of anything going on there, and I don’t want that drowning out some of the clearer scheduling ideas other channels have had over the last 13 years.
When TV Tokyo begin its late night madness, was their dealing affiliated with a particular content holder or holders? Or was it “free for all” in that “hey we have these paid-for programming slots, anyone can buy ’em”?
I’m trying to figure that out for myself. A couple of their early slots look like there was some joined up thinking going on. But another looks just as chaotic as much of the modern programming does.
Thinking about it some more, it makes sense that there had to be more “available” slots than possible anime productions to fill them. At least in the first couple years. Available in quotes meaning there are other, perhaps less desirable, alternatives, but open to be filled with late night anime. Presumably it became just a matter of someone footing enough money to make it happen since there was an opportunity to air it. And enough time to make it happen.