The ultimate goal of any anime and manga fan is to see a complete adaptation of a series they love. It’s a beautiful thing when it happens, with Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Yu Yu Hakusho serving as only two examples. Even when the adaptation doesn’t wrap up until later like Inuyasha, it’s all good. But sometimes things don’t end so neatly.

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Sometimes an animation studio isn’t able to finish a series because they catch up to the manga one too many times. And sometimes an anime is so popular the studio refuses to let go of the cash cow, leading to a series that, for good or ill, lasts longer than its source material. This list takes a look at both kinds of series, so read on to find out which ones worked well...and which ones didn't.

10 MANGA LASTED LONGER: GANGSTA

Gangsta’s lack of a full adaptation was the victim of a combination of things. Anime’s constant need for content, resulting in them adapting series far too early and only creating a single season before moving on is the chief issue. But a second, more unexpected problem was the studio responsible for the series, Manglobe, was unceremoniously shut down two days after the anime’s last episode aired.

The series had an excellent track record for making or adapting great series, from Samurai Champloo to Gangsta itself, but unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to get them out of multi-million dollar debt and eventual bankruptcy.

9 ANIME LASTED LONGER: TENCHI MUYO

Tenchi Muyo had a pair of manga from the series original creators Hitoshi Okuda and Fujimi Shobo—one that ran from 1994 to 2000 in No Need for Tenchi!, and another from 2000 to 2005 in The All-New Tenchi Muyo! Both series ended well over a decade ago, but the Tenchi franchise just continues to run.

There’s not only the TV only series Tenchi Universe and Tenchi in Tokyo, but the main Tenchi anime, Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki, as well as its various spin-offs, Tenchi Muyo! GXP and Tenchi Muyo: War on Geminar. This is a franchise that could start back up whenever it wants, and its loyal fanbase will always come running, which is why they announced a fifth season of Ryo-Ohki just this year.

8 MANGA LASTED LONGER: FAIRY TAIL

The Fairy Tail Guild, Fairy Tail

Fairy Tail just came to an end as an anime, after three different seasons that had multi-year breaks between them. The last season did a decent job bringing the final arc of the manga to life, so it feels weird even having this series here. However, right now, there’s a new manga series running from illustrator Atsuo Ueda and Fairy Tail creator Hiro Mashima called Fairy Tail:100 Years Quest.

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This series takes place after the original story and shows the team hunting down the Five Dragon Gods, five dragons with powers even greater than Acnologia, the final series boss. The manga’s been running for just over a year now, so it’s not quite time to give it an adaptation, but hopefully, someone will bring it to life in the future.

7 ANIME LASTED LONGER: LUPIN THE III

Monkey Punch’s original Lupin manga ran for two years from 1967 to 1969. He created a second manga, Lupin: World’s Most Wanted, roughly a decade later that would last longer, running for over twenty volumes and lasting four years from 1977 to 1981.

Of course, that pales in comparison to Lupin's run as an anime series. The character has had no less than five television series covering four different eras of Lupin, marked by the color jackets he wears. Of course, they still do manga for the popular character, but the last one was in 2014 and his two most recent series aired after that.

6 ANIME LASTED LONGER: DRAGON BALL

As the legends go, Toriyama initially wanted to change protagonists from Goku to Gohan after the Freiza Saga, but the fans never quite cottoned to the idea. Therefore, he kept Goku in the lead role for another two arcs before finally bringing the series to an end.

Alas, Toei would have none of this and decided to keep Dragon Ball going, transforming it into the often maligned Dragon Ball GT series. Dragon Ball GT ran for two years and sixty-four episodes with very little input from Toriyama, a fact that inflames more than a few Dragon Ball fans. Nonetheless, things got back on track with Dragon Ball Super, a series that received quite a bit of supervision from Toriyama.

5 MANGA LASTED LONGER: HUNTER X HUNTER

This isn’t even the anime’s fault. A lot of times, series will begin far too soon after the manga’s just gotten started, and wind up having to stop early. In Hunter x Hunter’s case, there had already been an adaptation over a decade earlier.

This time Madhouse had several hundred chapters to work with, and there was no reason they should’ve caught up before author Yoshihiro Togashi finished. But they didn’t count on Togashi not just going on multiple hiatuses but working two separate movies during those hiatus instead of the manga, so the most recent arc was forced to be ignored just to give the series a proper ending.

4 ANIME LASTED LONGER: YU-GI-OH

Depending on how one looks at it, this is either the most valid entry on the list or a total cheat. Kazuki Takahashi’s Yu-Gi-Oh manga stopped back in 2004 after he finished telling the story of Yugi and Atem. The second anime series that covered the duel-heavy half of Takahashi’s manga stopped around the same time.

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But since then there have been multiple Yu-Gi-Oh series, and while most of them have received their own manga adaptations, the latest one, Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS has no adaptation, as they continued the Arc-V manga until VRAINS was already ending, and they’ve instead chosen to do a completely different manga series.

3 MANGA LASTED LONGER: TRIGUN

Manga Trigun

There’s a great chance most people don’t even realize Trigun’s manga kept going after the anime. After all, the anime is looked at as one of the best of all time, praise most series with anime original plotlines do not receive usually.

In the case of Trigun, the manga went on for a full decade after the anime came to an end. Sure, there’s Trigun: Badlands Rumble for those anime-only fans, but this is such a massive discrepancy that it feels like Trigun fans are owed a full-on new adaptation just to get Yasuhiro Nightow’s original story.

2 ANIME LASTED LONGER: NARUTO

Kakashi, Itachi, Sakura, Sasuke, and Naruto all preparing for attack

Naruto may be the most baffling entry on this list. Thanks to the anime catching up with the manga early on, the anime was forced to use a host of filler for the better part of three years, until finally creating the Naruto: Shippuden series.

Even though the Naruto manga came to an end in 2014, the anime seemed to have no interest in bringing things to a close. Instead, they carried on for another three years past the manga’s ending, until finally circling back around to do the last bits of the story and moving on to Boruto.

1 MANGA LASTED LONGER: BLEACH

Probably the most well-known version of an anime coming to an end before the manga is Bleach. That’s because, alongside One Piece and Naruto, Bleach was considered one of the “Big Three," a group of incredibly successful manga that served as the pillars of Weekly Shonen Jump.

The anime ran for over 350 episodes, but it came to a stop in 2012, a full four years before the manga ended. The final arc, “Thousand Year War,” remains entirely without an adaptation, and as of now, there’s no confirmation it’ll ever receive one.

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