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It's Always Spring

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"Once upon a time, there was a magical place where it never rained. The end."
Mr. Sir, Holes

Think back to the last cartoon series you watched. Did you see red, orange and yellow leaves coming off the trees? Was there snow on the ground? Was school out of session?

If you answered no to all of these, and furthermore, can't even remember the last time any of these things occurred outside of a seasonal episode, then that's because It's Always Spring.

Cartoon characters tend to have a Limited Wardrobe, which generally does not lend itself to cold weather. Furthermore, school is often a plot element in cartoons about kids, so that rules summer out of the question. Finally, it is probably easier to just put green leaves on every tree and to never draw leaves lying on the ground, so ultimately, the lack of seasonal change is a matter of convenience.

Occasionally, the hero may visit another country which may specifically be hotter or colder than their hometown, resulting in a clothing and scenery change unique to that location. A season in another country heavily depends on its location: if it's Africa, Southern Asia, or some resort island, it's always warm summer, never the rainy winter. When it's Russia or Scandinavia, it'll be always covered in snow, even if the plot is set in July. However, almost without exclusions, It's Always Spring in the main character's hometown.

This may also have to do with the demographic appeal to make the audience relate more, as springs tend to occur even in places with both low and high extremes in the climate.

See also Dreaming of a White Christmas, Snowed-In, and Heat Wave.

Outside of animation, this is a consequence of Hollywood Provincialism. In Southern California, where most production takes place, the weather really is spring-like most of the year (at least, it is to everyone else). This was, in fact, a big part of why so much film production moved to Hollywood to begin with: unlike New Jersey (the center of the American film industry during The Pre Hollywood Era), the warm, sunny Mediterranean climate of Los Angeles allowed for year-round film production outdoors. It also occurs with shows and movies filmed in Louisiana or Georgia, two states in the American South that offer generous tax credits for filmmakers and have very warm climates; temperatures below 60 degrees Fahrenheit (15°C) (or, God forbid, 50 degrees (10°C)) are generally considered chilly. Outside of climate, most productions would rather film as much of a show or movie at the same time as possible, rather than wait for seasons to change, so even if the story has a seasonal shift, that may not be evident on the sets.

Christmas Episodes almost invariably shift the setting to winter. Forest of Perpetual Autumn is a specific aversion usually found in video games.


Examples

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    Anime and Manga 
  • Fullmetal Alchemist (2003): With the exception of snow in episode 6, the weather seems to stay the same throughout the course of the series, with the characters wearing the same outfits year-round. This is in contrast to the manga, which has characters gradually wear warmer clothing up until the Time Skip.
  • A Running Gag in The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You.
  • Justified in Neon Genesis Evangelion, where Second Impact shifted the axis of the Earth such that there are no longer seasons in the modern sense. This is subtly hinted at by the constant droning of summer cicadas in background scenes where the kids are nonetheless attending the normal school year(in which they wear short-sleeved summer uniforms year round), and more humorously by Pen-Pen being a variety of penguin who've adapted to a warmer climate. This may be best illustrated by the expression "... and tomorrow it will snow", which has apparently taken on the same meaning as "when pigs fly" in Japan.
  • Save for flashbacks, it's always early summer in Higurashi: When They Cry because the same month, June of 1983, is repeating over and over, thanks to the influence of a local deity who refuses to let all the main characters stay dead.
  • Pokémon: The Series: Due to the show operating Comic-Book Time, with Ash never aging, the Pokémon World is always in a summer season (due to early summer being seen as the ideal world for children adventures). In every region Ash travels to, the weather is almost always sunny and bright unless the plot demands otherwise. In Pokémon the Series: Black & White, we do see the change from spring to summer in the Deerling but otherwise the weather remains the same.
  • Inuyasha: Despite months passing in-universe, it's always sunshine and blue skies in both the medieval and modern era. The only exception is the very occasional rain shower when it's convenient to the plot.
  • Anime in school settings is usually forced to follow the sequence of the year. Ready examples are The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and even the otherwise rather minimalistic Doki Doki School Hours. They do not, of course, always show it, and in many we are simply supposed to take their word for it that time is passing. In some cases, montages of the semester readily don't show any other season (even when it's implied that a year has passed).
  • Cheerfully Lampshaded in Ouran High School Host Club, in which it is always whatever season suits the plot of the moment; text boxes in the manga politely ask the reader to ignore the fact that, once again, nobody has moved up a grade.
    • While it is usually always spring (or whatever season is most convenient), as of the last half of the manga this has been mostly averted. We see a summer festival, which eventually brings us to autumn, followed by winter with a New Year's outing... and then finally to spring again around chapter 70. From 70 on it appears we have real chronological time. As a bonus, when the seasons change so do the casts' outfits depending on the weather.
  • Averted in the first two Bleach movies, the first of which clearly takes place in the Fall complete with color changing leaves and the second which seems to take place in early Winter (with leafless trees and characters dressed in winter gear when not in uniform) since it was a Day in the Limelight movie for Hitsugaya.
  • Justified in Clamp School Detectives, where the ridiculously fancy middle-school campus is kept spring all year long with "a revolutionary cooling system". The Detectives like to build detailed playscapes of different seasons in their office when they want a change.
  • Justified in One Piece where different islands have a specific season motif. Changing seasons exist on those islands, but will vary according to the central climate of the island.
  • The Artificial Island in Real Drive is going through a perpetual summer. Justified by the use of weather nanites, and eventually turned dark when the weather nanites invites Gaia's Vengeance upon the island.
  • In Naruto, the Leaf Village is almost always depicted with spring/summer weather, even though the databooks give character ages establishing that Part 1 happened over the course of about a year of time and Part 2 up to the start of the Hunt for Itachi was about six months. Granted, it's part of the Land of Fire, so they might just have a warm climate. In the Shadow of the Anbu arc, it is finally shown to transition through seasons as Kakashi guards Kushina's well-being throughout the lengthy pregnancy of her son.
  • Chapters 15 through 138 of Sket Dance all take place in the autumn.
    Narrator: And this long, long, really, really long autumn comes to an end...
  • In Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, it's always either sunny or rainy, but never cold or snowy. Presumably cyborgs aren't bothered by weather—though if they use hydraulic actuators they might have to change their working-fluid in colder weather—but it's still a little jarring.
    • Even in winter, much of Japan doesn't get much snow—and without snow it's difficult to tell how cold it is. Occasionally the characters' breath is visible, usually at night.
    • As the supplemental materials say, most of the action centers in the new Japanese capital which absorbed both Osaka and Kobe, at least in the manga. Kansai region is generally quite hot — while it's not unusual to have snow in Tokyo, you'd be hard-pressed to find it in Osaka outside of a freezer.
  • Whenever we see Earth in Saturn Apartments we see no signs of winter or fall. Since it takes place in the future, global warming might be the cause.
  • Although there is very little schooling in the series, the majority of Dragon Ball takes place around May. This is due to arcs often occurring over the course of only a few days, before Toriyama time skips the story ahead a few years.
    • Different seasons are shown by changing location, as with the Muscle Tower portion of the Red Ribbon arc, where Goku gets bitterly frozen as he didn't think to dress warmer for cold/snowy weather.
  • In Yami No Matsuei it is eternally spring in the world of the dead, right down to the cherry blossom trees always being in bloom. In the beginning of the anime, it is shown that it is fall in the world of the living (thanks to the trees) before it cuts to the eternal cherry blossoms of the underworld.

    Asian Animation 
  • All of Simple Samosa takes place during the summer, as the characters are seen swimming in a chutney lake (with chutney, a sort of sauce/gravy commonly served with certain Indian foods, mostly replacing water in this show since all the characters are mostly Indian Anthropomorphic Food) and no distinctly season-specific features such as colorful fallen leaves or snow ever appear.

    Comic Books 

    Fan Works 
  • In How I Became Yours, there is never a hint of seasons changing. Eight months pass, and it's spring at the beginning, middle, and end of it.

    Film - Live-Action 
  • The events of X-Men: Days of Future Past center around a real-life event that took place in January 1973, yet various characters are seen wearing light clothes and short sleeves outdoors, without a single inch of snow in sight.

    Literature 
  • Justified in Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn book and movie, since it is eternally spring in any forest where a unicorn lives. When the eponymous unicorn leaves her forest to travel, however, she has to endure changing seasons just like any mortal.
  • Justified in Thief of Time, where it is explained that the History Monks have frozen their monastery grounds in time during the season when the cherry blossoms are falling, because they believe that to be the most beautiful time of year. Ironic, since Asian cultures find cherry blossoms beautiful because of how short the time is they're in bloom. Fixed at the end of the book. Lu-Tze got the entire point that Wen missed.
  • The Lost Hero has the characters heading to Walnut Creek, CA in the middle of December. The weather is described as 'brisk' but also as if 'winter wasn't a concept'( forget the real wording) and Mt. Diablo has no snow on it. It gets very cold in WC in the winter — not enough to snow, thanks to the wind currents off the ocean, but it's not 'warm' in the morning either. And there's often snow on MT. Diablo — enough that hikers can't climb. Another fun mention was the Berkeley hills, holding back the fog. While they do that, they are only 'golden brown' in the late spring, summer, and fall. The rest of the time, they are green.
  • Villains by Necessity: Explained as a side effect of Good having such a stranglehold on the world; the characters note that it should by all rights be autumn, but the sun only stays up longer (to the point where Kaylana's attempt to tell time by the sun's position is four hours off) and the flowers only get more abundant.
  • A major part of the world in A Song of Ice and Fire, where seasons can and do often last years at a time. One of the major noble house's words are a warning to remember that while hot weather lasts a long time in Westeros, Winter is Coming, so the population should remain wary.

    Live-Action TV 

By Network:

  • USA Network's "blue skies" strategy was named in reference to this trope. The idea was to create light, breezy dramas with bright visual palettes in sunny locations. Examples include Burn Notice, set in Miami, and Psych, set in Santa Barbara, CA. Mr. Robot, the thematically and visually dark drama set in the often-overcast New York City, effectively signaled an end to this strategy.

By Series:

  • Corner Gas is eternally spring or summer, despite being filmed on site. Of course, winters are quite brutal in Saskatchewan, and the creator/writer/star Brent Butt has expressed his lack of interest in filming in winter (aside from the Christmas episode).
  • Criminal Minds transports California weather all over the country, rarely if ever showing the characters trudging through snow when they're visiting snowy places in snow season. In "All That Remains", they even acknowledge that it's 20F outside, yet there's green grass everywhere and a scene in the pouring rain.
  • Deadwood is set in South Dakota and Time Skips over winter to avoid taking place in the snow.
  • Degrassi takes place in, is filmed in, and is written, produced and directed entirely by people who live in Toronto, and is an example of this due to a shooting schedule that coincided with summer vacation in the Degrassi Junior High days and now runs roughly April-November.
  • Desperate Housewives takes place in an ambiguous location that is always perfectly bright and green out all year long. Including winter. In fact in all eight seasons it's shown raining hardly more than twice ever, save for the spontaneous tornado attack one day.
  • Doctor Who:
    • Christmas special "The Runaway Bride" was obviously shot in the summer, as evidenced by the green leaves and the fact that Donna is unbothered by running around London on Christmas Eve in a sleeveless dress, not to mention being far too sunny.
    • "The Unicorn and the Wasp" deals with the famous disappearance of Agatha Christie, which occurred in December 1926. You wouldn't guess the month right by watching the episode, though, which for all appearances seems to be set in the summertime.
  • In one episode of Gilmore Girls, Rory and Dean spend the night in the theatre in the middle of winter. When they wake up at 5am to go running home, it's perfectly light out. Now, Gilmore Girls takes place in Connecticut. It is never that bright out at 5am during the winter.
    • In general, this show is an inversion of the trope. Amy Sherman-Palladino did not approve of the early/mid-00's fashion of midriff-baring shirts, and set most of the episodes in the fall or winter to justify other fashions. By the later seasons, that fashion had faded, so Rory goes on Spring Break her freshman year of college and the revival goes through all four seasons, spring and summer included.
  • A wildly inaccurate example in Greek. The show is set in a college in Ohio. The second part began after winter break. The finale was spring break. In between, Not. One. Snowflake. Not even a heavy coat. In Ohio. Where winters are known to kill people. The incredibly weak justification? "It's a warm part of Ohio". Apparently the warm part of Ohio is located in southern California.
  • Haven: Despite being set in Maine, the first four seasons take place only in spring or summer. There's even an Out of Holiday Episode that manages a Christmas in July filmed in temperate weather. The season 3 finale takes this to an egregious level. It's supposed to be set in late November/early December based on an earlier Halloween Episode, but all the exterior shots are lush and green, and the cast feel quite comfortable in light jackets. In winter. In Maine. The final season, which had twice as many episodes as the previous ones, finally had the cast filming in a Nova Scotia winter and everyone bundled up in parkas.
  • An odd live-action example: in the Australian soap Home and Away, it's always summer in Summer Bay. Even when the actors are filming in the middle of winter next to the strong cold winds of the ocean, their wardrobe reflects a summer climate. No wonder they have trouble emoting — they're too busy trying not to shiver. This is justified only by the nature of filming: episodes filmed in winter won't air until mid-spring.
  • It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia not surprisingly fits this trope. It's always a sunny, warm day outside, despite the fact that Philadelphia can get quite cold. Even when news reports warn of a huge storm bearing down on the city, the weather is perfect and Frank notes, "It's warm as shit!" Only the direct-to-DVD Christmas episode has the cast actually start wearing winter clothing, and even then the weather is still sunny. The pilot for the show was titled It's Always Sunny on Television, referencing this trope directly.
    • One of the greatest examples is "The World Series Defense" which has the gang trying to get to game 5 of the 2008 World Series on a bright day. In reality, it was cold and pouring rain that day to the point the game had to be called off mid-way through and replayed two days later. In the world of the show, it was still fantastic weather.
  • On LazyTown, Stephanie is apparently staying for the summer. So, the show takes place in summer, right? Well, there's two winter-themed episodes, and an episode where they go to school. Looks like Steph is staying longer than we thought.
  • Legends of Tomorrow: In Season 5, the Legends time-travel to France shortly after the death of Marie Antoinette, but still in the same year. The thing is, the Real Life Marie was executed in the fall, so the setting should be also in autumn or early winter. However, the one exterior shot looks more like spring or summer.
  • Make It or Break It takes place in Boulder, Colorado and yet we never see any snow or even any characters wearing jackets. It seems like the show only takes place during the spring/summer.
  • Monarch of the Glen always appears to be in spring or summer. One exception is when Archie is forced to stop paying staff to cut costs, so Lexie refuses to turn on the heating; resulting in the occupants of the house wrapped up in winter scarves and hats.
  • While you do occasionally see snow in Northern Exposure, it's pretty scarce, considering the show is set in Alaska. Given that the Arctic Circle is just up the road a stretch, daylight should be rare for part of the year.
  • Old/New City of Sanctuary never sees any kind of weather change except rain, despite the fact that the series is shot in friggin' Vancouver. The characters do, however, alternate between long and short sleeves.
  • Schitt's Creek takes plays in a rural town somewhere in what is probably Canada, but with the exception of the Christmas Episode, it's always bright and sunny. This is despite David Rose's affinity for sweaters and long sleeves.
  • Sex and the City has its characters living in perpetual spring in almost every episode until the fourth season. They didn't show New York winter until The Movie. Even in snow, the characters... still dressed the same way they had in all the episodes of the show. Brrrr!
  • Stargirl "Summer School Chapter Eight" Rick's teacher wishes him a happy 4th of July, and near the end of the episode there is a fireworks display. However, if you look at the landscape, all of the hardwood trees are bare of their leaves, and everyone is dressed as though it's late autumn and time for Thanksgiving.
  • Stranger Things: All of the trees still have their leaves as late as November.
    • The second episode of Season 2 has a scene where El hides from the cops in the woods at night which was clearly shot during summer since all the leaves are freshly green.
    • It's most pronounced in the Season 2 finale, which has an epilogue set in mid-December yet still has trees covered in leaves and characters dressed for early autumn.
  • Trailer Park Boys is almost always set in the spring/summer (other than the Christmas special), to get around the production nightmare of trying to shoot the show in the Nova Scotia winter (and so Walking Shirtless Scene Randy doesn't freeze to death). This is worked into the plot; as fall approaches, the season ends and the boys end up in jail (as a rule), and return to the park in the spring when released.
  • The X-Files. When the agents are at home, the weather seems to be a nondescript season of mild weather. Partially justified in that both agents live around Washington D.C., which tends to exhibit milder winter weather and seasonal change than other parts of the country. The temperature is really the most noticeable thing, though even the average temperature in the winter is in the 40s.
  • ‘’Kim's Convenience’’ is yet another Canadian show where it is always spring or summer. Toronto tends to be more mild than other parts of the country but there are still several months out of the year where heavy coats or least light jackets are needed.

    Music 
  • This is the reason the songs "Winter Wonderland", "Let It Snow", "Baby, It's Cold Outside", "Sleigh Ride" and, hell, even "Jingle Bells" are considered Christmas songs, despite not mentioning Christmas at all. On the other hand, it's also probably the only reason anybody still remembers them at all.
  • Albert Hammond's "It Never Rains in Southern California" warns of the disappointment that this misconception can cause. In this case, the "rain" is more of a metaphor for being a down-on-your-luck, out-of-work entertainer.
  • Olivia the Band, a rock group from Hawaii, has an album called Where We Come From It Never Snows. While true in the populated areas, the mountains Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea on the Big Island see snow most winters, and even Haleakala on Maui can get it on rare occasions.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Warhammer: The realm of Argwylon (known poetically as "the Moonspring Glades") in the Forest of Athel Loren is magically locked in perpetual springtime. Its elven inhabitants dress accordingly in bright spring colours, and maintain an atmosphere of hope and gaiety. It has similarly season-locked counterparts in three other realms of Athel Loren: Arranoc (summer), Tirsyth (autumn) and Atylwyth (winter).
  • An interesting example is the Magic: The Gathering plane Lorwyn, in which it is literally always spring.
    • For some long period of time, at some point it turns into a dark always fall/winter and is known as Shadowmoor.
    • Magic certainly shows seasons, though. Ice Age was one of the earliest sets, and has had a few subsequent sets that show non-spring settings.

    Video Games 
  • In outside dungeons in Dark Cloud 2/Dark Chronicle, it sometimes rains at different frequencies, but it never snows. And it never even rains anywhere else except in the opening movie.
  • The Grand Theft Auto series has this problem, although it is averted in Vice City and San Andreas, which are set much closer to the equator than GTA3. The fictionalized New York of GTA3 never changes climactically despite the significant amounts of time that can pass in game (it is actually possible to check how many days have passed in game from the menu).
    • In Liberty City Stories, the game is clearly set in late fall and it was meant to snow on occasion, but either due to programming bugs or the feature being Dummied Out, it never does. It just rains with unusual frequency. (Snow can be placed back into the game with a cheat device.)
    • Grand Theft Auto IV is set sometime in Autumn, as the leaves are for the most part gold and brown, and most of the characters wear coats.
  • As of Fallout 4, no game in the long-running Fallout series has ever featured seasons although it's not unusual for a year or more to pass In-Universe while playing any of the gamesnote . The weather is always the same combination of sunshine, clouds, rain, thunderstorms and dust storms, with the occasional radiation storm thrown in for flavor. Actual snowfall has yet to appear outside of an elaborate combat simulation set in the distant past, and since it's virtually impossible to determine what season any given game is currently in, it might as well be what passes for eternal springtime in this devastated After the End Crapsack World.
  • Downplayed in Bully. The season changes as the storyline goes on, but only as the storyline goes on. Also, after its end, the "Endless Summer" part starts.
  • The Sims 2 was the first Sims game to introduce the changing of seasons with their expansion pack Seasons (clever name, right?). Before Seasons, however, and even in the original version of the Sims, it was spring all the time, and the Sims could wear whatever they wanted to whenever they wanted to, which really wasn't all that bad. There just isn't enough time in the Sim day to worry about the weather being too cold for bikinis, and it gives the people who create clothing mods a lot of creative freedom.
    • This was also averted to a degree in the Vacation/On Holiday expansion of the original The Sims, where specific vacation locales were either in the middle of a blazing hot summer or a cold winter, and the characters' outfits changed to reflect that. Of course, the weather in THOSE regions is a constant as well...
    • The eternal spring was lampshaded in one of the expansions when you get the meteorologist job.
      • For Vacation, mentioned above, it's semi-justified by being a mountainous island: the winter-like lots are up on the snow-cap, the temperate lots are in a forest up on the mountain's side, and the summer lots are down on the beachy shore.
  • In The Sims 3, with Seasons, you can invoke this by turning off all seasons except for spring, as well as turning off all weather/precipitation. There will also be only Love Day (the In-Universe equivalent of Valentine's Day), and the Spring Festival will also be the only festival occurring.
  • In Persona 4, it's always the rainy season, as it's guaranteed to rain every couple of weeks or so for matters of plot convenience. Golden is an aversion, since while the main part of the original game ends on December 26 before jumping ahead to when the protagonist leaves town on March 20, Golden shows the winter months, with Inaba blanketed in snow from January through mid-February. As a result of this, the cast dresses for the winter, the player can no longer garden(but can dig for insects) and the cast goes on a skiing trip.
  • In FarmVille, there are no seasons; it is apparently always the best time to grow whatever crops you want. There's a cosmetic purchase that makes everything white, like snow, but it has no effect on gameplay.
  • In the first four generations of the Pokémon series, each region seems to take place in a specific season. Kanto takes place in the spring, Johto in the fall, Hoenn in the summer, and Sinnoh in the winter. (The trope is averted in Pokémon Black and White and subsequent games; see below.)
  • The Elder Scrolls:
    • Happens due to Gameplay and Story Segregation in Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim. Officially, there are seasons (the names of the months are derived from agricultural practices and meteorological phenomenon, e.g. First Seed, Last Seed, Frost Fall, etc.), but in the games the season is apparently keyed to the location rather than the time of year. Morrowind always has a late spring/early summer feel, with it implied to be warm with frequent rains and fogs, while Solstheim from Bloodmoon has a "dead of winter" feel. Oblivion has more of a height-of-summer feel everywhere but the northernmost regions. Skyrim always has a late autumn/early winter feel.
    • Of course, Nirn isn't Earth, so these consistent seasons may have some justifications. Strictly speaking, it's not really even a planet (cosmology in The Elder Scrolls is bizarre, to say the least).
  • In the Neverwinter Nights series the seasons never change regardless of how many times the In-Universe Game Clock cycles from day to night.
    • Despite the name, Neverwinter does get snow in the pen-and-paper game. Its name comes partly from the fact that the river never freezes, due to being warmed by a dormant volcano upstream inhabited by fire elementals.
    • In the videogames there is another explanation for the name given: the city was founded by the hero Never and his followers and allies, and was originally just a winter camp.
  • Lunarosse plays it pretty straight, as it looks like spring the entire game except for one plot event where winter hits and the characters celebrate the holidays at their snow-covered base. Since it goes right back to its usual look after, the implication is winter lasted less than a month. Of course, this is more the limits of RPG Maker and not having to remake every area in the game for a winter climate.
  • Yes, Your Grace: There are a few verbal hints of the passage of seasons, including Eryk judging a contest celebrating the arrival of spring very late in the game. However, the castle's vegetation never changes and rainy days tend to happen off-screen to create some of each week's petitioner demands. It also never gets too hot or too cold for anyone's usual outfit.
  • The first part of Fire Emblem: Three Houses covers an entire year in the continent of Fodlan, and the second part covers from four to eight months, depending on the route, but it never seems to snow anywhere, even in the cold northern lands of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus.
  • Bug Fables: It has been confirmed by one of the developers that Bugaria is canonically in a state of permanent spring, except for the Golden Hills region, which is a Forest of Perpetual Autumn due to magic. The game itself opens after rain has passed (causing rocks to fall and block off entrance to the Ant Kingdom), but the weather seen in the story proper is always sunny.
  • Most Mega Man Battle Network games seem to take place over a school year with weeks or months passing between the various plot incidents, but the appearance of ACDC Town never changes, with the trees always being green and no snow falling. This is possibly justified by the fact that, despite being based on Japan, the region of Electopia seems to be closer to the Equator than its real-life counterpart if a world map seen in Mega Man Battle Network 4: Red Sun and Blue Moon is anything to go by. And, of course, when Lan travels to the Russia-inspired nation of Sharo in 4, it seems to be in a state of perpetual winter, despite this not being the case with other countries located in the north like Netopia and YumLand. Averted with the second game, as mentioned below.

    Webcomics 

    Western Animation 
  • Ed, Edd n Eddy explicitly takes place during summer vacation for the first four seasons, with the exception of the three holiday specials. After it was Uncancelled, the fifth season took place in autumn, while the Cut Short sixth season was in winter. This is lampshaded in the episode "Out With the Old, In With the Ed", where the first act is spent with Eddy's attempt to fool everyone into thinking that school wasn't about to start up again by changing all of the neighborhood calendars to July, rigging the cul-de-sac with central heating, and painting the leaves green so he could keep up his daily school-free scamming forever.
  • Every single episode of Razzberry Jazzberry Jam takes place in the springtime. Yes, even the Halloween Episode, somehow.
  • Most of the time, it is usually spring in Recess. The trees are always green, even in the Halloween special “Terrifying Tales of Recess.” In the Christmas episode “Yes Mikey, Santa Does Shave,” the weather is hot, except at the end when it snows.
  • Both used and lampshaded in The Simpsons:
    • During one Valentine's Day episode, all the kids wore their usual T-shirts and shorts and Lisa wore her usual sleeveless dress; later, when the episode was mined for a Clip Show, Lisa comments in voiceover, "It was an unusually warm February 14th, so the children walked home without jackets."
    • Lampshaded again in the "Attack of the 50 Foot Eyesores" segment of "Treehouse of Horror VI." Marge quickly glances at Bart and Lisa and says "You kids should have jackets on."
    • A throwaway line in "Bart's Friend Falls in Love" suggests that the first half of the episode took place in late winter (the two-week anniversary of Homer using his "weight loss" tapes is said to be on the very first day of spring, although since the tapes were actually vocabulary builders, he instead calls it the vernal equinox), but there was no snow, all of the trees were green, and nobody was seen wearing jackets.
    • The Valentine's Day episode "Love Is in the N2-O2-Ar-CO2-Ne-He-CH4" has fully-leaved trees, no snow on the ground, and a lack of winter clothes.
    • The Simpsons sometimes goes out of its way to avert this, with the occasional episode ("Mr. Plow," "Homer the Heretic") set in winter or fall without reference to any holidays. Matt Groening expresses some annoyance with this trope in the DVD commentaries for those episodes.
  • On Camp Lazlo, it's always summer. Makes sense, since they're at summer camp, right? Except it's still summer, and they're still at camp on Valentine's Day. Most of the Christmas Episode took place in July, for crying out loud.
  • During an episode of Rugrats, the grandfather moves out of the main families house. For the next 30 seconds to 1 minute it shows the seasons changing. Then after it comes back to the season it originally was it is found out that this entire weather pattern change happened over a one week period with a sentence saying "One Week Later". Now THAT'S spring weather. Lampshaded immediately afterward by one of the parents saying "That's some weather this week, huh?"
  • Hey Arnold! played with this trope in a way similar to the Rugrats example above. There was an episode where Stinky decided to enter a harvesting competition — and while he is farming, it rains, it snows, it is amazingly hot... and in the end of the sequence, this dialogue (that sounded something like this but not exactly) happens:
    Stinky's dad: What a crazy weather! It rains, it snows, it dries...
    Stinky: And all within a week.
    • There was also the episode wherein the town gets affected by a heatwave, appropriately titled "Heat". And the episode it was paired with was called "Snow".
  • In Miraculous Ladybug, it seems to be always be spring, even during Valentine's Day. The only two major exceptions are in the Christmas Episode, when there is snow on the ground. The other is in the last scene of the Origins Episode, when Adrien shares his umbrella with Marinette and there is Romantic Rain.
  • The What's New, Scooby-Doo? special "A Scooby-Doo Valentine" takes place around Valentine's Day, yet there is no snow anywhere, and the trees have leaves, and no one is wearing winter clothes.
  • In Code Lyoko, a year apparently passes without any change in the seasons or weather except when required by the XANA attack of the day, and no aging or moving up in grades for the characters. All of the main characters except Yumi start off in the eighth grade, then a year passes and they're still in the eighth grade, then Aelita (who is in the same grade as the rest, i.e. eighth) is said to be twelve years old. Only once do they actually move up a grade, and if memory serves only twice is any sort of school holiday mentioned.
  • Although it's occasionally averted — the episode "Reawakening" takes place during winter for no plot-relevant reason — Gargoyles follows this trope to a "T". It became particularly notable after creator Greg Weisman established a detailed timeline for the series, which sets several adventures to specifically take place over winter months.
  • For the most part, it usually is spring in Danny Phantom. However, during most times on-site of Casper High, the season is apparently autumn as all the trees are orange. Even right before summer vacation.
  • In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, it appears to always be summer unless the season is relevant to the plot. In one case this led to bafflement when a Fall Episode occurred soon after a Winter Episode, with no discernible transitions in either direction. Admittedly, the seasons are explicitly magical, but Word of God claims they still take the normal amount of time and this was purely because they didn't want a calendar to limit what plots they could do.
  • In Ready Jet Go!, it always seems to be summer. Averted in both of Halloween 2-parters, where it's fall, and in "Holidays in Boxwood Terrace" and "Endless Summer", where it's winter.
  • A variation in Being Ian. We do indeed see a blizzard in one episode — which is actually odd, considering the show is set in British Columbia where in real life it scarcely ever stops raining all winter. Every other episode depicts perfect sunny weather of the sort B.C. usually only sees in the summertime, despite the show being set during the school year.

    Real Life 
  • Even warm locations have seasons — the rainy season versus the dry season, for instance. Nevertheless, seasons in Southern California tend to oscillate from summer, to early fall, to late spring not summer, back to summer again. It tends to make the imported deciduous trees very confused.
    • Subtropical inland regions with mountains on one side and shallow gulfs on the other, like India and Southern Texas, have remarkably stable high temperatures and isolated weather patterns year-round, with only the most extreme outside weather fronts breaking through the powerful updraft. This leads to locals thinking of seasons in terms of tornado/monsoon season, and the rest of the year, when foliage gradually fades from green to brown waiting for the next storm season. What passes for autumn and winter in these regions is more akin to spring in most parts of the world, just with more dead plants and less pollen.
    • Tropical environments and places with similar climates usually don't change a lot, having only a dry season and a wet season. In some areas the dry season is the period between fall and winter and in other's it's the opposite, but besides the temperature and the amount of rainfall, the surroundings are basically always the same.
      • Rainforests in particular, where the temperature change from day to night is greater than summer to winter.
    • The common joke about winter in Florida is that, the moment the first big snowstorm hits the rest of the country, Floridians immediately start bragging to their friends up north about where they live. The flip side, of course, is that the rest of the country starts laughing the moment Floridians start complaining about temperatures being below 60 degrees, which is considered genuinely cold in Florida but early spring weather elsewhere. It gets even worse on the rare occasions (generally decades apart) that it actually gets cold enough for snow; people are so unused to it that the whole state practically grinds to a halt.
    • Another flipside to this is Florida, a peninsula filled with swamps and surrounded by sea waters on both sides so when seasons like spring and summer do arrive the humidity is so thick with heat and uncomfortable you're more likely to find state citizens inside an air-conditioned house than outside by the pool.
  • One interesting case of this becoming Truth in Television, the rise of climate controlled buildings means it can always be spring indoors. Since most buildings stay at somewhere between 68 and 72°F (20-22°C) year-round, people who work in these buildings tend to dress for spring for their workday and simply put on extra layers whenever they have to go outside.
  • Several cities in Latin America have been called "The City of Eternal Spring". For example: Caracas (Venezuela), Tegucigalpa (Honduras), Medellín (Colombia), Guatemala City (Guatemala), Trujillo (Peru), Cochabamba (Bolivia), Arica (Chile), and Cuernavaca (Mexico, specifically the state of Morelos). At least two other Mexican cities, Guadalajara and Tlaquepaque (both in the state of Jalisco), are said to have this kind of weather.
    • Guatemala is also called "The Country of Eternal Spring".
    • Most of the listed cities are at high altitudes, making the weather much cooler than (most) lowland locations at similar latitudes. Caracas is at about 3,000 ft/900 m; Tegucigalpa at a hair under 1,000 m (3,250 ft); Cuernavaca, Guatemala City, and Medellín in the 5,000 ft/1,500 m range; Tlaquepaque a bit over 6,000 ft/1,800 m; and Cochabamba at about 8,400 ft/2,550 m. Arica is a coastal city and Trujillo nearly so; both have an unusual mild desert climate, shared with Peru's capital of Lima.
  • The natural environment within caves changes little if at all with the seasons, and then only because the flow rate of underground streams may be slightly higher after a spring thaw.
  • The planet Jupiter almost lack seasons due to its very low axial tilt as well as still having a lot of residual heat from its formation that is evenly distributed by its winds.
  • Australia essentially never drops below zero degrees Celsius (32 Fahrenheit) even in the dead of winter; snow only falls on the very tops of mountains. Like Floridians mentioned above, 15 degrees Celsius (59 Fahrenheit) is considered a bit cold. Native Englishman Yahtzee lampshaded this in one review: "It's Australian winter, which means perfect surfing weather". Subverted, however, when it comes to how warm the people are — many Australian houses lack proper insulation, so indoor temperatures can drop as low as 6°C during winternote , and winters can feel unbearably harsh despite being relatively warm compared to other countries.

Exceptions and Aversions

    Anime and Manga 
  • Averted in ARIA, where Akari mentions the changing of the seasons in her letters, which is reflected in the art for the episode. The manga volumes are actually seasonally themed, with the first being fall, the second being winter, the third being spring, and so on.
  • Love Hina also had all four seasons, several times (it takes place over the course of at least two years). It even had Halloween, Christmas, and New Years stories. In order.
  • Averted in Reborn! (2004), which clearly shows winter at the very least several times during the Daily Life Arc.
  • Sailor Moon has seasons that progress at the same rate as the episodes aired. Since there were five series but the internal timespan is less than three years, this is the source of intense confusion to anyone trying to put together a consistent series timeline.
  • Averted in Kimi ni Todoke, where the beginning and end of each school term is clearly marked, accompanied by an appropriate change of season.
  • Averted in Azumanga Daioh, as the story follows the lives of the characters over three school years, with each chapter corresponding to a single month. Snow is seen in the colder months (though not constantly) and the plant life always has an appropriate amount of leaves or flowers for the season. Clothing is the other obvious cue: the school uniforms have short sleeves and different colors during the warmer months, and when not in school the girls dress appropriately - "normal" clothing in spring, lighter clothing in summer, long sleeves in autumn, and heavy coats in winter. Then of course there are the trips to Chiyo's summer house.
  • Averted in Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid: Kanna's Daily Life, where each volume takes place over the course of a single season and cycles through them with each subsequent one. Mind you, this led to an entirely different problem once it hit volume 5 and Kanna was still in 3rd grade. The first season of the anime for the main series also clearly takes place over the course of about a year (specifically 2016-2017).
  • Averted in Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, where the changing seasons are addressed over the course of the school year (complete with a uniform change in mid-October) and there are dedicated summer and winter vacation arcs.

    Comic Strips 
  • Peanuts was famous for its numerous winter strips (ice-skating, hockey, snowball fights) - but then, Charles Schulz was from Minnesota, one of the wintriest of all U.S. states. There were also several autumnal strips, generally involving falling leaves or Woodstock wondering if he should fly south for the winter.
  • Calvin and Hobbes in particular had some epic winter strips over the years, including his famous deranged mutant killer monster snow goons. (C&H creator Bill Watterson was from the Cleveland, Ohio, area, which can and does have some pretty cold, snowy winters.)
    • Summer and autumn are less obvious, but do come up occasionally, such as one strip where Calvin is surprised when his mother mentions meeting his teacher at the supermarket — he'd "kinda figured teachers slept in coffins all summer", and another sequence where Calvin is supposed to assemble a collection of fallen leaves (and throws something together at the last minute). There are also several strips of Calvin playing in leaf piles, and even one where he notices the lessening daylight and worries that the sun is going out.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Doctor Who: "Fear Her", set in the lead-up to the Summer Olympics, has the actors' clearly visible breath betraying that it was actually shot in January and February. The chill is actually a plot point in-episode.
  • Elementary, being shot mostly in New York, also follows the seasons.
  • Averted on ER, which gives the impression that Chicago never has spring. Most of the time it's either snowing or raining, unless it's sweltering hot because they wanted an air-conditioning failure episode. Spring in Chicago is quite short in real life.
  • Averted in the various versions of Law & Order, where, due to filming in New York City and the production's shooting schedule, half the episodes are filmed during winter.
  • Averted in the Boston-based Spenser For Hire which even filmed while it was snowing.
  • The German crime drama Tatort is shot about two or three months prior to its first airing (depending on some other factors at times), which means the season is off by about the same amount at the first showing. While the weather is often visible (and jarring compared what Germans see out of their window while they watch it) it is rarely commented upon. This is especially weird given that most episodes go out of their way to convince viewers they were really shot in Munich, Münster, Cologne or whatever, especially when there is California Doubling for all but a handful of scenes.episodes.
  • Home Improvement did a good job of accurately portraying the different seasons in Michigan. Notably, the outdoor sets would be covered in snow for all episodes taking place from late-November to March.

    Video Games 
  • Averted somewhat in Persona 3, the game takes place over the course of nearly an entire year. As the seasons change, the trees lose their leaves and they eventually grow back. Your party members will change clothing depending on the season (and little else), and school goes in and out of session as expected.
  • The videogame The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall actually averted this trope. Seasons would change, with snow covering the ground in the winter. Except in the desert country. Of course, NPCs (especially the females) dressed in rather light and revealing clothing no matter the weather.
  • Dwarf Fortress, with typical depth, averts this by simulating the seasons appropriate to the local climate. Played straight in Adventure Mode due to Good Bad Bugs which cause the season to reset to spring every time you quick Travel, which is rarely more than a couple days each time.
  • Averted in Backyard Football 2004. When the climate in real life changes, the game climate changes too. Sports games, football games in particular, have had weather options in place since the 16-bit era. American football is defined to some degree by the fact that it's played outdoors, in a season extending from fall until the end of January or the beginning of February, and the majority of its teams are located in the (colder, wetter) northeast and Great Lakes regions.
  • Animal Crossing uses the system clock to explicitly follow the seasons and provide variation in available collectibles. Animal Crossing: New Horizons even goes as far as to ask the player whether they live in the northern or southern hemisphere, to help ensure that in-game seasons match reality; earlier games assume the player is in the northern hemisphere.
  • Story of Seasons games have rotating seasons. The crops you can plant and things you can gather change with them. Some games have areas where it is always a certain season, however. The Rune Factory spinoff series has such areas, for example.
  • Pokémon:
    • Pokémon Gold and Silver appears to take place during autumn, judging by the hues used in of some of the areas. The remakes HeartGold and SoulSilver definitely do, as shown by the path leading to the Bell Tower being vividly covered in autumn leaves.
    • Pokémon Diamond and Pearl takes place around winter, with the northern region of the map being covered in snow with frequent blizzards.
    • Pokémon Black and White have a feature where the season changes at the start of every month, in contrast to how it was always the same season in previous generations.
    • Judging from the forms the Deerling and Sawsbuck found there assume, Pokémon X and Y takes place in the spring.
  • Rhiannon: Curse of the Four Branches is set in mid-autumn, probably because that's when the various leafy twigs you need to collect can most easily be distinguished from one another.
  • Averted, kind of, in The Lost Crown, which does take place in springtime, but with the full range of weather — fog, cold, thundery, sunny, rainy, windy — one might expect from a realistic depiction of that season.
  • Bully takes place over a school year, with appropriate season changes. After you've completed the main story, however, the game goes into pure sandbox mode aptly called "Endless Summer."
  • Partly averted in Dragon Age: Origins, which takes place over roughly two years, and there are seasons. However, they are dependent on the location, not on the time the player visits them.
  • Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2005) inverts the trope by making the setting always Autumn. Which might explain its obsession with tinting everything brownish.
  • Mega Man Battle Network 2 takes place over summer vacation, unlike the other games in the series, although the appearance of ACDC Town itself doesn't change much from the perpetual spring in the other games.
  • Lil Gator Game is stated to take place during fall break, with the appearance of the trees and leaves in the park being orange-tinted to reflect this.

    Webcomics 
  • Averted by Unwinder's Tall Comics, which not only changes seasons, it maintains the seasons for multiple comics (none of which are actually related to the plot or Christmas), and characters' clothing changes appropriately.
  • Played with in Our Little Adventure. The seasons do change but since the world is flat, they logically shouldn't. There are also places in Manjulias where it's always summer or always winter. This like many other things in the comic get lampshaded.
  • The plot of The Phoenix Requiem happens during the course of one year, with the changing of seasons clearly seen in time.
  • Played straight for several years with Questionable Content due to Webcomic Time, until the creator put in a Time Skip that jumped the story to mid-winter. Seasons have since changed more often and as of late 2012 events are back around to warmer months, for the time being.
  • In Oglaf, the town of Meltwater is initially kept in perpetual winter by the sexually dissatisfied Snow Queen, only to be saved when Greir the mercenary services the Queen. In a later comic, the dwarves invent a frost-proof vibrator for the Snow Queen, and now it's always spring in Meltwater. (In short, inverted, played straight, and parodied.)
    You know, spring used to mean something, back before technology ruined the world.
  • After several years of sunny summer weather, The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! announced it would be introducing seasons, inaugurating it by having a Humongous Mecha knock over Bob's freshly raked pile of leaves.

    Western Animation 
  • In South Park, it is always winter, even when it shouldn't be, such as during baseball season or Halloween. There is always snow on the ground and all the kids' standard outfits include hats and parkas. Only one episode takes place in summer, in which a big deal is made of the fact that the snow melts to expose the dirt beneath. The original short is set during Christmas, locking in the show's look as winter-themed. The snowy landscapes also helped animate the original short because the boys' feet are obscured by the snow. Justified, considering the fact that South Park is located in Colorado, a state known for being mountainous and therefore cold (to the point that some areas are classified with a subarctic climate).
    Cartman: "There are only two seasons in South Park: Winter, and July!"
  • Arthur has episodes that take place during fall or winter, sometimes for no discernible reason besides a change of pace. ("Arthur's Eyes" briefly showed his dad raking leaves, and "Arthur and the Crunch Cereal Contest" ended with a snowball fight.) And if an episode takes place during summer vacation, Arthur has even been seen wearing a t-shirt instead of his iconic yellow sweater.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender: The first season begins in fall and changes to winter (as an important plot device, in the two-part "Winter Solstice" episodes), the second season takes place in the following spring, and the third is Fire Nation (volcanic near-equatorial archipelago) summer.
  • Averted in the sequel series, The Legend of Korra, where the main setting of Republic City demonstrably goes through the seasons as the series goes on.
  • Averted in As Told by Ginger: if watched in production order the 1st season runs from early fall to summer (in "Summer of Camp Caprice") and the 3rd runs from winter (in "Far From Home") till next fall. The second season, however, starts in the fall but has no particular timeline in the second half. It also rains from time to time without it being relevant to the plot.
  • Ben 10 takes place entirely during summer vacation, which forced the obligatory Christmas Episode to take place in a Christmas Theme Park.
  • Craig of the Creek: Season 1 plays this trope straight, but Season 2 is set in the summer from episode 8 onwards. This lasts till Season 3, episode 9, after which the characters go through autumn and winter before spring comes again near the season finale.
  • It's always summer in Disney Channel's Phineas and Ferb, which has an Expository Theme Tune stating that the show is about finding a way to spend a summer vacation. The summer having way too many days in it has frequently been lampshaded. Averions include various holiday/seasonal-themed episodes:
  • Gravity Falls takes place during the summer of 2012, from when the twins enter the titular town in the middle of June to when they leave on the last day of August.
  • Averted in Moral Orel. The First Season takes place in the Fall and Winter. The Second Season takes place in the Spring. The Third Season takes place in the Spring, Fall and Winter.
  • Averted in The Transformers (the franchise's original animated series). Autobot Headquarters is located in a desert, where there wouldn't be much in the way of seasons. One episode Lampshades this when Megatron's latest scheme disrupts the world's climate and it starts snowing in the desert in July. The episode opens with several of the heroes having a snowball fight.
  • In Transformers: Animated, it's snowing in Detroit around the end of season one, and again midway through season 3 during the Christmas Episode (which secondary material confirms was the Autobots' second Christmas).
  • Averted on The Spectacular Spider-Man, where time passes realistically with visible seasons.
  • Semi-averted on Max Steel: the first series of the show starts at the beginning of the school year and finishes somewhere in the summer semester. However, unless the characters aren't in California, the weather is always nice a spring-like.
  • Averted in Chuck Jones' Bugs/Daffy/Elmer Looney Tunes trilogy, with backgrounds in full autumn color or snow white - due to it being rabbit season. Duck Season, Rabbit Season!
  • Averted with American Dragon: Jake Long. While the series is mostly Always Spring, the two Valentine's Day episodes are notably snowy in addition to the Christmas episode. However, the Chinese New Year, which typically occurs in January-February, is in spring-like weather.
  • The Animated Adaptation of Franklin had enough seasonal material to well avert this. Particularly noteworthy was the fact that there were four films and of them, only one seems like it might have been set in spring, Franklin and the Turtle Lake Treasure. The first film, Franklin and the Green Knight, was set almost entirely in winter and featured a Spring Is Late situation. The second film, Franklin's Magic Christmas, was a Christmas holiday special. The third film, Back to School with Franklin, opened with a summer sequence and the rest of the film was set in... well, still summer most likely technically, since it was the start of a school year, and summer doesn't end until later in September.
  • Occasionally averted on Daria—the first made-for-TV movie is set during summer vacation and ends with school in the fall. Also, the episode "Fizz Ed" has Superbowl Sunday as a plot point, with the weather and wardrobe reflecting it in some scenes.
  • Downplayed in Steven Universe. While the first half of the first season makes it seem like a case of perpetual summer, other seasons start passing through once the show gains explicit continuity between episodes. However, events do seem very disproportionately focused in the warm seasons: In the show's first in-universe year, it appears to be warm in one episode, cool or snowy for the next three, and then it's spring by the episode after that. By contrast, the entire third season and some of the fourth take place between the first autumn leaves and the end of summer break.
  • Boo Boom! The Long Way Home starts in the spring of 1944, but then moves on to summer and fall, with the series finale being set shortly after Christmas.
  • The Loud House: All seasons have been featured at least once. The episode "Tea Tale Heart" is even clearly set during Autumn (the leaves are all colored) without it being relevant to the plot.
  • Seasons 1 and 2 of The Owl House are set during summer vacation since Luz is using being away at camp as cover for her staying on the Boiling Isles, while season 3 takes place from late October to early November.
  • Ed, Edd n Eddy'': The first four seasons all take place during the kids' summer vacation, so the weather doesn't change. Season 5 makes it a plot point that autumn has arrived and the characters finally have to go back to school (something Ed and Eddy try to avoid by paiting the leaves green and placing heaters everywhere to simulate warm weather), and wearing different, warmer versions of their usual outfits. They also get a few holiday specials in taking place in the winter. Presumably the Big Damn Movie loops back around to the next summer.


Alternative Title(s): It Is Always Spring

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