I remember, many years ago at this point, being at a convention and a friend of mine joined me in a queue. In that queue, she told me that she’d just been at a quiz and that one of the questions had been which anime series had the most number of episodes. I knew the answer and replied with it but she said “No, it’s One Piece.” I remember being stunned by this and I guess it’s possible that there may’ve been some context I was missing such as ‘released in English’ or something like that but I was genuinely shocked that some anime fans mistakenly thought that One Piece had more episodes than any other anime. I don’t know if common knowledge has changed since then but I thought it might still be interesting to take a look at some anime series that have had the most number of episodes produced.
Let’s start with the correct answer to that question. The anime series that has actually had the most number of episodes is Sazae-san. One of the most popular anime series ever, Sazae-san is based on the Michiko Hasegawa manga of the same name and the series has been running near continuously since 1969! When you look at the episode count of the series, you’ll see that two figures are often presented, usually one being over 8000 while the other is over 2500. This may seem confusing but this is explained by the fact that each episode of Sazae-san is broken up into segments, typically three. Regardless, the accomplishment of this feat should not be underestimated and should certainly not be ignored by Western fans who are likely to overlook this series.
Behind Sazae-san is another series that many Western fans may be unfamiliar with, Nintama Rantaro. Based off of a manga called Rakudai Ninja Rantaro, Nintama Rantaro began airing in 1993 and has aired over 2000 episodes! However, it’s important to note that the vast majority of these episodes are merely about 10 minutes in length, a reasonable explanation for how the series has managed to produce so many episodes in a relatively short span of time.
The series with the third most number of episodes is one that, admittedly, I hadn’t even heard of before writing this article! Ojarumaru is, as far as I can tell, an anime original that began airing in 1998 and has similarly risen to over 2000 episodes, albeit at about 10 minutes per episode. It also seems to have the distinction of being the first anime airing on NHK to switch to digital animation rather than using traditional cels.
The last series that I want to discuss is actually the only one which, as of this article, has ended its run. Oyako Club ran from 1994 to 2013 and features a grand total of 1818 episodes! Granted, these episodes are short at only 5 minutes long but it’s still remarkable, particularly since it was produced by the same animation company, Eiken, that does Sazae-san (talk about a workload!)
Notice that I didn’t even mention One Piece in this article and, for me to do so, I would have to write an article containing about 12 more titles before I reached it! If nothing else, it’s important to remember that these series may be relatively unknown outside of Japan but in no way does that invalidate their accomplishments. Let me know your thoughts on these anime series with the most number of episodes, whether you’ve seen or heard of these before, what you think about the lack of knowledge that many Western fans have of these shows and any additional information you might have on the topic.
Hopefully you have found this article interesting and informative and, if you wish to seek any of the works I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk and amazon.com for all of your needs!