Omake

Omake is おまけ, a bonus or freebie. In a shop it is the small thing added to a purchase to make you feel well treated, and Japanese retail runs on it: the snack with the toy in the box, the sample slipped into the bag. Publishers and studios borrowed the word for whatever they attach to a volume or a disc that is not the main work.

In manga volumes it is usually the author's few pages at the back: rough sketches, a note about deadlines, a joke about the editor. In anime it is a short after the episode, often animated in a squashed style with the cast out of character, or a mini-corner where two rivals share a flat and argue about dishes. Nothing that happens there is binding on the story.

The commercial logic is straightforward. Disc sales carried late-night anime for years, and an omake gives a buyer something the broadcast did not have. Some of these extras outgrew their hosts. Shorts bundled with a series have gone on to their own runs, and a few gag corners are better remembered than the episodes they were attached to.