Throughout the entirety of the animated Star Wars series The Clone Wars, General Grievous and Anakin Skywalker never met once. Despite the fact that Grievous was the Separatists' premier droid general and Skywalker was one of Jedi Order's greatest warriors and commanders, the two never exchanged words or traded lightsaber strikes. This was the result of one brief scene of dialogue between the two during Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, which posed an interesting challenge for showrunner Dave Filoni and his team when the animated series was being produced.
In Revenge of the Sith's opening act, General Grievous led an assault on the Republic capital world of Coruscant, kidnapping Supreme Chancellor Palpatine and taking him aboard his flagship. As a result, the film begins with Master Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker in their Jedi Interceptors, intending to rescue the chancellor from Grievous' hands. While the Jedi duo managed to infiltrate The Invisible Hand and Anakin slew Count Dooku, they ended being captured by Grievous and taken to the bridge. Grievous then remarked that he had expected someone with Anakin's reputation to be older, while Anakin countered that the droid general was shorter than he had expected. This implied that this interaction was their first, despite having been on opposite sides of the Clone Wars for the better part of three years.
As a result, this created some limitations for Clone Wars director Dave Filoni and Lucasfilm when production began on the animated series. However, they did indeed stay true to the continuity presented by this single scene. Anakin and Grievous never met, though they did get very close in certain episodes of the seven-season series. There were many times where they were in the vicinity of one another without crossing paths, such as aboard The Malevolence or during the Separatist campaign on Kamino where Obi-Wan just so happened to go after Grievous while Anakin dueled with Asajj Ventress. The closest they ever came to meeting was during the season 4 episode "Shadow Warrior," where Grievous and Anakin had been captured by either side, motivating Count Dooku and Padmé Amidala to orchestrate a prisoner transfer. However, despite moving past one another, Anakin was unconscious being dragged by droids while Grievous simply kept walking, contained with binders.
Clearly, Lucasfilm took this limitation and decided to turn it into a unique creative challenge, seeing how close they could get to an encounter without violating the line of dialogue in Revenge of the Sith which could have easily been ignored. Additionally, one has to wonder what The Clone Wars would have been like had Anakin and Grievous been free to oppose one another more directly. There certainly would have been some epic lightsaber duels between the two. Furthermore, there would have been some interesting avenues for symbolism considering the fact that Grievous' cybernetic systems were the prototypes for what would become Anakin's own life support system and armor as Darth Vader by the end of Revenge of the Sith.
That being said, one has to admire the dedication to continuity and canon, and keeping Anakin and Grievous apart certainly speaks to an impressive attention to detail. In contrast, Obi-Wan and Grievous had plenty of battles during The Clone Wars that were all kinds of epic, and the lack of Anakin as an opponent allowed the series to depict Kenobi much more as Grievous' chief nemesis, so it's not as if the villain was wasted by never facing Skywalker. In any case, it's an interesting detail that speaks volumes to the dedication Dave Filoni and Lucasfilm Animation had with the Star Wars series.
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