Jordan

ShiHuangdi1974 all good points. A big thing that I feel is constantly overlooked is that anime is very expensive to produce with surprisingly thin profit margins. The driving reason for most anime is not to make money off the anime but to stay just profitable enough to justify their existence and give a boost to manga sales or sell a product (think of Pokemon, Gundam model kits, etc.) Which is where these IPs really make their money.

I've gotta disagree even as a fellow old head who remembers the excitement of renting Evangelion and Akira VHS tapes from a local shop back in high school and the thrill of watching Toonami after school. Seasonal anime is the way forward. One Piece has become almost unwatchable due to how slow it progresses now because of its commitment to churn out no filler and keep pace with the manga. Naruto had two years of filler in the middle of the freaking ninja wars where you had to go back a bit and rewatch just to remember what the hell was happening. Black Clover hit a wall because the mangaka left weekly shonen jump to prioritize their health and the pacing of the series (IIRC). Fortunately the latter has shifted to a seasonal format.

An episode of anime requires at least 3 standard manga chapters to adapt an episode of content. Weekly series end up having to slow down considerably or deviate from the main story to make up for when they inevitably catch up to the source material. There's few studios that can deal with it well (e.g., I think a fair share of Bleach's filler content was overall enjoyable for what it was when compared to other weekly series).

I'd rather studios put their resources towards just doing a really good job of pumping out a well-adapted story arc each year and then be able to use their resources for other series instead of commiting their best people to weekly deadlines for a single series.

And weekly series also tend to take years to finish and don't necessarily get to the end either. Soul Eater got axed (still praying for that remake after how well Fire Force has done). Kekkaishi got cut short. Flames of Recca. Hell, just look at how long it took for Bleach to finally come back and adapt the final story arc after it was cancelled despite being part of the Big Three. There's tons of examples of weekly series that end before the full source material gets adapted so I'm not sure what argument you're trying to make on that point.