TV schedule
AniDB's anime entries allow for a number of resources to be added. This article in particular deals with one of them, the Japanese TV schedule, and with how it's useful to add and edit data for recent anime and episodes.
The Japanese TV schedule
Since circa 2002, Japan has made our lives a bit easier by maintaining a TV schedule. It has a lot of information, but what we specifically want from it is a per-show page stating when each episode airs on which TV station in Japan. Its main page can be found here. Normally, for every anime where that applies (that is, for TV anime aired since its creation), we want to have a link to its page on it. Just as every other resource, it will show up in the Resources line of the main information table for the anime, to the right of the anime pic, and, unless renamed, it will be called Schedule.
Adding a TV schedule link
- The description is missing or severely incomplete.If you can, please help by explaining it.
Understanding the TV schedule table
Now let's assume there is a link to the schedule for the show you want, and you want to use it to add, update or fix whatever sort of information. Here's a quick explanation of how to extract that information. Let's take the schedule for Code Geass R2 as an example.
- There should be a picture here to illustrate what is being said.If you can, please help by adding one.
The columns on that page are:
Name in Japanese | Description | Explanation (if required) / Notes |
---|---|---|
チャンネル | TV channel | Of very little if any importance to AniDB. |
開始日時 | Slot date/time | The date/hour the time slot time begins, given in the "year-month-day(weekday) hour:minute" format. As explained in several articles in this wiki, Japan is a funny country that has strange hours such as 26:00; if you see, for example, a slot allocated for 2nd of August, 26:00, it's actually 3rd of August, 02:00. The weekday is given in abbreviated form as a single kanji and is irrelevant for AniDB. |
分 | Slot duration | Duration of the TV slot given in minutes. That time also accounts for commercial breaks; a 30-minute slot generally means a (post-rounding) 25-minute episode, not a 30-minute one. |
回数 | Episode number | If it's empty, it generally means the anime's producers decided that episode is a special that goes outside the regular count. Those are filed as S specials in AniDB, unless the mods say otherwise. |
サブタイトル/コメント | Episode title and/or notes | Check the actual content before blindly adding what's written there as an episode title! It may be a note. |
フラグ | Flags | Standard sorts of notes that get used often in the schedule. See the information on them below. |
更新日 | Date of last update | Given in the "year-month-day" format. Useful for when you're trying to keep information up to date and things start to change. |
- | ? | Use unknown. |
Please note that adding episodes over one month in the future is frowned upon, even if the time slots are already scheduled, because, as the "last updated on" field might hint, things may always change in the future.
Flags
- The description is missing or severely incomplete.If you can, please help by explaining it.
Flags show their tooltips when you hover your mouse pointer over them. Here's a less-than-complete explanation of hopefully all of them. There should be a pic for each flag; feel free to add those pics.
- There should be a picture here to illustrate what is being said.If you can, please help by adding one.
Flag | TL | Tooltip | Tooltip TL | Pic / Visual Descrip. | Description | Explanation / Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
新 | new | 新番組 | new show | pink square | Broadcast start | Appears when a show begins broadcast, not necessarily for the first time (i.e. it also appears when the show begins reairing). |
終 | end | 最終回 | last episode | purple square | Broadcast end | Denotes the final episode. The schedule only counts the, well, scheduled episodes, which isn't all of them until it also specifically says it's the final one. The last episode, when confirmed final, will display that flag; until then, the schedule's episode count is tentative and may change. It also appears in the last reaired episode when a rebroadcast ends prematurely. |
再 | again | 再放送 | rebroadcast | light blue (purpleish?) on white square | Rebroadcast | (*) Appears when a show is being rebroadcast. Does not apply to secondary broadcasts in secondary channels a few hours or days after the initial one. |
! | ! | 先週無かったか、時間が違う | (pending a good tl) | red square | Slot change | (*) Seems to indicate when the previous week did not hold the same program in that time slot; more specifically, it appears to show up whenever the show begins airing, after a week when it did not air, or when the time changed from the previous week, and possibly also when the slot duration changes. |
注 | note | 注意 | caution | green square | Note | (*) Appears to be used with specials and marathons runs. |
(*): In this table, a (*) in the explanation column denotes the need for further research to confirm the data provided.