Why is /c/ its own board and not lumped with /a/ or something?

4chan was originally an anime imageboard, so yeah.

All of the weeb boards were made back when this site was mostly for anime. There's no reason for them to go away at this point.

>>19815
Because /a/ is an awful board filled with shitposters. There are plenty off boards dedicated to images only and its not like they are culture-less pits. To someone who doesn't browse /c/ it may just seem like an image dump board but its has one of the friendliest communities on the site and has its own inner workings.
To merge /c/ with /a/ would just kill of /c/ completely (most of the people who frequent /c/ would be pushed out by the much louder more aggressive people who shitpost on /a/). /a/ is just interested in their seasonal anime girls and from my experience with the board they were overly lewd and abusive towards characters in shows. /a/ is also more than just anime girls and people who frequent /c/ don't want anything else. I just want a place to share pictures and have a very loose casual discussion based off of the show or character; some threads that can be used as an example could be the Hidamari, Homura, and some of the k-on threads. In the end while there is some kind of overlap with the two boards, they are still very different. Hopefully this answers your question.
You shouldn't be concerned with the whole cost aspect since nothing came from the whole "4chan is out of money" shit that happened awhile ago.

I guess it wouldn't hurt if /c/ had a little bit more traffic, but /a/ is too fast and it's almost impossible to have threads there for anything other than the most popular/newest shows, so you really shouldn't lump them together.