Some franchises have run so long the creators, art style, and even the core audience have changed generations. Good business, or does it slowly kill what made the story special in the first place?
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Add your commentThe problem isn't the length itself, it's the padding. I've watched a series I genuinely loved turn into 40% recap episodes and power-up screaming matches that last four episodes each. The story I fell in love with in middle school is unrecognizable now. That's not storytelling, that's a content machine wearing the skin of a story.
my dad and i used to watch a shonen together every sunday morning when i was a kid. it was our thing. he passed away four years ago and the series is still going. part of me is glad because it still feels like a connection to him. part of me wishes it had ended beautifully when it still had that magic so i could have something complete to hold onto. it's complicated.
I was actually a manga assistant for a studio in Japan for about two years in my early twenties, and the pressure from publishers to extend popular series is absolutely relentless. Editors push creators to delay resolutions, introduce new villain tiers, retcon power ceilings — not because the author wants to, but because the licensing revenue machine demands it. The author's original vision often dies quietly somewhere around year seven.
Here's my challenge to everyone in this thread defending endless runs: name one series that ran 20+ years where the final arc was universally considered the BEST arc. I'll wait. Because every example I can think of has a widely-acknowledged peak somewhere in the middle, followed by a long decline. That pattern isn't a coincidence.
I'll say what nobody wants to hear: a LOT of these series should have ended around the 30-40% mark of their actual runtime. That's usually where the original premise fully resolves and then the author has to invent new stakes from scratch. Everything after that point is fanservice disguised as plot.
What gets me is when the ART STYLE degrades. I've followed a series where the early volumes had this raw, scratchy energy that felt urgent and alive, and now the linework looks clean and soulless and clearly rushed. You can see the exhaustion in the pages. That's not the same artist anymore, not spiritually. We're just watching someone burn out in slow motion for our entertainment.
the creator changing is actually what worries me most. i've seen interviews where an author basically admits the character no longer feels like theirs. that they're writing someone else's version of their own creation. that's a kind of creative grief that nobody talks about
That's actually a confidently stated but pretty flawed point above. Long-term readers don't 'drop out' because they stopped caring — many drop out because the quality declined, and they feel robbed of the ending they were promised through years of emotional investment. Nostalgia has nothing to do with it. It's about narrative debt.
I actually think there's a fascinating case to be made that some long shonen series function less like novels and more like mythology — they're not meant to have a definitive authored ending, they're meant to be ongoing cultural artifacts that generations inherit and reinterpret. But that only works if the creator and publisher are honest about that from the start, instead of pretending there's a destination they're building toward.
The argument that 'you can just stop watching' completely ignores the cultural phenomenon aspect. When a series runs that long it becomes part of the cultural fabric of fandom. You can't fully participate in community spaces, conventions, online discourse without engaging with it. So yes, it does affect people who would prefer it end, because the series refuses to leave the room.
The irony is that a clean, emotionally satisfying ending would actually make these franchises MORE valuable long-term as complete works — better for collections, adaptations, retrospectives, legacy. Publishers are destroying long-term IP value chasing short-term serialization revenue. It's genuinely bad business if you zoom out far enough.
The generational audience shift point in the topic is UNDERRATED. I got into a series when I was 12. I'm now 31. The kids reading it today have completely different cultural references, relationship to the genre, expectations of tropes. The series has to serve two completely incompatible audiences simultaneously. It inevitably fails both.
'forced to end' is dramatic wording. but YES there should be industry-side structures like mandated story arc review periods where a creator can voluntarily negotiate a sunset clause with the publisher. give authors an exit ramp that doesn't destroy their income. the current system offers no graceful exit.
Actually the real issue is that manga serialization culture in Weekly Shonen magazines was built around this model from the very beginning. It's not a bug it's a feature of the entire industry infrastructure. Changing it would require rethinking publication schedules, advertising models, volume sales projections, merchandise cycles... it's not as simple as 'just end it.'
The above comment destroyed me. That's exactly it. Long-running series become entangled with our actual lives in ways that make this debate intensely personal beyond just 'is the story good.'
Forced to end? By whom exactly? The government? A manga committee? I hate when people frame creative decisions as something that needs to be legally or institutionally mandated. If you don't like it, stop reading/watching. The market will sort it out.
Unpopular opinion incoming: the 'death' of a long series is often mourned by people who already stopped engaging with it years ago. The people still actively reading it are, by definition, still enjoying it. Why should the nostalgic feelings of dropouts override the enjoyment of current readers?
counterpoint: some of the most emotionally devastating arcs in shonen history happened LATE in long runs. like the story needed 10+ years of buildup to earn that weight. you can't manufacture that in a 50-chapter sprint.
The manga almost never has filler though, that's an anime production problem caused by catching up to source material. If you're blaming the manga for filler you fundamentally misunderstand how the adaptation pipeline works.
hot take: the anime adaptation being an eternal product keeps the manga running. if studios weren't producing the anime simultaneously the publisher would have far less incentive to string the manga along. so blame the anime industry as much as the manga side.
okay but who decides what 'too long' means? 20 years? 15? 8? some stories genuinely need space to breathe. i'd rather have a slow burn that earns its ending than a rushed finale that destroys everything
Disagree with the premise entirely. Some of the most beloved media properties in human history ran for decades. Soap operas, radio serials, comic runs — longevity and quality are not mutually exclusive. The problem is always execution, not duration.
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