Does winter get more romantic anime titles than other seasons?

Summary

• Spring sees the highest concentration of romance anime titles, closely followed by summer.

• The trend for more romance anime in spring could be due to the metaphorical idea of ​​“spring” in youth.

• The data shows an increase in total anime titles and romance concentration from 2020 to 2024.

There seems to be something unique about the atmosphere that surrounds each anime season, especially in recent years, where the most anticipated titles of each year appear on platforms like Crunchyroll in the fall. Anime trends come and go, but in recent years it has become increasingly clear that the winter anime season is the time when, on average, we are sent on the most parallel world travel.

Are such observations just due to confirmation bias, or can we say with certainty that certain seasons feature more of a certain type of show than others? More specifically, are there more romance titles in the winter anime season than in spring, summer and fall? Using MyAnimeList's information, let's examine whether this observation has been significant over the past five years.

Determination of the parameters of the examination

Number of novel titles compared to total number of titles

First, we need a lot of raw data. In order not to get too complicated, we will only focus on anime released in the last five years, i.e. all anime from 2020 to winter 2025, and to make it even easier, the research will only cover TV anime, so OVA, performed and theatrical releases don't count. An anime only belongs to the season in which its first episode was broadcast. If continuation seasons do not immediately follow one another, they are also counted.

The raw data in question involves counting the number of titles in each season, starting with Winter 2020, and comparing that count to the number of out-and-out romance titles – that is, anime where romance is the focus. From there, we determine the percentage of “romance concentration” for each of the seasons from winter 2020 to present, and then further determine the average “romance concentration” for each season over the past five years for the final comparison.

The data: Total number of titles per season as of winter 2020

Determining the romance anime concentration of each season

The following table is made up of information from MyAnimeList.net and, as mentioned, only shows the number of romance anime titles aired on television, not OVAs or film releases.

A period at the end of the percentage indicates recurring decimals.

The table above provides a breakdown of the number of romance anime titles per season as of Winter 2020, and what it shows us is particularly interesting. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on animation production (not to mention all aspects of life) is clear to see: 2020 numbers were significantly lower than in subsequent years. 2020 also offered the lowest concentration of romance anime in the study. The concentration of romance anime per year increased slightly between 2020 and 2022, but saw a dramatic increase from 2023 onwards, also reflecting an increase in the total number of new anime titles released in 2023 and beyond.

What does that mean?

And the winner is…

I'm trying to figure out which season overall has the highest concentration of romance anime per season, which by the way isn't winter but rather spring, often closely followed by summer. There was only one year in the sample period where there was actually a significant concentration of romance anime, last year (2024), but by spring it was easily pushed out of the top spot. If anything, the spring season is the time when one can expect a relatively wide selection of romance anime titles. Since we have a whole host of anime titles announced for spring and summer 2025, we could do a preliminary calculation of the numbers and see if spring could conclude the season with the highest concentration of romance anime by the end of the year.

• Spring 2025 – a total of 40 titles planned* | 8 expected romance anime = 20% romance anime

• Summer 2025 – 16 planned* | 2 expected romance anime = 12.5%

*Subject to change as we don't have the full dates yet, but it looks like there is already a high concentration of romance anime in spring 2025. What could improve this research would be if the numbers were first normalized so that the main aspect taken into account is not the average percentage of romance titles, as this value is heavily influenced by the total number of anime. Seasons with more titles, such as Fall, which generally has the highest number of new titles, have a higher probability of having more romance anime titles, leading to bias in the data. What this does give us, however, is a chance to determine whether the observation that some seasons offer more of a certain type of show than others has any weight at all – which it appears to have.

What reason could there be for the romantic satiety of spring?

“The Spring of Youth”

There are so many aspects that go into the eventual planning and airing of a television show and the animation production itself that could delay a title's premiere, but let's assume that every anime title comes out exactly on schedule, then the spring season wins. Anime due to the concentration of romance anime is something that (at least in most cases) can be a direct result of the belief that spring is the best season to air such a show. If that's the case, then what reason could there be for spring to be the best possible time for a production committee to drop its new romance anime? Well, it might have to do with the sentiment behind the saying “Youth is the spring of youth,” a metaphor that conveys the limitless energy, potential, and budding of a romantic connection for the first time in a very delicate but supposedly exciting way Wise describes time in life.

The vast majority of romance anime feature characters who are still teenagers in high school or young adults, and this period of their youth is often looked back fondly on by older characters as they watch the youngsters live their lives and find their way . The term “spring” often refers to the blossoming of romance or the very first love, not to mention the fact that the season of spring has always had a positive connotation because it is the time of warmth after the cold winter, especially but because spring also marks the beginning of the school year, which is always significant for the teenage protagonists who are often the subject of romance anime.