Dear TMDB, Please Make Frieren a 2 Season Show

I recently visited the TMDB page for Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End to leave the show a review. The first thing to stick out to me was that the show was listed as having one season. ‘That’s strange’ I thought, considering I had just finished watching the 4th episode of season 2. Then I noticed season 1 was listed as having 39 episodes. Season 1 only had 28 episodes. That’s when it hit me. You are counting season 2 as part of season 1 in your official episode ordering.

Every time I visit the page my body and soul are filled with an unpleasant sensation that can only be described as not liking what I’m seeing. I have tried to move past it, to ignore it, but it’s not working. I can’t stop thinking about it.

Current TMDB policy for anime states that official site of a show should be the primary source for episode ordering, and that any show using continuous numbering shall be treated as a single season on TMDB. I urge you to either reconsider this decision or to make an exception for Frieren, as you have for other shows in the past.

It’s not a technical limitation

When looking at the TMDB page for One Piece, you might notice that the most recent episode is noted as 22x1155, but season 22 only has 68 episodes. Curious. It is clear that there are no technical constraints influencing TMDB policy on this matter, since it doesn’t negatively impact One Piece. I can see no reason from a technical standpoint that Frieren could not recieve this same treatment.

The official site splits the show into two groups

While I will concede that the official site for Frieren does list the episodes of season 2 with continuous numbering instead of starting over at 1, it also does explicitly break the show into two distinct stories. It could easily be argued that this is merely a translation issue, and that these two stories are effectively two seasons of the show.

Consistency makes TMDB better

Displaying show information in a predictable manner makes TMDB a better resource for everyone. With consistent treatment across shows, it’s easier to compare them and to quickly find the information being looked for. Seasons are an easy way to express to users that a show was released in multiple distinct groups of episodes, and not continuously. This is true regardless of how the official sources choose to number the episodes. Shows like The Mandalorian are able to use continuous ordering as well as be split into multiple seasons without cuasing issue or confusion. Anime vs. live action is not a meaningful distinction meritting different rulesets for episode ordering. They are both tv shows. You at least can agree to that, given that both anime and american shows have URLs prefixed with /tv.

The stated goal of TMDB is to preserve episodes in the way that they were originally aired. This special treatment of anime barring the use of seasons on continuously numbered episodes goes against that stated goal. No logical viewer, after having waited almost 2 years for more episodes would consider them to still be part of season 1. You can see that in the way the show is talked about online. The community refers to it as season 2. There has been much discussion on this topic already, and it’s clear which way the community feels about Frieren. It deserves two seasons.