A great anime series can leave its mark in as few as a dozen installments, but there’s something to be said for a show that stretches out its story over years or even decades and reaps the benefits of maximizing the time viewers have spent with its characters. The lengthiest anime shows cover wide thematic ground too — unlike American television animation, where the longest-running shows tend to be loose, endlessly resettable comedies in which continuity is basically thrown out the window, Japan’s anime industry has been able to produce numerous long-lasting series in the serialized adventure genre. The absolute longest-running ones, though, tend to be geared towards young children.
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Producing a ranking of anime series by episode count is challenging due to the various franchises out there consisting of multiple series. Therefore, for the purposes of this ranking, we’re considering only continuous Japanese runs, with no more than two years of hiatus sans new episodes. Good luck starting any of these today.
15. Naruto (720 episodes)
Adapted from the eponymous shounen manga series created by Masashi Kishimoto, “Naruto” is maybe the 21st century’s most iconic example of a martial arts fantasy adventure anime that enjoys enormous crossover popularity in the West. Like its source material, the series follows Naruto Uzumaki (Junko Takeuchi), an orphan teenage ninja who dreams of becoming the Hokage, i.e., the leader of the village of Konoha.
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We should consider the anime run covering the story of Naruto himself. It includes both “Naruto,” the original series chronicling his young years that ran between 2002 and 2007, and “Naruto: Shippuden,” which acts as a direct sequel and follows Naruto into his late teens after receiving training from Jiraiya (Hōchū Ōtsuka). “Naruto” has 220 episodes, while “Naruto: Shippuden” has 500; added up, the series has a total of 720 episodes. That number would be even greater if we factored in the 293 episodes of “Boruto: Naruto Next Generations,” which continued the “Naruto” franchise — but we won’t do that here, as “Boruto” is rather pointedly its own separate series.
14. Duel Masters (879 episodes)
The Japanese media franchise “Duel Masters” is the kind of massive cross-platform brand that exemplifies the multifaceted nature of Japanese kid-oriented entertainment in the 21st century. Beginning as a manga adaptation of the tabletop and card game “Magic: The Gathering” in the 1990s, it eventually became its own thing, spawning various manga and anime series, multiple video games, and a trading card game. The anime and manga themselves are centered around a magic card game named “Duel Masters” that brings monsters to life in high-stakes duels.
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A total of seven anime television series and two web animes make up the official “Duel Masters” TV universe in Japan, beginning with the 78 episodes of original series released between 2002 and 2006. It was followed by “Shinseiki: Duel Masters Flash,” which aired 24 episodes between 2006 and 2007, and by the “Duel Master Zero” and “Duel Masters Cross” cycles between 2007 and 2011, which totaled an additional 187 episodes. The “Duel Masters Victory” and “Duel Masters Versus” series added 305 more installments to the tally between 2011 and 2017, and “Duel Masters King” added another 259 from 2017 to 2022, followed by 78 episodes of “Duel Masters Win” between 2022 and 2024. Finally, two web animes, “Duel Masters Lost: Crystal of Remembrance” and “Duel Masters Lost: Gekka no Shinigami,” added four episodes each between 2024 and 2025. All in all, the franchise has produced 939 episodes.
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13. Pretty Cure (1,018 episodes)
One of the most popular of all franchises in the magical girl genre in Japan, “Pretty Cure” — sometimes also known as “PreCure” — is notable as a property original to television, with no manga source material. While not as well-known in the U.S. as some of the other shows on this list, it’s enough of an institution in its home country to have spawned a total of 22 seasons of television. Functioning more or less like an anthology with single-year series focusing on different “generations,” the show follows successive groups of teenage girls who receive the power to transform into warriors known as the Pretty Cure by retrieving and using a number of magical items.
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A total of 22 seasons or series — depending on your definition — have aired in the “Pretty Cure” continuity, with only the second and fifth series following returning generations as opposed to introducing new ones. With each season/series spanning 45 to 50 episodes, the 22 years of “Pretty Cure” have yielded no fewer than 1,018 total episodes. “Tropical-Rouge! PreCure,” in particular, was one of the best anime series of 2022.
12. One Piece (1,128 episodes)
It may come as some surprise that the anime which has arguably become synonymous with the concept of “too many darn episodes to watch” only lands in 12th place on this list, but alas. Based on Eiichiro Oda’s eponymous manga series, “One Piece” follows many, many, many years in the lives of a ragtag group of seafarers led by Monkey D. Luffy (Mayumi Tanaka), who, at the age of 17, develops rubber-like body-stretching powers after eating a Devil Fruit. He proceeds to gather a crew of pirates and set out in search of the legendary treasure known as the One Piece, which he hopes will make him King of the Pirates.
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Since premiering in 1999, “One Piece” has been running virtually without interruption, producing a total of 21 seasons, each of which is given a unique title and covers several multi-episode story arcs. The shortest of those 21 seasons was Season 12, “Island of Women,” which aired only 14 episodes in 2009, while the longest, “Wano Country,” ran for over four years between 2019 and 2023 and produced 197 episodes. Put together, those 21 seasons count 1,128 total installments. Thankfully, if you’re thinking of starting “One Piece” now, there are a handful of episodes you can pretty safely skip.
11. Detective Conan a.k.a. Case Closed (1,162 episodes)
Released as “Case Closed” by Viz Media and Funimation in North America due to rights issues surrounding its original title, “Detective Conan” is an anime adaptation of the eponymous manga series by Gosho Aoyama. Both the manga and the anime follow Shinichi Kudo (Kappei Yamaguchi), a Japanese teenage detective who, while investigating a case involving a mysterious crime syndicate, winds up being captured and force-fed an experimental drug that turns him into an elementary school-age child. He adopts a new identity as Conan Edogawa (Minami Takayama), moves in with his childhood friend Ran Mori (Wakana Yamazaki), and begins to assist her private detective father Kogoro (Akira Kamiya and Rikiya Koyama) in solving cases.
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The anime series began airing in 1996 and has been going strong ever since. Thirty-one seasons have been completed, and Season 32 has been airing since April 2022, meaning the show’s total episode count will continue to grow as the weeks pass. As of May 13, 2025, there are 1,162 episodes of “Detective Conan.”
10. Yu-Gi-Oh! (1,245 episodes)
The “Yu-Gi-Oh!” series by Kazuki Takahashi played a great part in establishing our understanding of the contemporary shounen manga. Although it originally ran for just 38 volumes between 1996 and 2004, it has spawned one of Japan and the world’s most longevous, profitable, and inexhaustible media franchises ever — including a “Yu-Gi-Oh!” anime franchise comprising 10 total series that have aired in uninterrupted continuity since 1998. The first two series, “Yu-Gi-Oh!” and “Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters,” focused on the character of Yugi Muto (Megumi Ogata and Shunsuke Kazama) himself, but subsequent series have moved beyond Yugi to tell stories centered around the “Duel Monsters” card game and its various players and iterations.
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The original “Yu-Gi-Oh!” show ran for six months and had a mere 27 episodes; “Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters,” which effectively acted as a springboard for the franchise, had 224. Adding “Yu-Gi-Oh! GX’ (180 episodes), “Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D'” (155), “Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal” and “Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal II” (74 each), “Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V” (148), “Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS” (120), “Yu-Gi-Oh! Sevens” (92), and “Yu-Gi-Oh! Go Rush!!’ (151), the franchise has yielded 1,245 episodes.
9. Pokémon (1,328 episodes)
Ask any person in the world to name an anime series, and it’s statistically likely that they’ll answer with “Pokémon,” which has become as iconic and central to the cultural image of Japan as any television series has to any country in the past half-century. And it’s a testament to how huge the “Pokémon” franchise is that, even then, describing it in terms of the TV show alone would be reductive. The 29-year collection of manga series, films, anime episodes, games, toys, and innumerable merchandising tie-ins — all centered around a world of exuberant superpowered fauna and intense battle tournaments — is nothing less than the world’s highest-grossing media franchise ever.
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Still, the anime is in many ways the centerpiece of the cultural presence of “Pokémon,” and it has been airing uninterrupted since 1997 — with the first 25 seasons all following Ash Ketchum (Rica Matsumoto) on his quest to become a Pokémon master, a journey concluded in 2022 with subsequent seasons focusing on new protagonist Liko (Minori Suzuki). In total, the show has aired 1,329 episodes across its 27 seasons, including the currently airing Season 27.
8. Crayon Shin-chan (1,349 episodes)
Known for its distinctive, unmistakable visual style that twists simple, kid-like scribbles into unexpected and mischievously comedic forms, “Crayon Shin-chan” began as a manga series by Yoshito Usui. It began to be adapted into an anime series in 1992, and that series is still airing new episodes today. Since its beginning, the “Crayon Shin-chan” anime has followed Shinnosuke “Shin” Nohara (Akiko Yajima and Yumiko Kobayashi), a misbehaving 5-year-old boy who lives with his family in the Greater Tokyo Area city of Kasukabe, Japan, and goes on bizarre, often fantastical adventures with his friends.
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The show, which is not typically divided into production seasons in its native Japan but sometimes gets segmented into defined seasons in international broadcasts, has been airing episodes every year since 1992. Not for nothing, episode listings usually split the installments into years of airing as opposed to seasons. There have been 1,349 total episodes of “Crayon Shin-chan” so far.
7. Chibi Maruko-chan (1,479 episodes)
The slice-of-life manga series “Chibi Maruko-chan,” by Momoko Sakura, is among the longest-running and most consistently popular in Japan, having run a total of 18 volumes between 1986 and 2022. In 1990, it spawned an eponymous anime series; much like the manga, it’s largely inspired by its author’s own life growing up in the former Irie District in Shimizu (since incorporated into Shizuoka), and follows Momoko “Maruko” Sakura (Tarako and Kokoro Kikuchi), a 9-year-old suburban girl, her loving six-person family, and her various spunky antics and misadventures.
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The original “Chibi Maruko-chan” series aired between 1990 and 1992 and had 142 total episodes. After it wrapped, the franchise went on a three-year hiatus before a new “Chibi Maruko-chan” anime series picked things back up. For the purposes of this list, which considers only uninterrupted runs, we’re counting the second series, which began airing in 1995 and is still on the air today; this ongoing series has aired 1,479 episodes thus far.
6. Shima Shima Tora no Shimajirou (1,558 episodes)
Based on characters originally featured on “Kodomo Challenge,” a correspondence course for preschool children, “Shima Shima Tora no Shimajirou” is an educational children’s show centered around the Shimano tiger family. The show’s protagonist is Shimajiro Shimano (Chisato Nakajima and Omi Minami), who learns numerous important lessons in his day-to-day life as a preschooler. The show is set in Challenge Island, which is populated by various anthropomorphic animals who help Shimajiro discover and understand more about the world around him.
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Numerous iterations of the “Shima Shima Tora no Shimajirou” anime series have been produced. The first, premiering in 1993, ran until 2008 and had 726 episodes in total. A subsequent series, “Hakken Taiken Daisuki! Shimajirou,” ran 101 episodes between 2008 and 2010, followed by “Shimajirou Hesoka” between 2010 and 2012, which added 101 episodes. Since 2012, the franchise has been airing “Shimajirou no Wao!,” which counts 630 episodes so far, for a total of 1,558 “Shimajirou” episodes.
5. Soreike! Anpanman (1,640 episodes)
The children’s character Anpanman, a superhero whose head is shaped like a bean paste-filled sweet roll called anpan, is not especially well-known in the West, yet he ranks among the most iconic, recognizable, and omnipresent characters in Japanese media and commerce. Indeed, he’s ubiquitous enough that even the manga and anime series “One-Punch Man” was created partly as a humorous parody of the character. Beginning as a picture book series by Takashi Yanase, the “Anpanman” canon has been adapted to anime form on the ongoing “Soreike! Anpanman” series, on which Anpanman is voiced by Keiko Toda. Most episodes find Anpanman battling his arch-nemesis Baikinman (Ryūsei Nakao) and endeavoring to protect Uncle Jam (Hiroshi Masuoka and Kōichi Yamadera), the baker who created and mentors him.
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In nearly four decades on air, “Soreike! Anpanman” has been able to get very close to the record for most episodes of an anime at 1,640. While that particular record hasn’t quite been broken by it, however, another has: In 2009, the Guinness book verified “Anpanman” as the animated franchise with the highest number of characters; even back then, over 15 years ago, the number was already a whopping 1,768.
4. Ojarumaru (2,122 episodes)
Sometimes known in English-language markets as “Prince Mackaroo,” the “Ojarumaru” TV series is geared toward a younger audience and tells the story of a five-year-old prince from the Heian Era named Ojarumaru Sakanoue (Hiroko Konishi and Chinami Nishimura), who steals a scepter from a king and, while running away, ends up falling into a magical hole that transports him to modern-day Japan. Ojarumaru moves in with a Japanese family, while being pursued by three oni sent by the king to retrieve the scepter.
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Running continuously since its premiere on NHK Educational in October 1998, “Ojarumaru” is another example of a long-running anime series without a manga source. As a matter of fact, the opposite happened when “Ojarumaru” inspired a one-volume manga series by Tatsuma Ejiri that ran between 2012 and 2014. The TV version, meanwhile, has aired a total of 2,122 episodes thus far, divided into 27 seasons or “series,” and continues to air to this day.
3. Nintama Rantarou (2,590 episodes)
Adapted from the manga series “Rakudai Ninja Rantarou” by Sōbe Amako, “Nintama Rantarou” is sometimes known in English as “Ninjaboy Rantaro” and tells the story of Rantaro Inadera (Minami Takayama), a first-grade student at a ninja school during the Sengoku period who’s always looking to have fun with his friends when he’s not devoting himself to his ninja training. Heavy on silliness and anachronisms (beginning with Rantaro’s signature glasses), the show brings a sense of cartoony levity to the genre of historical fiction.
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The longest-running NHK anime series, “Nintama Rantarou” has been airing since April 1993 without interruption. There have been 32 completed seasons so far, and Season 33 is currently airing; added up, the 33 batches of episodes contain a mind-boggling total of 2,590 chapters. Those 1,128 “One Piece” episodes sure aren’t looking like much in the grand scheme of things by now, aren’t they?
2. Doraemon (2,662 episodes)
One of the oldest and most definitive of all manga series, Fujiko F. Fujio’s “Doraemon” was first published in 1969, with its original run stretching until 1997. In the decades since 1969, the character of Doraemon — a robotic cat from the 22nd century who travels back in time to help 10-year-old schoolboy Nobita Nobi improve his life, sent by Nobita’s future great-great-grandson — has become a global icon, one of the most widely recognized faces in the entire medium of manga. Naturally, he has also inspired multiple anime adaptations.
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The first of those adaptations aired 26 episodes between April and September 1973 on NNS and was essentially a one-off. Years later, in 1979, a second “Doraemon” anime series was launched — and it was that one which became an internationally famous phenomenon. Running nonstop from 1979 to 2005 on ANN, this “main” series aired 1,817 episodes and featured Nobuyo Ōyama as Doraemon and Noriko Ohara as Nobita. It was immediately followed by a third series, also on ANN, which has been running since 2005 with Wasabi Mizuta as the voice of Doraemon and Megumi Ōhara as Nobita; that show has aired 845 episodes across 20 seasons as of May 13, 2025. If we take the continuous ANN run from 1979 to today as a collected whole, it has produced 2,662 episodes thus far. Don’t be surprised if “Doraemon” continues into the titular character’s birth century.
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1. Sazae-san (2,801 episodes)
The longest-running anime of all time is based on a manga series that began all the way back in 1946. Written and illustrated by Machiko Hasegawa, “Sazae-san” started out as a yonkoma manga, a.k.a. a four-panel comic strip, first published in the evening edition of a local Fukuoka newspaper called the Fukunichi. A slice-of-life series following the free-spirited character of Sazae Fuguta, “Sazae-san” became one of Japan’s most popular and beloved comics, and, beginning in 1969, was adapted into an anime series on Fuji TV.
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And, believe it or not, that very same anime series is still airing every Sunday to this day — with Sazae still being voiced by Midori Katō, who was 29 when the show began and is now 85. A veritable Japanese TV institution, “Sazae-san” not only holds the record for longest-running anime, but also stands at second place for longest-running animated series from anywhere in the world — beaten only by Germany’s “Sandmännchen,” the longest-running TV show franchise of all time.
Sazae Fuguta and her tight-knit clan have become a kind of cozy and dependable second family to whole successive generations in Japan. Each half-hour “Sazae-san” episode features three segments, which has led to some sources placing its episode count at over 7,000, but, even if you go the orthodox route and count each half-hour airing as a single installment, the show still has an unfathomable episode count: The most recent airing as of this writing, on May 11, 2025, was none other than episode 2,801.
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