The earliest late-night anime titles include Sennin Buraku (1963–1964), Golgo 13 (1971), Lemon Angel (1987), and Super Zugan [ja] (1992).
Sennin Buraku was from the longest-running manga ever, originally serialised in the adult magazine Weekly Asahi Geinō from 1956 to 2014.
The title considered to be the true pioneer of late-night anime is Those Who Hunt Elves (1996) on TV Tokyo.
At the time, following the immense success of Neon Genesis Evangelion, the number of anime productions rapidly increased, with many of those titles coming to late-night slots.
At the same time, BS satellite station WOWOW started their block with the complete version of Cowboy Bebop which had been incompletely broadcast in TV Tokyo's evening timeslot.
In 2001, BS Digital station BS-i began their time slot with Mahoromatic, making the anime one of its holy grail contents.
Anime fans heavily criticized this attitude, and production companies began to avoid broadcasting on Fuji TV.
"[1] Late-night anime broadcasts that are not part of the national network primarily air in the Three Major Metropolitan Areas (Kanto, Kinki, Chukyo) or the Five Major Metropolitan Areas (which include Hokkaido and Fukuoka Prefecture, as well as adjacent Saga Prefecture, where only one private station is present).
Since late-night anime is broadcast during non-peak hours (the standard overall viewership rate on weekdays is approximately 33% at midnight (about half of prime time), and around 12% at 2 AM.