Nianfan年番
niánfān
The "year-long season" release model: a donghua that airs weekly, essentially without breaks, for a full year or more.
Nianfan borrows the Japanese-derived word fan (番, as in seasonal anime "bangumi") and scales it up: instead of a 12-episode season per quarter, a nianfan commits to roughly 50 weekly episodes a year, every year. Tencent Video pioneered the model with Perfect World in 2021 and moved Battle Through the Heavens and Soul Land into year-round production; bilibili followed with titles like Renegade Immortal.
The format suits 3DCG pipelines, where reusable character assets and motion capture make weekly output sustainable, and it suits thousand-chapter web novels that would take decades to adapt in seasonal chunks. The trade-off is a factory cadence: fans track "annual episode 104" rather than seasons, and production quality can breathe with the schedule.