Anime Series "Seasons" not interpreted correctly

General Discussions
1

Anime series often do not have different seasons but every season is a new series, e.g. Full Metal Panic! would be season 1, Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu would be season 2, etc but each is, in reality, its own series.
At the moment Plex does either find seasons if the episodes of the different series are in season directories/subdirectories OR, although the directories are named correctly, it sees just one season with e.g. 3 or 4 different versions of the same episode.
This does not only happen with the aforementioned Full Metal Panic but others as well.

2

Plex uses TheTVDB for tv show metadata.
And there they apply the totally reasonable logic that if a show is a direct continuation of a previous show, it is not a new, separate show, but merely a new season.

3

Thank you Otto,
I do understand your point but it does not help me fix my proplem.
Let’s take Gunslinger Girl as an example this time, there is the original anime (just called Gunslinger Girl) and the continuation of that one called Gunslinger Girl -Il Teatrino -.
If I store these two in different directories called as the name of each, Plex will interpret this as just one “season” of Gunslinger Girl with two different versions for each episode. On the other hand, if I store both inside the same directory, calling the first one season 1 and the second season 2, Plex will recognize 2 distinct “seasons” BUT as Gunslinger Girl actually has just 1 season, metadata for the 2nd is not available since it tecnically does not exist.
As you may see then, neither of these options work. Though I recon that the 2nd option is better than the 1st, it is not correct since I lose e.g. all metadata.

4

On TheTVDB, there is a season 2 of Gunslinger Girl. So this is working.
https://www.thetvdb.com/series/gunslinger-girl/seasons/2

5

Hello,
Yes, tvdb shows two seasons but Plex does not. Plex interprets the two seasons as one season with two versions of each episode.

PNG
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You may see in the screenshot that there is a small number at the top left corner indicating this.

6

^^^ of course you must use this method to make it work.

7

Hi!
I did as you sugested and put both ‘seasons’ in a single directory, each into their own subdirectory but the same thing as before happened - I do get two different seasons for this particular series ( Gunslinger Girl) but the second season is not recongnized correctly by Plex. As you stated, tvdb does have all the metadata about each of the two seasons including titles, descriptions, etc. but Plex only retrieves the information for the 1st season not for the 2nd one.
Is there a way for Plex to both recognize the different seasons AND get the related metadata for each episode? I mean, tvdb does have the information, it’s Plex that doesn’t retrieve and apply it for all but the 1st season

8

Please post the contents of the Plex Media Info XML
https://support.plex.tv/articles/201998867-investigate-media-information-and-formats/
of one episode from season 2

9

Here you go:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<MediaContainer size="1" allowSync="1" identifier="com.plexapp.plugins.library" librarySectionID="8" librarySectionTitle="4n1m3" librarySectionUUID="b9e42d72-4f7f-4fbb-9cbe-5536153945bf" mediaTagPrefix="/system/bundle/media/flags/" mediaTagVersion="1555951837">
<Video ratingKey="5930" key="/library/metadata/5930" parentRatingKey="5929" grandparentRatingKey="5415" guid="com.plexapp.agents.thetvdb://78812/1/1?lang=en" librarySectionTitle="4n1m3" librarySectionID="8" librarySectionKey="/library/sections/8" type="episode" title="Episode 1" titleSort="Fratello" grandparentKey="/library/metadata/5415" parentKey="/library/metadata/5929" grandparentTitle="Gunslinger Girl" parentTitle="Season 2" contentRating="TV-14" summary="" index="1" parentIndex="2" rating="7.0" year="2003" thumb="/library/metadata/5930/thumb/1557057509" art="/library/metadata/5415/art/1556987480" grandparentThumb="/library/metadata/5415/thumb/1556987480" grandparentArt="/library/metadata/5415/art/1556987480" grandparentTheme="/library/metadata/5415/theme/1556987480" duration="1507798" addedAt="1416110678" updatedAt="1557057509" chapterSource="media">
<Media id="7583" duration="1507798" bitrate="2844" width="1920" height="1080" aspectRatio="1.78" audioChannels="6" audioCodec="aac" videoCodec="h264" videoResolution="1080" container="mkv" videoFrameRate="24p" audioProfile="he-aac" videoProfile="high">
<Part accessible="1" exists="1" id="8196" key="/library/parts/8196/1416109113/file.mkv" duration="1507798" file="/var/lib/plexmediaserver/4n1m3/Gunslinger_Girl/Gunslinger_Girl_S02/gunslinger_girl_-_il_teatrino_-_S02E01.mkv" size="535945813" audioProfile="he-aac" container="mkv" videoProfile="high">
<Stream id="29246" streamType="1" default="1" codec="h264" index="0" bitrate="2844" language="&#26085;&#26412;&#35486;" languageCode="jpn" bitDepth="8" chromaLocation="left" chromaSubsampling="4:2:0" frameRate="23.976" hasScalingMatrix="0" height="1080" level="50" profile="high" refFrames="9" scanType="progressive" title="AVC-HD" width="1920" displayTitle="1080p (H.264)" />
<Stream id="29247" streamType="2" selected="1" default="1" codec="aac" index="1" channels="6" language="English" languageCode="eng" profile="he-aac" samplingRate="48000" title="AAC" displayTitle="English (HE-AAC 5.1)" />
<Stream id="29248" streamType="2" codec="aac" index="2" channels="2" language="&#26085;&#26412;&#35486;" languageCode="jpn" profile="he-aac" samplingRate="48000" title="AAC" displayTitle="&#26085;&#26412;&#35486; (HE-AAC Stereo)" />
<Stream id="29249" streamType="3" default="1" codec="ass" index="3" language="English" languageCode="eng" title="ASS" displayTitle="English (ASS)" />
</Part>
</Media>
<Director id="18700" filter="director=18700" tag="Morio Asaka" />
<Director id="18202" filter="director=18202" tag="Kenichi Kawamura" />
<Writer id="18698" filter="writer=18698" tag="Junki Takegami" />
<Writer id="18699" filter="writer=18699" tag="Morio Asaka" />
<Extras size="0">
</Extras>
</Video>
</MediaContainer>
10

It is being matched still as duplicate of season 1.
You will have to perform the The Plex Dance ™
to clear this mismatch (which resulted from your earlier attempts with other file names.)

11

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