Schedule Slip in Anime and Manga.
- Attack on Titan: The creators of the anime were caught completely off guard by how popular it became, resulting in a four year gap before they were able to make a second season. This gap allowed the story to reach a point where a third season was announced right after the last episode of the second season ended, scheduled to air in Summer 2018, much to the relief of the fans.
- Disaster struck again during season 3 in the end of Fall 2018 however, when it was suddenly revealed to be a split-cour. The fanbase had absolutely no warning this was going to happen, and the second half of the season aired 6 months later in Spring 2019. It was particularly devastating to fans of the manga, who knew that the first cour was to end right before what was, at the time, considered to be the best story arc in the series.
- Season 4 also turned out to be a split-cour season. Made worse by the fact it's also titled "The Final Season". Season 4 Part 2 ultimately didn't finish out the story, leading to two special episodes (both over an hour long) actually concluding the story roughly 3 years after The Final Season started
- Kentaro Miura, the creator of Berserk, was legendary for this. When he was on schedule, new tankobon volumes of the manga come out roughly twice a year, not out of the ordinary considering the magazine it's published in, but he took hiatuses a lot – most notoriously, he ended one hiatus to start another one just two months later. And Berserk is a chapter-a-month series. These breaks were likely necessary
to stave off breakdowns. On the other hand, coming out of a Creator Breakdown might have soured him on the series: it's harder to make depressing stuff when you're happy, and Berserk has been an express elevator to Hell since it started. - After an almost-three-year hiatus from June 2010 to March 2013, the Black Lagoon series started releasing new chapters. Unfortunately, the series went on another hiatus following February 2014 (when chapter 87 was published). The series finally returned in May 2017... only to go on another hiatus in August 2018 (after chapter 101 was published). The series is currently running again as of September 2019.
- After years of silence, Chihayafuru was announced to get a third season starting April 2019. However, it was announced early that year that its debut had been pushed back to October 2019.
- The Descendants of Darkness manga began in 1997 and updated fairly regularly until the release of volume 11 in 2003. Then there was a full seven years between volume 11 and volume 12- it wasn't released until 2010 (apparently due to problems with author/artist Yoko Matsushita's health).
- D.Gray-Man has experienced several stops in production due to the author falling ill. After a hiatus in 2009, the series returned with a fifty page chapter... and another hiatus. However, from November on, it started running monthly rather than weekly. It went on hiatus again in 2012, and didn't start publishing again until July 2015, but now the chapters come out on a quarterly instead of a monthly basis.
- Digital Manga Publishing is infamous for this, as it can take years for them to release volumes. It's gotten to the point that many have assumed that they lost the licsenses when they actually haven't.
- Fairy Tail: Between chapters 396 and 397, with predictable reactions from the fandom.
- Fist of the Blue Sky, the Prequel to Fist of the North Star can only enjoy sporadic and unannounced releases since 2005 due to Tetsuo Hara, its illustrator, becoming blind in one eye from a condition suffered by one in a million. Having lost depth perception, all his panels have to be re-drawn and inked by an assistant; the fact that his insisted style is realistic and intricately detailed does not help to alleviate the problem.
- The Five Star Stories:
- One reason for the Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole and somewhat abrupt ending of Fruits Basket's anime while the manga was still in progress? Natsuki Takaya broke her left arm. Her drawing arm.note
- Newer fans of Guyver tend to think this is what happens with Yoshiki Takaya however he consistently puts out one book a year and has never once put out an issue each month for an entire year. He did once have a hiatus to finish up another of his works from before Guyver.
- Hellsing: 10 years to finish a 10 volume manga. Kohta Hirano is (in)famously known for being quite a lazy mangaka when editors are not keeping constant watch on him. Near the end of the series it seemed Hirano would release a new chapter whenever he felt like it; he was often taking breaks from working in a monthly magazine. Many of the chapters in the second half of the series are just 9 to 12 pages long!
- The OVAs also followed suit in what it seems to be a staple in the franchise, the first three episodes had just a few months between them (typical for a lavishly-animated OVA). From the 4th onward, the delays would just get longer and longer as Satelight was having a hard time producing the episodes all by themselves. After a year and half without releasing anything, Satelight passed the baton to Madhouse and it looked like they would keep up the pace, and they did... up to the 7th episode, another year and few months (and many rumors that Madhouse just dropped the series) is what it took for the 8th episode to get a release date; the series finally finished with the release of the 10th episode in late December 2012, nearly seven years after the series began.
- At least the English release of the OVA's had an excuse (original licensor shut down during production of Episode 4; new licensor attempted to get the rest but a merger in Japan forced them to redo all the contracts from scratch, which took over two years).
- The Toonami broadcast of the OVAs even managed to follow suit: due to a clerical error with the rights, the final 2 episodes weren't able to air until December of 2014, after the series had left off with the 8th episode in the second week of November.
- Hirano topped himself with the prequel, Hellsing: The Dawn. After 6 chapters, he simply stopped in 2007. The Dawn didn't even have enough chapters to publish a single volume, so the series remains just a collection of 6 separate publications in 6 different Young King Ours+ issues.
- Drifters, another Hirano work, has managed 68 chapters, the first 59 of which have been collected in five volumes, since it started publication in 2009.
- The OVAs also followed suit in what it seems to be a staple in the franchise, the first three episodes had just a few months between them (typical for a lavishly-animated OVA). From the 4th onward, the delays would just get longer and longer as Satelight was having a hard time producing the episodes all by themselves. After a year and half without releasing anything, Satelight passed the baton to Madhouse and it looked like they would keep up the pace, and they did... up to the 7th episode, another year and few months (and many rumors that Madhouse just dropped the series) is what it took for the 8th episode to get a release date; the series finally finished with the release of the 10th episode in late December 2012, nearly seven years after the series began.
- Hibiki's Magic was published in a monthly magazine for twelve years... but due to Rei Izumi's health-issues, in this time it only released 29 chapters (34 if one includes the bonus-chapters). It took seven years between the release of volumes 2 and 3, but finally finished with volume 4.
- Hunter × Hunter, from Yoshihiro Togashi, the author of YuYu Hakusho, was featured regularly in Shonen Jump for several years. Nowadays the series is on hiatus much more than it is not, with roughly one collected volume coming out every year and a half or so (JC titles typically put out six or seven volumes in that same amount of time). Delays have been attributed to illness, which was addressed by the author himself in 2022. The fact that unlike almost all mangaka he mostly worked without assistants (aside from occasionally his wife, who's a very successful mangaka in her own right) until he decided to increase his staff probably doesn't help either.
- Idolish 7: The anime adaptation has never had a complete season air uninterrupted, most often due to having odd season lengths that don't quite fit into a standard 13-episode broadcasting cour:
- The first season had 17 episodes, with the first three airing on the same day. Its final two episodes were delayed for six weeks before being aired together.
- The second season began in April 2020 and aired four episodes before being delayed for five months due to the COVID-19 pandemic, resuming broadcast in October.
- The third season was split-cour, with the first 13 episodes airing from July to September 2021 and the second part resuming a full year later in October 2022. And because the second part was 17 episodes long, its final four episodes were also delayed for another six weeks before finally being aired in February 2023.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders was licensed by Viz. It was scheduled to run over 16 volumes, which should've been a layup. Instead, the 11th volume was delayed from August 2008 to April 2009, for eight months, solely because of a scene where the villain, DIO, read a book while threatening to kill Jotaro. Why was this a problem? Well, in the manga, this book was just unreadable scribbles... but in the second OVA series based on this part, the writers copy-pasted text from the Qur'an into the book without knowing what it wasnote , and the resulting protests caused Viz to halt all sales of all JoJo-related material, manga and anime alike, until they could be checked for other such errors. The author of the series, Hirohiko Araki, has never missed a deadline in 27 years (over 100 volumes of work), though.
- The Lucky Star manga began serialization in 2003, but has been on hiatus since 2014 due to creator Kagami Yoshimizu planning another unknown project.
- Magic of Stella contains an In-Universe example. Ayame, the writer for an doujin game group, has a chronic problem of keeping up with deadlines, to the point that the group leader Shiina keeps blackmailing her to keep her on line.
- Media Blasters can take years to release content when it comes to their anime releases. Even a good portion of them end up never actually coming out (Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei, for example).
- The English dub of My Hero Academia's final six episodes of Season 4 ended up getting delayed by a month and a half due to the coronavirus outbreak. Thankfully, Funimation solved that problem by having the actors perform in their home studios.
- Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind was originally started in 1982 solely to get funding for the film (as people with money would not back an anime movie not based on a manga when Hayao Miyazaki was still a relative unknown). The final story was 7 volumes long (about 3½ years for a monthly series, and these volumes were shorter than most), but it did not finish until 1994. This is because Miyazaki would take long hiatuses to direct some more movies. The end result of this is that the story in the Nausicaä movie only covers the first volume and a half of the manga.
- Negima! Magister Negi Magi's author, Ken Akamatsu, takes breaks lasting from a week to upwards of three weeks every now and then, claiming to be doing research. While he's almost as famous for his Shown Their Work moments as he is for inducing trope overdose, a lot of fans joke that his "research time" is spent researching his wife. In truth, as he has gotten older his drawing speed appears to have decreased and thus it takes slightly more than a week to draw one week's chapter, leading to a rough schedule of 3-4 chapters and then a break.
- Akamatsu also took a lengthy hiatus about 3/4 of the way through Love Hina, so this isn't new territory for him.
- Akamatsu apparently finally admitted an inability to keep any sort of weekly schedule anymore when he announced UQ Holder! would shift from a weekly magazine to a monthly one, mentioning his age as an involved factor online.
- The manga of Neon Genesis Evangelion had been running since just before the anime started and it finally reached its conclusion in 2013, after 18 years of production. It averaged around one 6-stage volume a year (that's about one chapter every two months). There could occasionally be a full year in between chapter releases.
- The English dub of One Piece has twice been hit with long hiatuses between releases. A 16 month gap between Seasons 3 and 4, and a long 25 month gap between Seasons 9 and 10. The latter is only slightly alleviated by the release of dubbed TV Specials and One Piece Stampede.
- Pokémon: The Series had this as a result of the Pokémon Shock incident where children got seizures from the "Electric Soldier Porygon" episode. This website lists a few episodes that had their airdates changed around as a result of the incident. This caused some continuity errors in the show, like Ash still having a Charmander in "Snow Way Out!" and "Showdown at the Po-ké Corral", an episode which set up the plot of Pokémon: The First Movie, airing long after the film's release in Japan rather than the week before like it was originally intended to. Interestingly enough, the latter episode did wind up airing before the movie's release overseas-in North America, for instance, the episode aired two months before the film's release.
- Pokémon Adventures:
- Because of the R/S arc's Ending Fatigue, Pokémon Adventures had a schedule slip for a long time, with Gen IV starting while the Gen III arcs had yet to conclude, Gen V starting while the Gen IV arcs had yet to conclude, and Gen VI starting while the Gen V arcs had yet to conclude. The scheduling for BW2 aside, Kusaka finally fixed this problem in Gen VI, as both arcs from that generation concluded just in time for Gen VII to start.
- Since Pokémon Black and White came out, the manga has had trouble with schedule slips. Due to lack of multiple magazines to release the chapters, story arcs are now significantly shorter than before. (SMUSUM arc being a definite victim of this).
- Pretty Rhythm Aurora Dream was supposed to premiere on April 2nd, 2011, but due to the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, the show premiered a week later.
- The Rebuild of Evangelion movies. The entire series was supposed to have finished up back in 2009. The ultimate release date for the fourth and final installment? March 9, 2021, thanks to a combination of Hideaki Anno's depression rearing its ugly head again, his preoccupation with making Shin Godzilla during the interim period, and a world-altering pandemic. It's almost impressive how fans haven't yet joked about how the final movie should be renamed "You Can (Not) Rebuild Forever".
- Sailor Moon Crystal, the Continuity Reboot of the Sailor Moon franchise, was announced during July 2012's 20th Anniversary Milestone Celebration for a Summer 2013 release. That got pushed back to Winter 2013, then even further, until its actual July 2014 debut. Then the third season didn't air until almost a year after the second, and the next arc would be adapted into a pair of movies which were originally going to be released in September 2020, but were delayed until 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Saint Seiya: Next Dimension suffered a number of these due to the creator becoming really sick, the switch to all-color, and Editors delaying it on purpose due to Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas.
- Spring 2020 had the dubious honor of this happening to practically the entire industry thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. Which is an entirely reasonable justification, although there was still some outrage from fans over Rebuild of Evangelion's conclusion being delayed for the umpteenth time.
- Studio Shaft is notorious for delaying episodes.
- Due to Distanced from Current Events issues related to the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami of 2011, the penultimate episode of Puella Magi Madoka Magica was postponed. Word of God expressed relief at the delay, as the earthquake cost the staff precious time that would otherwise have been used to make the episode. Eventually it was announced that the last episodes of the anime would air together about a month later (although this was apparently well after the episodes were completed). The last volume of the manga adaptation and the Prequel manga Oriko Magica were also delayed, the latter being moved from April to May.
- Bakemonogatari's last few episodes being delayed caused a fair amount of backlash. At least Madoka was delayed for understandable reasons.
- Suite Pretty Cure ♪'s sixth episode was delayed due to news coverage of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami pre-empting all television programming in Japan for at least a week. This gave the animators time to re-animate a sequence that was considered to be too similar to the events of the tragedy.
- Symphogear was originally supposed to start its fifth season, XV, in April 2019. It was pushed back to July 2019.
- Several Toei Animation productions got delayed after their server was hacked in March of 2022.
- In 1975, Sazae-san reran old episodes of the show due to the oil shock increasing production costs.
- World Trigger: Starting in 2015, Ashihara took a break from publishing a chapter every four to five weeks due to the pain from the cervical spondylosis he developed in his neck. The series was transferred to Jump Square in December 2018 after a two year hiatus, where he publishes anywhere between 0 to 2 chapters each month depending on his health.
