[scudlee]

...I guess I can kinda see how to do that (I think). Might be too messy to be practical, though.

Consider, for example, Chobits. This is the anime-list.xml entry:

Code:

<anime anidbid="12" tvdbid="72070" defaulttvdbseason="1">
  <name>Chobits</name>
  <mapping-list>
    <mapping anidbseason="1" tvdbseason="1">;10-9;11-10;12-11;13-12;14-13;15-14;16-15;17-16;19-17;20-18;21-19;22-20;23-21;24-22;25-23;26-24;</mapping>
    <mapping anidbseason="1" tvdbseason="0">;9-2;18-3;</mapping>
    <mapping anidbseason="0" tvdbseason="0">;1-4;2-1;</mapping>
  </mapping-list>
  <before>;1-27;2-28;</before>
</anime>

Under your scheme using the tvdbseason, you'd end up with

Season 0
- Ep 01 Hibiya & Kotoko Chat (anidb S00E01, tvdb special S00E04)
- Ep 02 Chibits (anidb S00E02, tvdb S00E01)
- Ep 09 Shinbo & Sumomo Chat (anidb S01E09, tvdb S00E02)
- Ep 18 Minoru & Yuzuki Chat (anidb S01E18, tvdb S00E03)

Season 1
- Eps 1-8
- Eps 10-17
- Eps 19-26

Which is all a bit of a jumble. Episodes 9 and 18 in particular, jumping from season 1 to 0, would not be pretty.

...But then I could probably special-case season 0... But then there would still be the issue of correctly placing specials within a season (since it wouldn't be guaranteed to be season 1 any more)... which again might be doable...

Eh, short answer is going to have to be "no", sorry. Too much effort for a single request. If there's more demand, I'll reconsider. I can definitely see how it would be useful for the longer series.

It might gel better with my idea to have certain series flagged in the anime-list to just use the TVDB absolute numbering (which would then cut down on some of the huge mapping lists that need to be kept updated), but I haven't thought that idea through yet (in that scenario, it could just be those series to which the multi-season scheme would optionally apply).

(There is an update coming BTW, I promise. It's basically done, I just keep delaying it for trivial reasons.)