Ask John: Why Did They Cancel Legend of Basara?

Question:
I have recently seen Legend of Basara, and it’s a great anime! However, when I looked for more episodes past 13 I found none. It seems that they stopped airing the show after the 13th episode. Why would they stop such a great show? Do you think they will ever finish it or release the manga in English?

Answer:
Basara wasn’t actually canceled. It was one of the shows that was intended from the beginning to run for only 13 episodes. While 26 episodes is the length of an average quarterly TV season in Japan, 12 or 13 episodes is the average length of a half-season long series. Within the past few years, especially since the advent of direct TV stations like WOWWOW, shorter TV series have become increasingly common. Short TV series like Those Who Hunt Elves, Eatman, Legend of Basara, Himiko-den, Generator Gawl and To Heart were intended from the planning stages to run for only 12 or 13 episodes. In other cases, shows are intended to run for longer or shorter runs. Petshop of Horrors was announced as a four episode series before it ever premiered on television. Likewise, before it ever premiered, Card Captor Sakura was planned to have exactly 70 TV episodes.

It’s actually quite uncommon for an anime series to get canceled on Japanese television. Most of the time, when a series is suffering from poor ratings, such as Tenchi Muyo, Dragonball GT or Sailormoon, its creators are made aware of circumstances and allowed to conclude the series naturally. I’m sure that there are others, but the only anime TV series that I can think of that were genuinely canceled before their originally scheduled final episodes are the first Lupin TV series, the Dirty Pair TV series, the first Mobile Suit Gundam TV series and Gundam X.

In the case of Basara, given the relative age of the series, it’s unlikely that more animation will be produced for it now or in the future. The relative bishounen tone of the Basara manga also makes it a relatively unlikely candidate for translation and publication in the US, although anything is always possible.