Archive Panic / Anime & Manga

• The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You: While the main draw of the manga is the exaggeration of Taste the Rainbow, there's a good chance that new readers will have to read through a lot of chapters before the first girlfriend that suits their fancy gets introduced to the harem, especially if said girlfriend is introduced some time after a girlfriend who sits poorly with them.
• Dragon Ball is a big one. The Dragon Ball manga by Akira Toriyama ran for 42 volumes and 519 chapters for 11 years. The anime spans for 508 episodes (384 with Dragon Ball Z Kai), counting 153 episodes from Dragon Ball (covering volumes 1 to 16), 291 episodes from Dragon Ball Z (167 episodes in the Dragon Ball Z Kai recut; covering volumes 17 to 42), and 64 episodes from Dragon Ball GT (anime-original content). Currently it has an ongoing series in the form of Dragon Ball Super, which has 131 episodes as an anime and 12 volumes as a manga. There's also the 20 theatrical films, 4 specials (all of which have both anime and manga versions),^note The 2008 Jump special, the Trunks special/bonus chapter, the Bardock special/Minus chapter, and Dragon Ball – Episode of Bardock. 2 short films, hour-long crossover with One Piece and Toriko, 2-part OVA serving as a strategy guide for one of the video games, dozens of said video games (some with their own unique characters and stories), 1 volume Jaco the Galactic Patrolman (a Stealth Prequel), various spin-off mangas (such as Dragon Ball SD), various guidebooks, and tons of other content that's still being documented.
• Fairy Tail, with the original Manga running for 545 chapters and the Anime running for 328 episodes (including Fairy Tail Zero). And there's also 6 Spin-Off mangas, 2 prequel mangas, 9 OVAs (which lack an official English release), 2 movies, and continuation manga which at last check is at 130 chapters.
• Golgo 13: 155 volumes running for nearly 50 years — and that's just the manga.
• Inuyasha has over fifty of those little yellow books to read. In total, it has 558 chapters, done over a course of ten years. The anime is scarcely less daunting an undertaking, with 193 episodes including the plot-resolving Final Act.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. The original manga ran weekly for nearly 15 years with one hiatus between Part 5 and Part 6, before switching to monthly partway through Steel Ball Run. If you add up the number of chapters between all nine parts, that adds up to 910 chapters and counting. Thankfully, the "Panic" effect is diminished thanks to the series being cut up into nine distinct parts, each focusing on a different character's adventures, which can help make it feel like you're reading a bunch of shorter manga series instead of one huge one. Additionally, all the parts starting from part 7 take place in an Alternate Universe, so you're not required to read the parts prior to that.
• Currently holding the record for the longest manga series is Kochira Katsushika-ku Kameari Kouen Mae Hashutsujo, or Kochikame. It went on for more than 30 years in a weekly magazine and legend says the author/studio never went on hiatus. It was finished at 200 volumes.
• One Piece. Add the Kudzu Plot and huge cast, and you'll understand why it can be hard to catch up with the manga's story. Skimming it only makes you miss plot points that come up volumes later. New readers are sometimes directed to start as late as Volume 50 to prevent Continuity Lock-Out (at least it supplies recaps), although most fans would strongly suggest starting the series from the beginning. It's over 1100 chapters as of 2024.
  • The anime is even worse with slow pacing and padding throughout which Toei had to deploy to avoid overtaking the manga (to keep the coveted time slot the anime could not go on hiatus). There are about as many episodes as there are chapters as of 2023. With 20 minutes apiece, it's 360 hours to watch, plus 15 OAV movies.
  • This is one of the reasons the live action adaptation was so successful: People who did not have this much time could watch 44 anime episodes condensed into 8 hour-long episodes.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! has been going strong since 1996, with no less than five manga series, seven TV shows, and four movies. Said TV shows tend to have at least 150 episodes per series. However, due to the TV series being unrelated sequels to the original manga with different protagonists, a watcher/reader can choose to only watch/read the one that they find most interesting.

• Pokémon has managed to do this three times over. Which is no surprise for something adapting seven installments of video games for over a decade:
  • The Pokémon: The Series anime has over 1200 episodes with 20 movies and counting. And that's not counting the Pikachu shorts, the Weekly Pokemon Broadcasting Station episodes (most of which were dubbed as Pokemon Chronicles) and various other specials. This is counting the banned episodes, however.
  • Pokémon Adventures has run as long, with 60+ volumes.
  • To a somewhat lesser extent is the slapstick Japanese only Pocket Monsters manga, the first adaptation of the games. It's over 30 volumes long.
• Case Closed. Hundreds and hundreds of chapters...and the damned detective is still stuck as a kid! Surpassed the 1000th chapter milestone in 2017, and any semblance to a final arc is nowhere in sight. The anime series is another behemoth, having reached its 1000th episode in 2021, and that's not including dozens of films and specials.
• Berserk, at 40 volumes and still going, even after the author's death.
• Sazae-san has over 7,000 7-minute episodes, making it the longest running animated program and longest running non-soap opera fictional show in the world. And it's still in production. Thankfully (or sadly, depending on your view), it's impossible to archive binge the anime due to the author's no home video releases policy. Luckily (or unluckily, depending on your perspective), it would still take a while to watch all of the episodes you can find. It would take 20 hours of non-stop viewing to watch everything that's already on Amazon, and that number might grow in the future.
• Hajime no Ippo is over 1000 chapters. The anime has a 75-episode series, a 90-minute movie, a 1-hour OVA, AND a 26-episode Sequel Series! And there are quite a few cliffhangers here and there.
• Naruto, with 700 chapters, 70 volumes and over 600 anime episodes (though there are more than a hundred fillers), plus eleven movies, and an ongoing Spin-Offspring sequel series, is deep in this territory.
• Legend of the Galactic Heroes is 110 episodes long, not counting gaiden materials or movies, and each episode is 25 minutes long. Watching all of them consecutively will take over 45 hours.
• Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- is 232 chapters long plus an epilogue. Not much compared to the other examples here, but if you want to understand what's going on in the background, you have to read ×××HOLiC, which is itself 213 chapters, as well as Cardcaptor Sakura, X/1999, and Tokyo Babylon. Also, Tsubasa was designed to bridge every series CLAMP has made so you might want to look into all their other works as well.
• Start watching Slayers. Then realize that there are 5 series, adding up to 104 episodes, each of 22 minutes long, adding up to a reasonable value of 38 hours. Then realize on top of that, there are 5 feature length movies and 2 OVA series. All in all, you'll have 44+ hours of shows to watch. Good luck. And then you realize that are still 20+ light novels released.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi has 355 chapters over 38 volumes, though the original goal of ~400 chapters was aborted due to being Screwed By The Diet. Count the side mangas, the Negima Neo manga, the anime adaptation and various OVA and you will be busy for a while — though even 38 volumes is still not long enough to even make the list of long runners on The Other Wiki. And when you think it's finally over, a Stealth Sequel (UQ Holder!) begins.
• Maria Watches Over Us has 2 12-Episode Anime, one with 24 episodes and three 45 minutes OVAs. Add to that the 35+ light novels and you'll be occupied for a long while.
• While only 5 minutes long per episode, the anime version of Hetalia: Axis Powers actually surpassed Legend of the Galactic Heroes in terms of (non-TV anime) episode count. That said though, that still amounts to a little over 9 hours of footage.
• Digimon has spawned 498 episodes and 13 movies. The good news is, outside of direct sequels such as Adventure 02 or Digimon Xros Wars: The Young Hunters Who Leapt Through Time, each series can be watched independently of the other. And you're going to have to play the Digimon (WonderSwan Series) to know what's going on with Ken and Ryo. And once your done with the anime, there's six different manga series and 22 video games (including the above mentioned WonderSwan Series).
• Pretty Cure has almost 1000 episodes and 31 movies among 20 seasons, with the cumulative running time currently being about 354 hours. Eleven of those seasons can be watched independently as two sets of two series are sequels. That's also not factoring in spinoffs (ex. Power of Hope ~PreCure Full Bloom~, Dancing Star Pretty Cure The Stage). And good luck watching fourteen of the movies as they are Bat Family Crossover movies and you're gonna need a scorecard trying to keep up with which heroine is which.
• The original Sailor Moon anime lasted for 200 episodes, three movies, and five shorts.
• Fist of the North Star is 152 episodes long anime, with an additional 4 animated movies, one live-action movie, 3 OVAs, a 13-episode spin-off, and a parody series.
• So, you're interested in Gundam that started its journey since 1979 and decide to explore some more? As for 2014, good luck spending your time with 16 TV series title with episode count ranging between 25-50 episodes (alternatively, some of them available in compilation format, with 16 movie compiling 7 TV series^note 0079, Zeta, ZZ, Turn A, SEED, Destiny, AGE and 3 compilation OVA for a TV series^note 00); 8 OVA and 1 ONA^note Original Net Animation series; 3 movies (including 1 forgotten live action^note G-Saviour); and dozen of manga, novels, and video games. A TV Tropes page that compiles it exists not without reason.
• Doraemon. The 1973 anime only lasted 26 episodes of 30 minutes each. That's around a paltry 13 hours of nonstop viewing. Then comes the 1979 anime, which ran all the way to 2005. How many episodes are there, you ask? 1787 half hour episodes, which a simple calculation will tell you that it will take around 37 days and 8 hours of nonstop viewing to complete. Wait, it gets better! 2005 wasn't the year it ended, but the year the show was overhauled! It ran another 497 half hour episodes as of December 31st, 2017, or almost 10 days nonstop. To enjoy all the anime alone, you will need 50 days and 9 hours of nonstop binging. And that's not counting the movies, of which there are roughly 34 of them. And the kicker is, the episodes are still being made, with new episodes coming out weekly and new movies annually. Or the manga- even though the collected manga are only 45 volumes long, the rest of the manga that aren't in the collection are also printed across various other magazines since 1969. (Good luck finding all of the 1973 anime, by the way.)
• Lone Wolf and Cub weighed in at nearly 9,000 pages by the end of its six-year run. It has been collected in both 28 volumes of 300+ pages each and 12 omnibus volumes of 700+ pages each.
• Ojarumaru has been running since 1998 and has 1500+ episodes, 1 movie, and 4 specials. Although every episode is 7 minutes long ^note  10 minutes long if you count the opening and ending theme. , trying to binge-watch at least one series would require hundreds of hours since most of them consists of 90 episodes. However, it's pretty much impossible to binge-watch the series since the VHS releases of Series 1-5 are out of print and only a small amount of the episodes are available on DVD and video streaming services in Japan.
• After an over 15 year run, Gintama concluded — clocking in at 704 chapters across 77 volumes. There have been 6 anime series, totaling 369 episodes — and that’s not including the OVAs, the movies, or the upcoming spinoff anime announced in 2023.
• Dokaben, a manga running from 1972 to 2018, had more volumes than any other manga, with a massive 205.
• Kobo, the Li'l Rascal, a manga starting in 1982, has more chapters than any other manga, with an unbelievable 11,241. It only has 102 volumes, though.
• The Jewelpet franchise has 351 episodes (even more if you count the double episodes of Seasons 3 and 7), 6 video games, and a movie.
• The Anpanman anime has been running since 1988, with over 1,300 episodes to its name. The film series, much like with Doraemon, is updated with a new installment almost every year; there are around 30 films in the series.
• Great Teacher Onizuka has 207 manga chapters, and if you want to read everything in chronological order, there's also the 10-chapter Origins Episode Bad Company and 267 chapters of GTO: The Early Years to read first. Then there's the Interquel GTO: Shonan 14 Days, which runs for 70 chapters, and the ongoing sequel GTO: Paradise Lost, currently at 133 chapters. And the Early Years spinoff Shonan Seven^note 46 chapters; however, Onizuka doesn't appear in it, it's just set at the same school he attended. And the spinoffs about Onizuka's friends Ryuji and Saejima.
  • And then there's the 43-episode anime adaptation, the live-action adaptation^note 12 episodes and 1 special, the 1999 live-action film, the second live-action adaptation^note 11 episodes and 3 specials, the third live-action adaptation^note 4 episodes, and the fourth live-action^note 11 episodes. And then there's the 5 OVAs for Shonan Junai Gumi^note 52 minutes each, the live-action for that^note 5 episodes, and a second live-action on Amazon Prime. AND the 1998 live-action film of Bad Company, which seems to have no official subtitled release.
• As of 2021, Shima Shima Tora no Shimajirō has over 1,300 total episodes and eight movies. And that's not even counting the various Kodomo Challenge shorts that were produced for the series.
• Hamtaro ran for almost 300 episodes. Only 104 of those episodes were localized in English, and even fewer of those English episodes ever got released on home media.