Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-2.24.220.213-20131116170647/@comment-98.221.42.132-20131207163901

Animation takes a long time to do... most of the animating work for the series seems to be done while the seasons are in-progress, though. It comes out feeling like an animated weekly manga release more than an anime, honestly. If they did more in advance, we could probably expect longer episodes on average, but with the series already in progress, if they tried to change the method now, fans would become impatient.

Keeping the work active while the series is in progress DOES have one other advantage, though: they can more actively respond to criticism and allow fans to take a more active role (such as in the recent contest to design a battle outfit for Velvet), which wouldn't be as feasible if episodes were completed far in advance.