Top 5 Anime That Outstayed Their Welcome
Some just didn't know when to quit. Welcome to WatchMojo.com and today we are counting down our picks for the top five anime that outstayed their welcome.
For this list, we'll be looking at the anime that went on for just a little too long.
Please keep in mind, and we can't emphasise this enough, we aren't saying any of these anime are bad. On the contrary, they have their moments of brilliance, but still suffer from sticking around when it would have been more beneficial to cut things a little shorter…
#5: “Inuyasha” (2000-10)
It’s a fantasy anime that many fans still regard as a classic, and they have good reason to do so. It had some damned good action, a small cast of lovable characters, and a brewing romance that had a heartfelt payoff. It’s just a shame it took us so long to get to said payoff.
Before we reached the “final act” series in 2009, the series fizzled out in 2004 – with the plot moving at a snail’s pace. Thankfully the 5-year gap between the two series left people hungry for the follow up, proving that a little breathing room can make a world of difference for a series.
#4: “Persona 4 Golden” (2014)
Talk about pointless. We all love the Persona games, and for the most part the original anime adaptation did a decent job of it. Then Golden came along, which is essentially covered the new features in the vita port of the game, featuring a retelling of old narrative threads but with the addition of an extra female character who, lets face it, is poochie.
People already had the full P4 experience (several times over, in fact) and milking it for this one last poor-adaptation was just a bad move…
#3: “Rurouni Kenshin” (1996-98)
Two words; season three. If this anime had just ended things after Kenshin and Shishio’s clash this series would have been held up as an action classic.
Having a follow up to an awesome sword fight with a season made up of nothing but filler really managed to drag the rest of it down significantly.
Don’t get us wrong, we still love Kenshin for its humor and fast pace fight scenes, it’s just such a disappointment that the following thirty two episodes had to be such let-downs.
And if season 3 didn’t hurt the series enough, the allegations against the now defamed author certainly served as the final nail in the coffin…
#2: “Bleach” (2004-12)
You were off to such a good start! Originally one of shounen anime’s big three, Bleach won us all over with the brilliantly executed Soul Society arc, which gave us no end of supernatural showdowns and a serious amount of swordplay. Then we got the Bount arc; which was not too-bad a filer. But then we got to meet the Espada, which was awesome! Then we got more filler arcs…which were less good. You see where we’re going with this? But despite all this, Bleach’s core arcs stood strong, and we finally reached the long awaited final battle with Aizen – what a perfect way to conclude this shonen juggernaut…but then it kept going...huh.
#1: “Naruto” (2002-07)
Mired in so much filler that many of us forgot the actual overarching plot at times, Naruto was bogged down by unwanted content. Which is a damn shame, because when it got things right it was a series that was leaps and bounds above other! Following the battle between Naruto and Sasuke, the stage is set for the much-awaited time skip…riiiight after a little bit of filler.
Sorry did we say a little bit? We meant over 80 damned episodes of filler – none of which was good. Fans were absolutely gagging for Shippuden to get rolling but this series just kept on going…
