With the recent news stories about Season 2 episode titles, one-sentence descriptions, and airdates, it is cool to see that we'll be getting treated to at least the seventh episode of the season before a hiatus.

On occasion, whether it's clearly typed out somewhere on these boards or just thought about, there are at least a few people hoping that this season of Transformers Prime won't have a wonky release schedule like Season 1's. After all, there were probably four or so breaks of at least a couple of weeks between some Season 1 episodes (excluding the somewhat odd spacing between the parts of Darkness Rising).

I've mentioned this a couple of times on some threads about Season 2 some time ago, but I figured I'd address this in a new thread all its own. As many or hopefully all of us know, part of Japan suffered great damage a year ago (as of tomorrow, March 11th) due to the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. As TF: Prime's animation studio of Polygon Pictures is Japanese, it's rather likely that production at that company was halted quite a bit around that time, either directly (did Tokyo suffer much from the disaster?) or indirectly (at least some of the company's workers possibly taking breaks to help in the recovery efforts).

Due to those unfortunate circumstances, The Hub likely began to stretch out the release dates of the episodes that were entirely or close to completion at the time, rather than show them all at a normal pace week after week, and then take a hiatus for a few months. In fact, "Deus ex Machina," which had the first sudden hiatus with a month-long break until "Speed Metal," aired on March 11, 2011.

I wouldn't be surprised if there are still problems in some areas of Japan that were greatly affected by the disaster, but the situation over there is much better now than when it happened. So with these things in mind, the viewers of Transformers Prime - myself included - will hopefully have a more manageable release schedule for Season 2.