One hour anime- why not?

Compare a one hour TV show in the US to a half hour anime episode.  The one hour show will have plenty of time to develop setting and characters, almost like a miniature movie.  It can spend minutes on setting mood, or it can drag on just for the sake of filling up one hour.

Half hour anime eps tend to fill everything up within their alloted time, which is a good thing, but in the case of long drawn out multi-season series, why not tell the story in one hour instead?  The breaking up of half an hour every episode can be jarring when the story could be told in longer sections.  The downside, like US shows, is that entire episodes may just fill an hour because it has to, wheras a half hour filler episode is much more bearable.

Shows that could use one hour episodes include slower paced series, or series that drag on forever with no end in sight, such as Dragonball Z and Inuyasha.  Others, such as Rurouni Kenshin or perhaps Gundam, could use one hour to further develop plot, mood, and characters without resorting to frequent episode breaks.

Stupid idea.  Who can bear 1 whole hour of Drag-on Ball Z when it's already a strain to watch at half an hour?  Kids will tire of the anime so fast it not funny. (Or at least the Japanese kiddies will. Dunno about Americans since we bombarded with cartoon blocks with back to back episodes at times.)  Another thing to consider is it's a lot of work to produce a half hour episode.  There's simply not enough time and budget for most animation studios to do that kinda thing every week.

It might be ok for some original anime, but since most come from manga that are paced for chapter length story segments anyway (which are about half the length of an anime episode), pacing's not really a problem.  If shows drag too much, or not enough, that's pretty much one of two problems.  It might just be that the original manga was poorly paced, and it's the author's fault.  More like is the possibility that the people that adapted the manga to anime wanted to either cram a lot of plot into too few episodes (13, for instance), or they're purposefully trying to slow down the anime so it doesn't catch up with the manga (as often happens in shows like naruto or DBZ).

I'd guess that due to the often hectic lifestyle of many Japanese, many people may not have a whole hour at a time to devote to watching a show.  Half an hour is more manageable.  Notice how morning shows have a clock dispayed in the corner to let everybody know they're late? 

Well, most of the Japanese TV dramas (dorama) are one hour show...

>>4

Don't tell me that's seriously why morning TV has that clock there. I've noticed that thing for a couple years now and just thought it was.... like, just there. Like it was the policy of the network to put the clock there, kind of like on the US morning news you see a clock too.

Though I guess we might actually do it for that reason too....

One example of a 1hr anime tv series:
ttp://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=1116

Figure 17: Hikaru to Tsubasa.. TV anime that was slotted for 1hr per ep. It was mildly successful, despite the gimmicky nature of the broadcast. Originally aired in 2001. Licensed by Media Blasters in 2003.

Figure 17 aired once a month for 12 months...a strange broadcast indeed.

There are plenty of 45-60 minute OVAs.