Why do anime production studios keep the rights to anime which they don't plan on continuing? There are a lot of anime that have a first season, but no second season, even though there is enough material to produce another season. There are also a few anime which are dubbed, but only up to a certain point in the series.

So, why do anime companies keep the rights to these anime, instead of passing them on to another company?

For example, here are a few anime which didn't get more seasons:


Mayo Chiki (1 season) - Big cliffhanger
Rosario Vampire (2 seasons) - Another cliffhanger
High School of the Dead (1 season)
The World God Only Knows (3 seasons) - Missed out a lot of content


And some which are dubbed only to a certain point in the series:


Detective Conan (130 episodes) - Stopped due to low ratings
The Familiar of Zero (1 season) - Dubbed no further due to low ratings


There are many more examples. Why are the studios behind these series and dubs reluctant to release the rights to others to continue the series?
Essentially, it all comes down to money.

A lot of series are discontinued simply because the series aren't making enough money - whether that be for the English publishers in the West, or the original publishers in Japan.

Selling the rights of an anime means that they cannot continue to receive any recurring income from the series - even if it isn't that significant. Ongoing income could include licensing the rights to stream the show as part of a package deal to streaming services. For example, a studio licenses a bundle of three shows to CrunchyRoll, when CrunchyRoll really just wants one. [On a side note, this is why there's a load of random movies on Netflix]. Also, if there are new platforms on which to sell their media - such as new online stores or new video systems - studios effectively get another burst of sales, especially if it's digital (much less cost to put the items up for sale).

There isn't a lot of incentive for other companies to buy studio's productions that have proven to be loss-making, especially as the price and the long processes to secure the deal would often be hard to justify. It's a much wiser decision for companies to focus on works that have a solid following.

Every season, the popularity of a show drops as less and less people keep up to date/interested. If a show is profitable in the first season, it doesn't necessarily mean that it can manage with reduced sales the next time round. On the other hand, if the main show is still profitable, they don't really have much reason to sell it either.

It isn't strictly true that shows will never change hands though.

Take Yuru Yuri for example: the third season is going to be animated by TYO Animations, even though the first 2 were animated by Dogakobo. Anime companies tend to be fairly tight-lipped about internal processes and exchanges, so I'm afraid it's quite hard to get more information on why they swapped studios, or the process they had to go through to do it.

There have been several Western examples of "license rescues", which, whilst not explicitly the same as the bare rights (but similar to your dubbing question), allow publication of a discontinued series to continue to be translated. This is quite rare unfortunately - Viz Media explains that they tend to be hard sells. Western companies are similarly tight-lipped, although luckily less so that their Japanese counterparts

Further reading


Anime News Network on U.S. licensing