People love the idea of short anime. Short seasons that run anywhere from the usual 12-13 to 24-26 episodes long seem ideal for anime fans who just want to get into a series and finish it up without spending several weeks getting through it.

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At least, people love them until they find one they fall in love with. Then suddenly it's the worst thing ever, as their favorite series is going to wrap up before they wanted it to. Sometimes the series is an original series that's meant to be short, while other times the studio only adapted a small part of an ongoing source material. Whatever the case, there are plenty of single-season series that could have run for far longer and been just as successful.

10 Z/X: Ignition Combined Elements Of Digimon With Card Games

ZX Ignition

Z/X: Ignition was Digimon for a new generation. It was set in a world where, one day, five different portals to alternate futures appeared, known as “Black Points.” From each point, monsters invaded to ensure that their future would become the future that survived.

Each set of invaders would have to battle with human partners with card devices. This series was a lot more fun than it had any right to be as a kid’s show, and could easily have gone multiple seasons.

9 Record of the Grancrest War Rushed Through Its Storyline

Theo and his mage Siluca from Record of Grancrest War.

Record of Grancrest War is a fantasy anime that launched in 2018 and ran for a single season of 26 episodes. It actually managed to finish its entire storyline within that run... but it probably shouldn’t have. It had to speed through so many of its key storylines and rush through so many character development arcs.

There were clearly characters that deserved so much time but got nothing other than a few minutes of introduction before being written out. It was a rare case of a show that would have been much better if it had run for a much longer time.

8 Trigun Didn't Adapt The Sequel Manga

Vash from the anime, Trigun

Trigun feels like a complete project, but believe it or not, it isn’t. The series ran for over a decade after it finished as a manga. The original manga stopped and continued on as Trigun Maximum in a seinen magazine from 1998 to 2008. This allowed the show to delve into how humanity landed on the planet Gunsmoke, showing the readers what happened to the rest of humanity as well.

It’s not that this information was required, but there was more Trigun available from the creator and it is unfortunate that viewers never got it.

7 Grimgar of Fantasy & Ash Had Room For More Development Of Its Protagonists

grimgar of fantasy and ash

Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash remains, to this day, one of the most unique isekai series ever. It’s not about protagonists being overpowered, nor is it specifically about them being “weak” on purpose.

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The characters are weak because they don’t know what they’re doing, and their weakness plays into the storyline in ways most stories would never think to do. It ran for only one season because most light novel adaptations aren’t given the time they deserve unless they’re mega-popular.

6 Nanana's Buried Treasure Is A Clever Mystery Anime

Nanana's Buried Treasure Tensai

Nanana’s Buried Treasure was a mystery series that ran for only eleven episodes. It followed a pair of protagonists—a genius young detective named Tensai Ikkyuu and a high school kid named Juugo Yama, who were in search of a collection of items with mysterious powers known as the Nanana Collection.

These items were scattered across an island by a woman who became a ghost after she was killed a decade ago. This series stops as it’s getting intriguing, which stops it from being as memorable as it could be.

5 Castle Town Dandelion Is A Slice Of Life About Superpowered Royalty

Castle Town Dandelion

Castle Town Dandelion is a slice-of-life anime following the Sakurada family, the royalty that presides over Japan. They all have superpowers, and the entire city is monitoring them at all times to make sure each member of the family is constantly safe while they live their lives.

At the same time, the next leader of the country is going to be decided by vote—and one member decides she just has to win. Not because she wants to rule the country, but just so she can get rid of the cameras and get her privacy back. This series featured a cute cast that had the potential to go on for years afterward—even its manga hasn’t stopped yet.

4 Sword Art Online Alternative Focuses On The Gun Gale Online World

gun gale online

Sword Art Online Alternative is from Keiichi Sigsawa, creator of Kino’s Journey. Turns out, Sigsawa is enough of a gun nut that he loved the idea of an MMO that was focused entirely around guns.

So his version of Gun Gale Online is completely missing Kirito and his crew and instead focuses on an entirely different crew of characters that feel more complete but no less over the top and ridiculous.

3 Mouretsu Pirates Mixes Sci-Fi Space Piracy With Slice Of Life

Marika Kato

Marika is a high school kid who runs the space yacht club at her school, until one day she learns her father was actually a legendary space pirate captain. With her father passing, she’s now suddenly become the head of the spaceship he once piloted, as his closest descendant.

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This series is just as absurd as it sounds—Marika has to continue being a high school student while also learning how to be a space pirate. It’s got tons of potential as a science fiction series, and it’s unfortunate it ran for just one season and a film.

2 Air Gear Made Rocket-Powered Roller Skates Cool

The main cast of Air Gear

Air Gear should have been one of the biggest series of the 2000s. The series takes all the trappings and ideas of shonen anime and brings it into the world of rollerblading, as it gives its characters rocket-powered skates. The manga gets into some insane sci-fi stuff as the powers and techniques the characters use get more ridiculous.

There’s an OVA that hints at some of this but it’s got nothing on what the manga gets into, and the fact that they never tried to do a sequel series or a remake is a loss for the entire anime community.

1 Joker Game Is A Pre-World War II Action Drama

Joker Game

Joker Game focuses on a collection of spies formed in Japan right before the beginning of World War II. The trick here is that with Japan having been focused on fighting honorably for years, the very idea of spycraft is strange to them, and only a select few have learned how to properly gain information in this new era.

This series had a succinct episode count that got to the point, but it could have easily gone on for years developing its characters into and through the second World War.

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