What anime do you wish kept going While people may have wanted more seasons of a show they liked, not always is that possible even if the producers had convinced investors, partners, and advertising sponsors to green light it. For example, at the time the Claymore anime came out, there wasn't that much more of the manga that was available since Claymore is a slow-releasing manga. It would be years before there was enough to make another series of the same length. As for bringing out season 2 of Claymore now that a few years have passed, the anime landscape has changed; both funding and purchasing customers are scarce, so the baseline production resources have to be conserved for shows that do not risk the studio's future (with the exception of Toei which has several unabashed merchandising powerhouses). In the years since Claymore first appeared, a greater percentage of anime fans have switched to pirating anime or reverse importing anime or manga. Naturally, the major loss of customers to the Dark Side negatively affects what will be released as well as the risks the Studio and Sponsors are willing to take. Hence, fewer 26, 48, or 52 episode series are made; instead, lower-risk 12 to 14 episode shows become the norm because that avoids much of the tapering effect from video sales of longer series.
As for high-quality shows that have room plotwise for at least another season, some that I like are:
Juuni Kokki - The Twelve Kingdoms is based on a set of novels. Hopefully by now the author has written more novels for Juuni Kokki.
Macross Plus season 2 includes the tech & politics of changing from production of Megaroad series ships towards the updated Galaxy and subsequent Frontier series fleets. Since Plus already had a large dose of politics and design decision-making in it, a second season with more of the same (only more intense since galaxy/frontier designs are well beyond a fighter fly-off) would dovetail nicely. As that would also be 20 years closer to 2012, perhaps there could be a few flashbacks to how Megaroad #1 and #3 are doing. For those who don't remember, Megaroad #1 has Hunter, Misa Hayase, and Lyn Minmay on it. You can see much of Megaroad #1's traveling route and progress in the first ep of Macross Frontier.
Macross Frontier season 2 would be able to have many divergent directions in exploring the past history of the Zentraedi's partner races (if more relics are found) to the development of another planet similar to Macross Plus's Eden. Perhaps the next evolution of ark fleets would reduce the vulnerability of the Island concept and utilize multiple but smaller islands that would exchange resource imbalances on an interval basis rather than continual basis as shown in Macross Frontier. At that point, it might even be possible to change the one-way concept of the Frontier landings into an actual re-launchable ark similar to the older Megaroad series. If so, then ark fleets could replenish in more timely fashion whereas with the Frontier island concept the replenishment is terribly slow.
Bubblegum Crisis was outstanding at the time it came out. I wish Artmic had more patience with it. And no, this is the original Bubblegum Crisis and not the alternate universe remake of Bubblegum Crisis 2040. The original had been slated for more episodes, but due to production difficulties and various squabblings, it was dropped.
Birdy the Mighty DECODE season 3 could easily have a mix of on-planet and off-planet adventures which I would definitely like, but that would surely stress the imaginations of the animation team and character designers in coming up with the look and feel of alien worlds. The Birdy manga is still ongoing and has gone way way beyond where season 2 of Birdy DECODE ended. The DECODE and manga storylines do not exactly mesh with each other as the anime made significant changes and introduced new chars as well as suppressed the roles of other chars presumably to make a better video version (which I agree with). The manga has a different feel to it that would not have made as good a video if it were exactly turned into an anime. A new scanlator has taken over the Birdy manga, so you should see a whole bunch of manga chapters continuing where the 2Big scanlation group had last stopped translating the manga. If you enjoyed the video, give the manga a try as its storyline is different (since there is no Ryunka in the manga!). The 2Big site has most of the translated chapters available via DDL.
