Beatless originated as a Light Novel, written by Satoshi Hase, with art by redjuice. The anime adaptation began in January. But the story of a young man and his AI partner, redefining the relationship between humans and androids got bogged down by production issues. This resulted in multiple intermission compilation episodes throughout the show’s run. Four, to be exact. And they weren’t exactly evenly spread throughout the series. This led to the series finally taking a hiatus after the 20th episode (or 16th, if the intermissions aren’t counted) in June. The series later announced that the climax of the series would air as 4 episodes in September. Now those four episodes, dubbed Beatless Final Stage have airdates. They premiere on the 25th, 27th, and 28th, respectively.
The TV anime already faced a steep helping of criticism over its pacing. This likely because of the way in which the story was adapted. Most light novel adaptations pull from multiple volumes at a time. This goes especially for 2-cour (24-episode) anime, such as A Certain Magical Index. But Beatless only has one volume and went for two cours. A move that many felt was the reason behind the show’s slow-burning pace. Some argue that the series is meant to be slower, so the audience has more time to think about the ideas being presented. It’s a part of the show’s more pensive nature.
These kinds of production issues aren’t unheard of. The anime industry deals with incredibly tight deadlines, for one. This often leads to similar issues. A recent example is the TV anime, Maerchen Maedchen. It had major issues from the very beginning. The studio rushed the series out, leading to poor animation quality in later episodes. They took a break to improve the animation, but it didn’t ultimately help. As such, the final two episodes have yet to air. Thankfully, Beatless managed to avoid that fate. The 21st episode of Beatless airs on September 25th, the 22nd episode on the 27th, and the final two episodes on the 28th.