Geass episode 9 postponement

[kaine-maxwell.livejournal.com]

http://forums.narutofan.com/showthread.php?t=375155
Apperently episode 9 of Geass is being postponed from it's June 1st airing due to the earthquakes in China.

EDIT: more proof:
http://animehistory.wordpress.com/2008/05/21/code-geass-r2-episode-09-postponed-to-june-8th/

Comments

[arhel.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I didn't mean to confuse you there =)

Sunday afternoons have things like news, sports, and sometimes family shows. Children-oriented anime (Doraemon or something, maybe) wouldn't be out of place there (though I believe most of those are weekend mornings), but a teen/young adult series is a little out of the usual demographic. A late night anime can expect an average rating from 1% to 5% or so, whereas a mainstream program generally gets closer to 10%. I can get more detailed numbers later but I will resist surfing 2-chan at work right now ^^;

The original run wasn't as popular as Gundam Seed, certainly, but was quite respectable for a late night anime and sold a lot of DVDs and merchandise. It's a little too early to tell how R2 is doing in that department since the DVDs aren't out yet and there's the additional complication of people maybe waiting for Blu-Ray instead.

I admit to not really remembering whether the season 1 recap episodes were planned or not. This new one definitely wasn't (some of the TV magazines didn't get time to change the information, even), which worries me a little. The actual causes and eventual effects are just speculation right now, so we'll just have to hope for the best. I just hope they don't do weird things to the plot or have a drastic drop in production values because of the ratings.

[lulu-quality.livejournal.com]

I'm looking at a lot of different pieces of information right now and it doesn't seem like the ratings are that big of a deal. The main problem is with the time slot: Sundays are the main day off for people (Saturdays are half-days for students). It's really hard to come home at that time on a Sunday with jobs, friends, a life, etc. Instead, they can just watch it online on a site like Biglobe later (Biglobe posts the episodes 7 hours later after broadcast). Plus, the video-streaming services that provide R2 have it as the #1 anime watched online on their lists. All the videos of Geass on Biglobe basically make up the top 18 most watched anime vids with the one exception of episode 4 of Macross at #16 or #17. DVD sales are great, so it's not a problem. What could be a problem is using up one of the allotted episode slots. While I'm slightly disappointed about not seeing the episode sooner, It's perfectly understandable why and I respect their decision.

[arhel.livejournal.com]

I admit I do not know enough about the inner workings of Japanese public broadcasting contracts to say just how much the ratings affect a show. Some of the revenue has to come from commercial contracts with sponsors, but how much and whether strong merchandise sales can override low ratings is something else.

Don't get me wrong, I am certainly not complaining about the way they do things or even really mind the delay, I just hope it is a one-time delay rather than being a sign of further difficulties.