10 Shonen Anime That Ended Too Soon

The major complaint for most shonen anime series is that they just run too long.  More often than not, the longest-running anime series tend to be shonen series, and generally action series at that.  One Piece is near 1000 episodes, while series like Bleach and Naruto both went well over 300.  Even a “short” series like Yu Yu Hakusho has at least one hundred episodes.

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But some times shonen series end long before they were meant to.  This can be due to the anime catching up to the manga, or it can be because the author quit working on the project.  In either case, fans are often left wondering how much better the series would be if it finished as it was meant to.

10 Yu-Gi-Oh Felt Rushed Towards The End Of Its Series

The original Yu-Gi-Oh ran for over two hundred episodes, but it feels like there was a bit more that could have been done. When the filler is removed, there’s really only four arcs and most of them are fairly short. It feels like they could have developed some of the side characters more.

There hasn’t been a cast as memorable as the originals, though Yu-Gi-Oh! GX and Yu-Gi-Oh 5D’s have come close. It’s really too bad, as these days the card game has changed so much Konami had to introduce an entirely version of the game and create a far less popular cartoon for them.

9 Air Gear Only Skipped All The Crazy Contests At The End

Air Gear was a clever concept that merged sports with shonen action. Oh! Great went from Tenjou Tenge and it’s martial arts focus to Air Gear taking motorized roller skates. The ending of the first season ends well before the series gets truly wild.

Later chapters talk about genetic engineering, hyper advanced science, and people who can skate so well they essentially develop super-powers. One character can somehow “stop time” with his powers. The world was robbed of this wild content, and there’s no excuse for it.

8 Yu Yu Hakusho Felt Complete, But The Author Had More Arcs In Mind

Yu Yu Hakusho is technically perfect—it’s four arcs and most of them are of fairly high quality. But there was definitely much more story left to be told. In the manga, Yusuke talks about some of the cases he dealt with off-screen that would’ve made the universe so much more interesting.

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Specifically, it’s discovered Koenma’s dad is the reason for all of the fighting between the Spirit World and the Demon World. Though there wasn’t more script to go on, these were ideas that could have been turned into entirely new stories for Yusuke and the others.

7 Flame of Recca Ended Before the Last Major Arc

Flame of Recca was a series that was basically Yu Yu Hakusho, but with ninjas. The main character is a delinquent teenager named Recca who wants to become a ninja, and falls in love with a young girl with the power to heal people, who he promises to be her ninja, only to discover he’s actually the child of the Hokage clan.

In fairness, it worked out a lot better than people thought, which is why it has over 25 million copies sold. The manga ran for about seven years, but the anime came along roughly half way through, did a basic adaptation and called it a day. It’s unfortunate, because there’s multiple arcs remaining that explain the lead character Recca’s family history that elevates the material and helps it become its own storyline.

6 Negima Had A Hard Shift Into Magic And Combat That Was Avoided

Negima was incredibly popular in the early 2000’s, gaining not one but two separate television series and a live-action show. However, it was never popular enough to get a good anime adaptation. The series starts out with the feel of another harem, which was expected of writer Ken Akamatsu, who at the time was best known for Love Hina.

Over time it makes a hard turn into shonen fantasy, with characters boasting special magic powers and traveling to completely different worlds.

5 Zatch Bell Never Got To Show The True Way Zatch Became King

Zatch Bell is a victim of bad timing. The series followed Kiyo and Zatch Bell, a high school student and a young boy from the “Mamodo World”. Zatch Bell was meant to become King of the Mamodos, and was trapped in a battle against other Mamodos until either his book burned or he defeated the last remaining one.

The series never quite got to give fans the ending they deserved, despite running for 150 episodes. The series wrapped up one short year before the manga did, leaving fans forced to go to the manga if they wanted to get the ending of the story.

4 Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic Needed One More Season

Magi fans everywhere continue to wait on the third and presumably final season of Aladdin. At the time, the manga was still going on, and thus even the pause in adaptation made sense. Though the first season of Magi had some problems remaining faithful to the manga, the second season did a much better job and had incredible pacing.

But now even after the Magi manga is finished, there’s still no third season, leaving Aladdin and Morgiana fans high and dry, even as Shinobu Ohtaka gets a new adaptation for her latest manga.

3 Noragami Had Tons Of Unexplained Plot Points

Noragami was fairly popular when it launched and despite only getting two short seasons, it’s still talked about today as a good anime series. However, when it left off there was plenty left to explore. By the end of the series, everyone’s learned that Yato was actually a powerful god who decided to go a different direction in life.

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They also introduce Yato’s father, the person who was responsible for making Yato into a destruction god. There’s so much more to this storyline and Noragami absolutely needs several new seasons to delve into it.

2 Black Cat Somehow Ended Soon Even Though Its Manga Was Done

What’s baffling about Black Cat isn’t its shorter run time. Plenty of series have run twenty-four episodes and ended afterwards. What’s baffling is that there was no reason to do that.

The original Black Cat manga ran from 2000 to 2004. The Black Cat anime started in 2005, a year after the last chapter was published. They had a full manga waiting to be adapted and they gave it the minimum amount of episodes before moving on to something else, robbing everyone of one of the most creative shonen action series this side of Cowboy Bebop.

1 Bleach Finished Before Its Last Arc Could Finish

The Bleach anime arguably ended too late, depending on who you ask. Most fans believed the series should have ended after Aizen was defeated. However, the story still had more plotlines to wrap up. Unfortunately, by this point, the interest in the property seemed to have dipped, and as a result, Bleach was canceled before the final arc’s story could be animated.

Fortunately, Bleach: Thousand Year War is being animated now, bringing the franchise to the ending originally planned for it.

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About The Author Sage Ashford (793 Articles Published)

Lover of all things obscure, Sage Ashford has also written for Comicon.

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