Screw that, it's too damn long!

Does excessive length in an anime/manga turn you off? Things that generally go on far too long tend to become less interesting as time goes by and that's probably true for a lot of long-running series. But what if the series actually has quantity as well as quality? Are you willing to overlook the length if the series in question is good?

Might apply to TV shows too, I guess. =p I'll answer later on. Though, seeing my favorite anime is One Piece, my answer is probably quite obvious.

Usually lengthier anime put me off. I feel like 3 or 4 seasons is usually more than enough to convey a long story. Most shows get stale after that point and don't entertain the same way. It's why, sadly, I really can't get into long running shows like Bleach, Naruto and One Piece (even though this one was decidedly awesome in the first 4 season/arcs I bothered to watch).

I do make exceptions for good shows, and some shows are good enough that their length is irrelevant due to their inevitable variety, like Star Trek. But not all mediums of television are forgiving of repetitiveness, and animation just so happens to be one of the least forgiving when it comes to staleness.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, is quickly approaching the "typical point of staleness" so I will soon see (December I believe) if the series continues on with the same originality or not. I could definitely see myself departing the fandom at S4 if it is extremely poor compared to other seasons.

This leads me on to my next point. The "Beginning" exception. I make exceptions for series that are newly assigned a long running status if I am currently watching it as it is released to the public. I find that usually the release rates are slow enough that they don't make demands on my time, so I don't have to allocate days or weeks to "catching up".

But yes, the "Catching up" problem is a huge one for me. If I cannot reasonably catch up in 1-2 days, I usually drop the show or consider myself too far behind, regardless of it's long running status.

It definitely can be a problem, catching up with an anime/tv series that already has a lot of episodes is a pain.

I think my limit for Anime is probably over 100 episodes, way too much time to catch up on.

For some reason, I think I'm more lenient with tv-shows - maybe because each episode is longer and tends not to have 'filler' or random episodes. I remember watching four seasons of Fringe in a relatively short time.

Saying that, if I start watching a program whilst it's still airing, and it doesn't bore me, then I continue on. I'm still up to date with Naruto now (after joining somewhere around episode 80), however I'll never start One Piece as 600 episodes is far too daunting.

I got absolutely sick of Bleach after episode 100, which is why I tend to skip over ongoings.

If I really like the series and it has quite a few seasons, I'll watch them. But in general, I prefer anime with 12~20 episodes.

huge numbers of episodes are not a huge turnoff for me since I watch Yugioh, Digimon, Naruto and Pokemon. The thing I do hate are fillers. If the fillers goes for 5-10 episodes, then I'll lose interest during that period of time and wait a few weeks until they release the full arc so I won't have to watch every week just for a useless filler. Since every episodes generally run for 22 minutes with no commercial, 5 or 10 episodes could go up to 220 minutes, which is 3 hours and 40 minutes of my time just watching fillers that won't contribute to the story. Might as well just sit down on a chair and look at my plants grow, in the end it'll be the same thing, nothing interesting will happen in both cases.

The only long term anime I've even attempted to watch was Naruto and I quit at episode eight because I just didn't like it anyway.

I'm not enough of a major anime watcher to say I would rule out all long term shows, but the ones I have watched up to now all have less than fifty episodes.

In the past I've seen quite some long term series, like Fairy Tail, One Piece and Naruto, but I've lost interest long ago. At least I don't watch these animes anymore, since I like watching rather short ones (well, Gintama might be an exception). I'd rather read the manga, hoping that it ends some day (like Naruto, Fairy Tail), than having to see all those fillers and battles that last about 50 episodes (might be exaggerating, a little :P).

Also most anime series, which air quite some time seem to lose most of their good looking graphics and become more and more fanservice...

With anime it's kind of a turn-off if it's over 100 episodes. Just seeing that number of episodes is enough to put the entire series in the back of my mind and it's the reason why I haven't watched Gintama. On the plus side, excessive length means that there must be some merit to it. Despite the somewhat popular opinion, a show isn't bad because of its length. It's actually pretty stupid to say so.

The length of a manga is absolutely no problem at all, though. Manga's strange. Something like Ao no Exorcist has a bit over 40 chapters but each chapter is really long, but Toriko has over 200 and each one is pretty short. Overall it feels more rewarding to read something with shorter chapters since it feels like I'm actually accomplishing something, but I enjoy catching up with something that has longer chapters. Plus there's almost never anything that can be considered filler.

The fact that an anime is long doesn't turn me off, but if an anime is long and it can't maintain a constant grabbing storyline, then I'll just add to my trash bin of anime's. It depends on the anime most of the time is what this all v comes down too. I will cry if an anime enjoyed a lot ends prematurely or it starts to degrade, although usually once it degrades, as far as I'm concerned it has as ended.

Prime example: Sword Art Online

Sweets Witch said:

Manga's strange. Something like Ao no Exorcist has a bit over 40 chapters but each chapter is really long

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Things like this are a huge turnoff for me. I just can't keep up with reading a manga when each chapter is 60-100 pages. I'm typically a short manga reader, when each chapter is, say, twenty-forty pages, as long as the chapter count is kept down a little or I'm caught up with it. As for anime... I don't really care, except in extreme cases like One Piece, something I haven't even started. It's at Episode 603 and that's something I'm just flat out disinterested in just by the episode count. I couldn't with that, aha.

I don't have a lot of exposure to long-running anime, but I imagine a subconscious apprehension about their length is partially to blame for why I've never bothered to get into things like One Piece or Bleach. Where I have the biggest issue with 'long' entertainment is definitely in the case of films. For me, a film has to reeeeeeeally justify itself to be over 2 hours in length. Some films do this very well but, more often than not, I often find 2+ hour films quite indulgent.

I think 12 or 13 episodes is a good length for an anime. Lots of 20+ episode length shows I've seen could be cut down and only be improved. Anything over 30 episodes is really pushing it as far as my attention is concerned.

I picked up One Piece while 500 episode were already out and since it peak my interest during the first couple of story arcs i didn't let the amount of episode scare me off. I think being open minded is always a good think because if you count off an anime or any sort of tv show because it's too long you might miss out on something great.

Although some shows do push it, and always leave you wondering why certain things were spread across a million episode (DBZ is an example of this but we were young and didn't mind at the time)

I don't have a lot of exposure to long-running anime, but I imagine a subconscious apprehension about their length is partially to blame for why I've never bothered to get into things like One Piece or Bleach. Where I have the biggest issue with 'long' entertainment is definitely in the case of films. For me, a film has to reeeeeeeally justify itself to be over 2 hours in length. Some films do this very well but, more often than not, I often find 2+ hour films quite indulgent.

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Same here. I'm still trying to get through the 200+ episodes of the first Yu-Gi-Oh! anime, let alone the others.
The fact that there is a Season 0 of Yu-Gi-Oh! (that I'm not done watching yet) just makes it worse.

I cannot watch movies. I just can't. Anything longer than 30 minutes will never grab my attention.
I did watch 3 movies yesterday, but mainly because it's my "homework" as a language student. I had to fast-forward through most of the movies though.
And the whole time I just felt like yelling "But get to the freaking point already..."

When something's good, I never want it to end. In t.v, the fact that Chuck ended after 5 seasons was absolutely gutting, particularly as only two seasons were full 20+ ones (I also hate how in England we have 6-episode series. Skins seemed long because they did 10/11 episodes per series). But then again, I used to read Hayate No Gotoku! (Think that's what it was called) manga on the internet, and there were so many chapters and so many similar-looking girls who were into him at one point or another, i just got confused and stopped reading.
I don't mind long films, provided there's enough plot development or action scenes. For example with the Dark Knight Rises I get over the lack of action by the fact that the talking, and even the silent bits, are so good. But with the Fast and Furious series I'm glad they're bringing more action into it - there wasn't enough racing in the early ones, although they were good. (The effects were shocking too, just watch the main drag races in TFatF and 2F2F again, when they use Nos it's hilarious xD ).

Long animes tend to be a put off for me. It keeps me from rewatching a lot of things, since back when I was younger, I'd only get to catch bits and pieces of anime I liked since it was always on way past my bedtime. I mean, I could easily watch it now, but I look and realize it's no wonder I couldn't follow along so easily back then cause it just...doesn't end. I am more likely to watch something that's already finished though. I don't like the suspense of waiting for new episodes and missing them and such haha. That's why I tend to stick with older things.

That's a good thing about Yu-Gi-Oh DM. It's five seasons long, one of those seasons being complete filler bs that you can definitely skip out on so more like 4 seasons. But yeah. I can't keep up with an anime like Pokemon or Naruto that just keep going and going. Too much for me, haha. Though bear in mind, I'm not a big person on watching anime or even regular television, so I wouldn't bother recommending me anything. :P

Doesn't matter if it's 1 or 1000 eps. If it's good I'll enjoy it.

I had small problem catching up with Bleach, since there was like 250+ episodes when I started watching it, but I finally managed to catch up and It's currently my most favorite anime now.

I generally watch all those short animes with 12-25 episodes, you know the usual ones. I have never really watched any long-running anime as I feel that why bother watching it when there's like 333 episodes already, it would take weeks to at least catch up. The only thing that can make me stand long running anime is that I watched it from like all the way from the beginning and I feel sort of attached to it already. The longest anime I have ever watched is D-Gray Man, with 103 episodes, or maybe Yu-Gi-Oh, or Pokemon.but those are what we call cartoons right?

Anyway, I feel that 12-13 episodes animes are too short while 25 episodes ones are too draggy. However, for some reason, animes with more episode generally make me have more attention span and makes me want to watch the next episode. (I am looking at you, DGM and SKET Dance!)

Maybe that's why the animes can get so long anyway....

the number ep is a turn off for me, the longest Anime I have ever watch was Toyko Mew Mew with 52 eps. Anything longer that than I will not even try as I get bored easily with them. I did try watching "One Piece" but after 4 eps I gave up as it was boring.

so yeah 52 eps max for me.