Animated series

An animated series is a set of animated works with a common series title, usually related to one another. These episodes typically share the same main characters, some different secondary characters and a basic theme. Series can have either a finite number of episodes like a miniseries, a definite end, or be open-ended, without a predetermined number of episodes. They can be broadcast on television, shown in movie theatres, released direct-to-video or on the internet. Like animated films, animated series can be of a wide variety of genres and can also have different target audiences, from children to adults.

Animated television series are regularly presented and can appear as much as up to once a week or daily during a prescribed time slot. The time slot may very, including morning, like saturday-morning cartoons, prime time, like prime time cartoons, to late night, like late night anime. They may also be broadcast on weekdays (weekday cartoons) or only on weekends.

The duration of each episode varies depending on the series. Traditionally, series are produced as complete half-hour or nearly half-hour programs; however, many are produced as animated shorts of 10–11 minutes, which can then paired with other shorts to fill a set time period. There are also some short series with a length of approximately five minutes; these have recently become more common in anime.

They are sometimes grouped together according to network programming demands. Thus a particular series may appear in a number of formats or time block.

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