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  • ️Sat Jul 13 2024

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ArcFatigue/AnimeAndManga

Arc Fatigue

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Arc Stall

Examples 

  • The Washizu Mahjong arc of Akagi started in 1997 and ended when the manga did, in 2019. The manga had started in 1992 and run for three arcs before that one. A single game lasting a single night lasted for 22 years. The last round of the last match alone took five years to write, with one issue coming out every month. They take seven months just to draw all the tiles to start the round.
  • The vast majority of Arachnid's 70+ chapters take place on a single day, with Alice bouncing from one battle with an Ax-Crazy Organization assassin to the next, which can get rather exhausting and frustrating after a point.
  • Assassination Classroom:
    • What some fans thought of the God of Death arc, which lasted around thirteen chapters. The anime averts this by a long shot, completing the entire arc in just two episodes... Though, instead, it received some complaints for being a rushed Pragmatic Adaptation.
    • In a variation, everything after Chapter 153, largely because, with Class E firmly defeating Class A and Koro-sensei's life largely safe, the series had very little to actually do. As a result, much of February drags with the students doing various things, which left many fans wishing for Matsui to just get to the final arc already.
  • The Revenge of the Love Failure arc in Beastars lasts for almost 70 chapters, roughly 20 chapters longer than the next longest arc in the series. The story kept finding increasingly contrived ways for the arc's Big Bad Melon to evade capture, while the development of all side characters is largely put on hold for the duration. Not helping matters is that the series was swiftly brought to a close a mere four chapters after it ends.
  • Due to Schedule Slip and several other plots along the way, the journey to Elfheim in Berserk lasted all the way from June 2001, when the place was first mentioned as a possible destination for Guts and Casca in Chapter 181, to November 2015, when they finally arrived in Chapter 342.
  • Black Butler and its various arcs just seem to get longer as the manga goes on, with the two initial arcs of Jack the Ripper and the Circus Arc ranging from short to decently long without getting annoying. The problems began later on.
    • The Campagnia Ship Arc was long, although it did reveal some twists, important characters and their development and began a potential long-running background plot, so the length could be excused.
    • The Weston College Arc was the beginning of a downfall. The arc was long and took place in a school, bringing a lot of boring chores that generally were not found in the manga before, and involved a sub-plot to reveal a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing which many fans think could've been cut without impacting the important mission Ciel had been given upon infiltrating the school. The kicker came when the mission was stalled to involve a Tournament Arc in the middle of it — once again, it was necessary to advance the plot but prolonged the arc to the point of the reader getting exhausted.
    • The Werewolf Arc in Germany is a mixture. The arc took around 20 chapters to complete, which sounds like very little, but was longer than the previous arcs and several chapters felt like nothing was going anywhere.
    • The Blue Cult arc. Ciel infiltrated originally because Lizzie had gone missing, and it involved some wackiness in the sense that the P4 from the Weston arc have become an idol group, but with sinister on-goings behind the titular cult's original means. Ciel creates a rival idol group called the Phantom 5 to expose the cult more, then the arc diverts into a different plot-thread, including the death of Agni and the revelation of the "true" Ciel Phantomhive returning, revealing that the 'Ciel' we've been following is his twin brother, having taken the name and identity of Ciel. After the latest revelation, the arc devolves into multiple Flashback chapters detailing the twins' life and how the events of the ritual that summoned Sebastian came into being. Interesting, but definitely a big side-track.
  • Black Lagoon: The Baile de la Muerte arc. It wrapped up at 33 chapters out of 76 total, and nearly four years of real-world time passed before the arc was over. It was also such a massive, confusing Gambit Pileup that even the series creator admitted it was dragging. Not a new trend, however, because previously Fujiyama Gangsta Paradise did the same at 16 out of 37 chapters. Baile de la Muerte is still more infamous among fans of the series, because immediately following the arc's conclusion, the manga was hit with Schedule Slip.
  • Bleach:
    • While it was a relatively minor offender compared to later storylines, the Soul Society Arc is said to have dragged on for longer than necessary because it expanded the cast by a factor of about three, and all the new characters needed time to be fleshed out. Compounding the problem was the sudden change of tone and format, going from a Monster of the Week Urban Fantasy to a much more action-oriented High Fantasy. Fans who were particularly fond of the coming-of-age teenage drama of the early chapters found the move towards more standard Shōnen fights disappointing.
    • The Arrancar Arc spanned Chapters 183-423, four publication years and an additional four anime years. The arc slowed down to a crawl as even minion fights were given lavish screen time. The arc spawned the meme "Are they still in Mexico?" and the anime often interrupted the canon storyline in mid-action to insert filler arcs whenever it caught up to the manga. The arc also ends up being divided into three sub-arcs — though the first of these arcs doesn't drag too much, Hueco Mundo became infamous for its visual monotony (hope you like plain white backgrounds), while "Fake Karakura" dedicates a lot of pagetime to characters with very little connection to the protagonists fighting villains who really only exist for the sake of fight scenes.
    • The first anime filler arc, the Bount Arc, heavily padded its episodes to include content that was pointless to both the storyline and setting. Despite minimal new characters (by Bleach standards), the arc was at least as long as the Soul Society Arc.
    • It happened again during the Blood War arc, specifically the start of the Vandenreich's second invasion of Soul Society. Complaints seem to be similar to those against the battle in Fake Karakura Town, namely that it's a seemingly endless series of fights against bad guys who usually only get a minimum of characterization before getting offed. However, the last leg of the arc ended up inverting this; due to the manga author's swiftly failing health, the manga was so abruptly wrapped up that the last stretch was heavily compressed and extremely rushed, with many new, game-changing plot points being brought up without ever really being fully touched upon.
  • A Certain Scientific Railgun has the Dream Ranker arc. The first half consists of two mini-arcs and bits of filler that have barely anything to do with the main plot of the arc. In fact, the actual plot doesn't really start until the arc's halfway point.
  • Death Note:
    • The Yotsuba Arc drags on, with the investigation team trying to figure out who the Kira in the titular Yotsuba company is and part of the intense atmosphere is lost by Light having forfeited his ownership of the Death Note as part of a Memory Gambit and hence has lost all memory of said Death Note, Ryuk or his being Kira, which makes working alongside L not as thrilling as some readers might have thought.
    • The rest of the manga after a Time Skip is this, calling it the Near/Mello Arc, or a complete Myth Stall as it ranges over half of the manga and eventually ends it. Post-Time Skip, Light is the de facto leader of the investigation team after L's death and the new opposites are Near and Mello, Suspiciously Similar Substitutes of L and neither quite reaches the intense rivalry between them and Light that the latter had with L. Coupling this with Gambit Pileup after Gambit Pileup and feeling like even Light has lost the desire to really do his job as Kira and you have a prolonged discussion of trying to outsmart the other which doesn't come to full circle until the last 10 chapters, by which point the reader might be extremely bored. Ironic as the series was originally written as a Take That! towards dragged-out storylines, something author Tsugumi Ohba identifies as a Pet-Peeve Trope.
  • Digimon:
    • Digimon Tamers begins to drag the hell out when the D-Reaper shows up in Tokyo, kidnaps Juri, traps Culumon with her inside, and starts spreading. Several episodes are dedicated to complicated research, lots of Techno Babble, introducing new characters, Juri angsting nonstop (not without reason, but the narration stretches it to tedious levels), etc. And it keeps going, and going, and going, without any real developments...
    • Digimon Frontier suffered from this with the appearance of the Royal Knights. Most of the Digidestined are sidelined in favor of Takuya and Koji, and each encounter with the Knights ends with the Digidestined being defeated, with some angsting from Koichi. Thankfully, the introduction of Lucemon ends this pattern.
  • Dragon Ball:
    • Dragon Ball: Even before Dragon Ball Z, the series had its fair share of filler and padding to avoid catching up to the source material, but it got especially bad during the Red Ribbon Army saga. It reached its absolute nadir in the General Blue portions, which include episodes where Goku and friends spend the whole time running around in circles to escape a robot pirate, with certain shots and sequences of animation repeated over and over again. It all results in an arc that takes a lot longer to get through in the anime than it did in the manga.
    • Dragon Ball Z overall is an example so infamous that Dragon Ball Z Kai's advertising flaunted it being a shorter recut as a selling point, and is considered a better experience if you're not watching in Japanese. In the original manga, the Frieza and Cell sagas are of the exact same length and are tied for longest arc in the series (the Buu Saga has more chapters than both, but they tend to have much lower page counts). A classic joke is "How long does it take a Saiyan to screw in a lightbulb?"Answer
    • The Namek/Frieza Saga(s) are by far the most (in)famous. "Are they still on Namek?" (the original name for this trope) has become the standard meme when referring to any story arc that seems to be dragging on for too long.
      • Several of the episodes consist of just characters speaking or flying from one place to another, with very few fight sequences to break it all up (since the story is like a game of chess, told 22 minutes a week). One episode, "Bulma’s Big Day", is almost complete filler — it starts with Bulma tricking two of Frieza's henchmen into looking for the Dragon Balls, then turns into a Bizarro Episode which has no impact on the saga's plot at all after the henchmen are gone. This sluggish pacing happens because the anime was constantly at risk of overtaking the manga: when Goku first went Super Saiyan in the anime, it was a scant three chapters behind the manga, so Toei had to constantly write in excuses to delay the events unfolding. After this point, they opted to take weeks off and insert filler arcs wholesale to give the manga a chance to get further ahead, resulting in the ten-episode Garlic Jr. Saga after Frieza's defeat and the five-episode Other World Saga after the Cell Games.
      • Protracted fights were also a killer, with the climactic battle against Frieza being the longest in the series. Not only is it a full arc of its own, it makes up a third of the Namek storyline, featuring only a handful of grossly outmatched heroes fighting against a seemingly Invincible Villain. To spice things up, we have a side story of the Earthlings attempting to join the heroes, except that would take them three weeks, so the audience already knows this won't go anywhere.
      • Namek also has a limited cast of characters stuck on planet Namek, a world where everything is one of two colors (green sky and water, blue grass and trees) and there are nothing but ocean archipelagos, topped off with an eternal daytime due to multiple suns, making for a visually monotonous arc. It's also very underdeveloped: the local population is low and occupy about seven tiny villages, almost all of which have been wiped out by the time the heroes even arrive (there's a total of three living Namekians for most of the story, none of whom do very much). It says a lot that the planet starting to fall apart is one of the most interesting things that happens, simply because the weather is different. By contrast, the following storylines, the Android and Buu Sagas, are set on Earth, about the most diverse location imaginable.
      • The experience varied per region, but none got off without some hurt. In Japan, the entire series was broadcast just one episode a week. In the US, the anime went through a dubbing change as Funimation went in-house, resulting in the anime re-running several times over, so audiences sat through half the Namek Arc only to be taken back to Raditz yet again.
    • The Cell Games. Midway through Episode 190, Cell starts to charge up a Kamehameha. Following a flashback, Goku telepathically tells Gohan that he can still win this, and Gohan starts preparing his own Kamehameha. The two launch their attacks right at the beginning of the next episode — and are deadlocked for the entire episode. This lasted one chapter in the manga, too, but 14 pages aren't exactly the same as 22 minutes. Overall, however, the Cell Saga gets off lighter than Namek simply due to actually being able to change location/scenery.
    • This is also a common accusation given to the Buu Saga, since many different attempts are made at killing him and every single one fails despite weeks of build-up. It lasts 70 episodes, and for 60 of them the heroes are either fighting him or figuring out how to fight him, which not even the Namek Arc did! A major component of this is that after the death of Babidi, which happens relatively early, the Buu Saga really only has one villain to work with (albeit one with multiple forms and personalities), which is Buu himself. What's more, Buu can regenerate from any damage with no apparent limit, and seems to have limitless stamina as well. This causes a lot of scenes in the arc to feel rather pointless, as the main characters aren't making any apparent progress in stopping the villain, with every attempt ending in him just regrowing all the damage dealt. It doesn't help that two such attempts to kill him (Gotenks and Ultimate Gohan) actually served to make him stronger.
    • This phenomena is lampshaded in Dragon Ball Z Abridged when Krillin randomly notes at one point that "We're still on Namek!" in the twenty-fourth episode. They land on Namek in the thirteenth, while the entire Saiyan Saga is covered in ten episodes. For the record, the Frieza Saga clocks in at twenty episodes, the last of which is again not half as long, not twice as long, but triple the length of the regular TFS parody episodes, which means they actually spent approximately 22 episodes on Namek.
      • TFS' Dragon Ball Z Kai Abridged Episode 2 manages to condense the Frieza Saga even further down to seven minutes in length... which is still around three times longer than DBZ Kai Abridged 1 covering the Saiyan Saga, which clocks in at two minutes and 10 seconds.
    • The Universe Survival Saga from Dragon Ball Super is inconsistently hit with arc fatigue. After a setup that takes twenty episodes, mostly spent gathering team members and watching the arena be built (for the former, the intro made Universe 7's whole lineup clear beforehand except for Frieza replacing Buu), the actual tournament starts. Initially, it was well-received for its wild action and Visual Effects of Awesome. However, as the tournament goes on for significantly longer than even the Future Trunks arc — despite, in classic Dragon Ball fashion, the tournament only lasting 48 minutes in-universe — it starts to fall into fatigue territory. While some fans enjoy the unique battles and non-stop action, others criticize many of the fights for being glorified Filler that lack plot progression or emotional impact. This reaches a head when Jiren takes prominence as the clear Arc Villain, doing away much of the tension and appeal of a Battle Royale since it's clear from early on that it will come down to a final battle between Jiren and Goku in his latest Super Mode, while the other battles just serve to waste time and whittle down the cast. Not helped at all by Jiren himself being a very divisive character for his personality, effortless defeating of multiple popular characters, and what is perceived to be a poorly done Freudian Excuse.
  • Fairy Tail:
    • For a manga that is generally good at keeping its arcs at a short length without rushing them, the series has the Grand Magic Games arc, which is over 70 chapters long. The first part of the arc (which is about the Fairy Tail world's equivalent of the Olympic Games) isn't too bad, with most games and fights usually only lasting somewhere in-between a half chapter and two chapters. However, the final day of the Games keeps going for over 20 chapters. Meanwhile, several of the 20 chapters are spent on a side-plot about Natsu and his friends, who are captured in the royal castle. They do almost nothing but fight Cannon Fodder soldiers and executioners, who just keep returning only to get beaten again.
    • The arc dealing with the last dark guild standing, Tartaros, is also accused of this, despite generally being considered one of the best arcs in the story. This is specifically because of two points near the end. The first is the countdown of Face. We start with it seemingly getting destroyed about 10 chapters after it emerges, only to reveal 3000 more and initiate another countdown that actually reaches 0, then we flash back to 20 minutes earlier and have several chapters ultimately leading to the same chapter, ending as it goes off just to keep the cliffhanger... and it's immediately destroyed by the Dragon Slayers' long-lost parents. The second is the way the chapters juggle several concurrent fights, often without any significant progression at all.
    • The Grand Finale, the Alvarez Empire arc, lasted 107 chapters in all, but that's not what tends to bother fans. What does so is the fact that this arc has to juggle the largest cast of characters the manga had ever seen, both new and returning heroes and villains, while setting the scene for the largest battles of the series and dropping the last and biggest plot revelations. By the time of the final battles with Zeref and Acnologia, several fans were of the opinion that so much time was spent on buildup, fights and rematches with the Spriggan 12, and twists that it made them feel rushed by comparison.
  • Fist of the North Star: "Is Raoh still alive?" Raoh's second battle with Kenshiro (which came after several near-death experiences for Raoh and several chapters' worth of what felt like padding) felt climactic and final, and Raoh's escape and continued survival for another ~10 chapters after that raised the story arc's Ending Fatigue to new heights. Then in Volume 24: Big Bad's gone, everything resolved, story's over, right? Wrong.
  • Food Wars!:
    • The "Fall Classic" arc lasted for more than 50 chapters, with the preliminaries spending 10 chapters or so to highlight the dishes made by numerous side characters (whom very few readers cared about) and its subsequent judging. The main tournament itself contains seven individual matches, each spanning at least five chapters, that by the time the finals come around, most readers have gotten tired of it and want the plot to move on already.
    • Surpassing the "Fall Classic" arc is the Central saga which lasted for 131 chapters, two and a half years in Real Life.
    • The final Les Cuisinier Noir/BLUE Tournament Arc was 51 chapters long. As the plot progressed, the author began to skip too many rounds and the main Soma vs. Asahi round was needlessly increased to eight chapters. Rather than focusing on the cooking, the arc is mostly dedicated towards Asahi's antics and Erina's parental issues.
  • Two simultaneous battles taking place in Guyver last ten entire books with little else going on. For comparison, the first book covered the hero's birth, death, resurrection, and initial defeat of the Chronos Corporation.
  • Haruhi Suzumiya's anime adaptation has the Endless Eight arc. Eight episodes of the exact same events with minor variations, adapted from a single short story from the original novels, which only concerned one particular time loop (the last one), and was about at most 30 pages. Eight episodes equals almost three hours. This angered fans who wanted an epic six-episode adaptation of The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, the fourth novel in the series. The latter did come out as a feature-length movie, however: what was at the time the second-longest animated feature ever created, at 2 hours 42 minutes in length (one minute shorter than Final Yamato, the record-holder until the extended cut of In This Corner of the World in 2019). In hindsight, though, many still wish they would've adapted the arc into the anime, rather than dragging out a chapter across eight episodes just so the arc could be adapted into a movie.
  • Hunter × Hunter: The Chimera Ant arc was widely hated for its extremely slow pacing, although at the time it seemed much slower-paced than it ended up being due to constant Series Hiatus. The arc lasted 132 chapters, but in real time took over nine years to conclude — the manga was only six years old when the Chimera Ant arc started.
  • The first novel of In/Spectre greatly concerned itself over Steel Lady Nanase and the extensive efforts to weaken the Internet's perceptions that give her power. Its anime and manga adaptations didn't truncate this, so their retellings of the arc became abnormally long — in the anime, it starts in the middle of Episode 3 and lasts all the way to the end of the season in Episode 12, while in the manga it starts in the middle of Volume 1 and goes all the way to the end of Volume 6.
  • Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?: While it does give some valuable backstory to Ryu Lion, the Calamity Arc carries on for a long period of time in the fourth season of the anime. What doesn't help matters is that there's an endless feeling of gloominess and despair in many of the episodes, stretched out over the course of 17 episodes in a 22-episode season. And many of those episodes basically amount to Bell and Ryu or Bell's Familia going through endless stretches of the dungeon with very little to no change in scenery, facing neverending hordes of monsters, and suffering from fatigue and debilitating injuries over and over again. While one may appreciate the idea of Bell and Ryu getting more time together, the formula used to bring them closer in this arc can start feeling downright tedious after a while, especially since the franchise has generally been pretty good at avoiding Arc Fatigue and the feeling of fun one might normally get from the Danmachi series can quite easily turn into a feeling of bleakness and agitation for the story arc to finally wrap things up.
  • While the art and storytelling of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure has significantly improved following the manga's shift from Weekly Shonen Jump to Ultra Jump, many can agree that it came at the cost of significantly dragging out the pace of it, due to Ultra Jump updating monthly instead of weekly. Case in point, the first seinen-oriented arc, Steel Ball Run, took seven years, two months, and 17 days to tell its story, compared to previous parts only taking two or three yearsnote , and following that, JoJolion took ten years and three months - and many readers lamented the fact that it was in print for most of that decade before it finally even settled on who its Big Bad was, compared to most prior parts fully introducing its main villains about halfway through at the latest.
  • The Backstory arc of Kaze to Ki no Uta takes up six volumes out of a total 17. Usually, backstory arcs take up a few chapters and it does give readers some background to some characters, but that particular arc drags on way longer than it should have.
  • The late episodes of Lady Jewelpet involving the Beasts and the Door to Chaos are often considered the weakest part of the show. It seems to go on forever with several characters going through melodramatic deaths that aren't (in at least one case, multiple times), Momona's indecision being a retread of Chiari's, and Elena's tacked-on character development.
  • Land of the Lustrous: The Moon arc takes up 70% of the manga's runtime and was full of moments the fandom were not fans of, from the focus on Aechmea and Cairngrom's uncomfortable relationship to the absolute torture that Phos goes through to the very slow reveal of the Moon Prince's plans, involving quite a few red herrings. The slow pace was exacerbated by the series going on hiatus multiple times during the Moon arc, including a two-year hiatus that is seen as killing off most of the series' hype.
  • Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic suffered from this during the climax of the Magnostadt Academy arc where the continued use of The Worf Barrage stalls the battle against the Medium for the sole purpose of gathering every major character introduced in the story so far. Despite the increase of noteworthy people in the area, the Medium is no closer to being defeated now than it was fifteen chapters ago, and was finally defeated moments after the last two primary characters, Hakuryuu and Judar, entered the fray.
  • The anime version of MÄR has this problem not because of the length of the filler arcs per se, but because they threw so many at the most incorrect moments. It goes like this: Snow is captured near the end of Round 6, Ginta wants to rescue her but first must fight Ian — okay, fair enough. Then they prepare to leave but Phantom shows up and says they need to do the final round first. Okay, fine, so they go through the Gate of Training, which turns into a filler arc about the cast being sent to an illusion of Tokyo created from Ginta's memories, Then they get back and some minor villains from way back when are causing trouble so they have to deal with that. 'Then the final round starts and goes on for a while, and once Phantom is beaten, they need a special ÄRM to get them to the castle to rescue Snow, which leads to a filler episode about hunting down the Referee of the tournament, followed by two more episodes about fixing Babbo who broke in the battle against Phantom and THEN one more episode about Ian for no reason. The ultimate irony is it only actually takes them one episode to rescue Snow. But due to so much unnecessary filler padding, it goes on forever. Snow is captured in Episode 58 and not rescued until freaking Episode 84!
  • Marvel Anime:
    • Marvel Anime: Wolverine:
      • The series is only 12 episodes long. One entire episode is just Wolverine fighting Omega Red, which spills over into the start of the next episode, and Omega Red still comes back at the end of that next episode.
      • The entire second half of the series is built around Wolverine going to the island of Madipoor, where the Big Bad has set up his base. There's a full three episodes (that's a quarter of the entire series) between Wolverine arriving on Madripoor and actually going to fight the Big Bad. These episodes were spent building dull and completely irrelevant characters, side-plots that are uninteresting and have little payoff, and a filler episode where Wolverine has to rescue Yukio.
    • Wolverine wasn't the only Marvel Anime series to suffer from this: the X-Men series completely switches plot lines halfway through, so a good three or so straight episodes are just solid exposition while nothing really happens. Again: 12 episodes total.
  • My Hero Academia:
    • The Internship Arc's total size is slightly more than twice the size of the previous longest arc, for a total of 46 chapters. The arc dragged on over the course of a year, which says a lot in a manga that typically features very short and to-the-point arcs. Adopting the "flashback in the middle of fights" trope that the manga had mostly avoided before that point certainly made the fights longer than what's usual for the manga (some of which were chapters long). The author himself admitted near the end of the arc that it was too long and many fans were vocal that the arc, while good, was beginning to overstay its welcome.
    • Likewise, it takes eighty-one chapters to wrap up the final battle, which wound up lasting for about two years.
  • Naruto is usually good about preventing arcs from lasting too long, but...
    • The final arc, taking a day and a half In-Universe, went on for about three years. The initial action mainly serves to give the side characters A Day in the Limelight, with the overall plot not really advancing until Naruto arrives. Then the fighting turns into a tug-of-war marathon, with each side endlessly churning out increasingly powerful techniques. During this, the actual main antagonist changed at least seven times, with some villains getting the focus multiple times each, and with several of them declaring that everything has gone All According to Plan for them. When the war finally ends, Sasuke declares he will take over the world to reform the shinobi system, triggering the long-awaited final battle between him and Naruto. While the author had already stated that the final battle would be between them and Naruto, it still felt like yet another extension to an already bloated arc.
    • The anime has the Three-Tails filler arc. It contains some ideas that would make for an interesting three or four episodes but instead goes on for an exasperating 23 episodes.
    • The original anime (i.e. pre-Time Skip) had a lengthy filler arc, which was technically dozens of small filler arcs and episodes right after each other. Now, a few filler episodes here and there doesn't hurt. But when the last 80+ episodes in the series are all filler... It starts to get a bit jarring. Even the final arc, which ends with Naruto and Jiraiya leaving to train, isn't even canon, but it does set things up for his return in the first episode of Shippuden.
  • One single fight in the NEEDLESS anime takes nine episodes out of 24.
  • Negima! Magister Negi Magi:
    • The School Festival got its third day of "dates with Negi" cut in favor of the "Battle for Mahora". At least in this case, there was a Tournament Arc thrown in the middle for variety. Akamatsu had realized the arc was starting to drag and decided to drop a few mini-arcs on the tail end to avoid making the problem worse.
    • The Magical World arc may have dragged on more than needed as well. It finally ended, taking nearly half the manga's run to complete.
  • One Piece:
    • In the Enies Lobby arc, the backstory of the main villain, Rob Lucci, is cut down from a full flashback to a brief summary. The author stated that this is because the arc, combined with the Water 7 arc that precedes it and leads directly into its events, was already running quite long, and a flashback in the middle of the climactic fight would have slowed the pacing down even more. The flashback is shown in full in the anime.
    • The Skypeia arc also caught some flak for this, given its length compared to, at the time, its relative unimportance note  to the rest of the story. The real punch to the gut in the Skypeia arc is that Luffy's fight with the Big Bad "ends" a full 17 chapters before the Big Bad is finally "defeated." The seven-chapter-long flashback doesn't help, interrupting the arc's climax in favor of two months of exposition.
    • The Straw Hat Separation Saga and especially the Marineford arc are also considered this, as the concept puts everyone but Luffy Out of Focus, and the latter is largely one very drawn-out battle sequence. The Straw Hats set out for the Sabaody Archipelago in Chapter 490. By the time they've split up, taken a level in badass, met up again, and then finally began the voyage to Fishman Island, it's Chapter 602. That's 112 chapters, not including the month-long hiatus that the manga went on during the time skip. Marineford is even longer in the anime, particularly the large string of episodes where it feels like Luffy is forever running across the ice trying to reach the platform where Ace is being held captive.
    • Fishman Island in the anime. Due to the anime's "one episode equals one chapter" pacing, Fishman Island really drags on TV. All subsequent arcs fall victim to this too, or worse — some episodes in the Punk Hazard arc use only half of a chapter's worth of story. One such episode consists almost solely of Sanji, Nami, Franky, and Chopper running across a day care room with little happening besides banter.
    • Dressrosa is the longest arc in the series up to that point by a large margin, lasting exactly one hundred chapters; the aforementioned Skypiea Arc lasts only 66 chapters. The fact that the arc has loads of characters, even by One Piece standards, did it no favors. It also sets up other imminent events in addition to those already ongoing, building up anticipation for the arc itself to get itself over with. True to form, the Dressrosa Arc in the anime was historically slow. Much of every episode's content drastically extends the scenes with the Tontatta or the coliseum fights, as well as adding in tons of things to stall the Straw Hats. In fairness, the huge cast is semi-justified as many characters in the arc end up becoming part of the Straw Hat Grand Fleet, but it still drags in many fans eyes.
    • Whole Cake Island is something of a drag to get through, largely because the initial objective — retrieving Sanji — is accomplished midway through the arc. But Sanji doesn't want his family to die, despite their actions toward him earlier (save his sister), so a wedding crash is planned for Sanji's upcoming wedding in order to kill Big Mom. The plan somewhat works (they save Sanji's family), but they fail to kill their target, forcing the heroes to flee. Overall, the finale of the Whole Cake Island gets the worst of it, as it's a really long Escape Sequence of the Straw Hats trying to escape the island that goes on for about 30 chapters. Luffy gets pulled into a literal mirror dimension to fight one of Big Mom's eldest children, Katakuri, and Sanji decides to bake a cake to appease Big Mom that ends up taking 10 hours to prepare, leaving the rest of the crew having to survive against Big Mom and her forces till then. Harrowing? Yes. But many fans likewise grew frustrated how long it went on before it eventually ended.
    • The Wano Country arc dwarfs Dressrosa with a four-year story that takes a while to get to its climax. And said climax dominates a majority of the arc, with shifts in fights either getting interrupted or swapped out with different opponents. Similar to Dressrosa, it's somewhat excusable in that there were a lot of characters to cover, but by the time Luffy and Kaido reached the climax of their battle, a good chunk of readers were more than ready to move on. It didn't help that the COVID-19 Pandemic happened around this point, causing a number of breaks in-between chapters.
  • One-Punch Man:
    • The martial-arts Tournament Arc that lasted from Chapters 58 to 71 in the manga ended up being quite fatiguing for some readers, particularly with ONE and Murata's long pauses. Since the focus is on a massive monster breakout that occurs during the tournament, this results in many one-off heroes battling the monsters, rather than on Saitama’s arc. As a result, many feel that the arc detracts from the central plot. It also doesn't help that the arc can be seen as "Filler" note  for being smack dab in the middle of the ongoing "Hero Hunter Garou Arc", which is a sore spot for the fans that wish to finally see the Garou storyline conclude.
    • What can be summed up as the "Monster Association" arc or the Human Monster Saga in relation to Garou suffers from excessive Padding and redraws of already finished chapters. Beginning in July of 2017 with Chapter 78, the plot has fallen to a snail's pace because of the number of chapters spent on the Heroes fighting random one-off monsters that don't add much to the storytelling other than showing off the powers of the heroes. The "final battle" between Tatsumaki and the Monster Queen Psykorochi started in early 2020, and they were only defeated in early 2021. The arc itself ended with Chapter 170 in August 2022, making it over half of the entire series in length.
  • Pokémon Adventures: The last volume of the Black & White chapter has Black sealed away in the Light Stone alongside Reshiram thanks to a Last Breath Bullet from Ghetsis. Ghetsis then proceeds to escape as the Light Stone vanishes with Black still inside. This caused many people to turn on the arc for its Cruel Twist Ending, accentuated by how popular of a character Black was. While the intention was for the cliffhanger to be resolved in the Black 2 & White 2 adaptation, that arc fell under an infamous case of Schedule Slip as a result of newer Pokémon games being given priority for publishing. What was supposed to be a short arc that started in 2013, didn't reach its conclusion until early 2020. So for about seven years fans were left with one of the most popular heroes in the series suffering a Fate Worse than Death, which while eventually getting a satisfying ending and future readings won't have this problem, it caused Adventures to fall out of mainstream fan relevance and hasn't recovered that since.
  • Pokémon the Series:
    • Effectively every arc excluding the Orange Islands is prone to this, as the series' source material (apart from a couple of filler arcs) is a game whose installments are released three to four years apart rather than a weekly manga.
    • Kanto is only around 80 episodes depending on the inclusion/disregard of a couple banned episodes. However, it has one particularly long gap that occurred between the sixth and seventh Gym Badges at, accounting for "Holiday Hi-Jynx" and "Snow Way Out", 29 episodes. There are also about 10 episodes of Filler after the eighth Badge, which amount to Ash sitting at home waiting for the Kanto League to start. It was around this time that the producers realized they had a hit on their hands, so they had to extend the series in some way before the release of the Johto games. (Hence, the 36-episode-long Orange Islands arc, which serves as a substitute for an Elite Four arc.)
    • Johto: 158 episodes, compounded by the fact that there is only one main quest (Contests and the like would not be introduced until the next season). Some contend that the Whirl Islands Tournament and special guest arcs could've been removed, but that would have had the fourth-longest gap between Badges (27 episodes between the Fog and Storm Badges) succeeded by what would have been the shortest gap (1 episode, usurping Kanto's Boulder-to-Cascade and Marsh-to-Rainbow gaps of 2).note 
    • Hoenn: 132 episodes. It's made more bearable by the addition of Contests, though a case can be made for the Petalburg-Rustboro and Dewford Island arcs, which are early on and paced slowly. The Team Aqua and Team Magma arcs suffer the reverse of this, as many feel they could have had more focus and buildup than they got, and the conclusion to their arc is seen as rushed.
    • Battle Frontier: 60 episodes.note  Inverted in that most of the filler is in the beginning, leading to a faster pace with the rest of the arc. This is exemplified by the gap between Ash earning his 1st and 2nd Frontier Symbols, getting the first at the very tail end of the previous season and taking 13 episodes to get his second sometime after the change to Battle Frontier proper - though this also means that it's within the middle of this gap that the infamous VA switch happened as the English dub went in-house, which will surely throw people off getting used to the new voices. The gap between the 6th and 7th Symbols is also quite long at 22 episodes, which was a result of having to wrap up May's Kanto Contest journey along with Ash having to battle Pyramid King Brandon three times before finally beating him.
    • Sinnoh: 191 episodes. Just a single episode shy of as many as the two Ruby and Sapphire series combined. It also holds the record for both the longest and second-longest gaps between Gym Battles, with 31 episodes between Gardenia and Maylene and 52 episodes between Candice and Volkner. Granted, these gaps develop the buildup and resolution, respectively, of both the Contest and Team Galactic arcs, and are further justified by the distance between those two Gyms, but that still means that the main quest is demoted to C-Plot status twice.
    • The Unova series averts this trope with its fast pace, but that results in the 142-episode saga suffering from a different trope. Ash gets all eight of his Badges in 84 episodes, though the gap between #3 and #4 is pretty long (27 episodes, tied for the fourth-longest gap between badges with the gap between badge #4 and #5 during Johto). After various arcs of padding and filler,Details there's the stock-standard Tournament Arc with a stock-standard length of 7 episodesnote  which is more contentious for its results than its pacing. This is followed by a 14-episode arc revolving around N and Team Plasma, which people are heavily divided on. The quick pace ultimately resulted in the last 5 months prior to the release of the Gen VI games having an Orange Islands/Battle Frontier-style round of pure, aimless island-hopping filler, only without a pseudo-tournament like those arcs had. The subsequent ratings drop shows the extent of the wear and tear.
    • Kalos: 140 episodes. The next chapter of the series started off on a rough note with the drop in ratings that occurred during BW's Decolore Islands arc. Its first season is bogged down by Filler and Padding after the first ten episodes. Serena is virtually pointless until finally discovering a goal for herself around 40 episodes in, and the Kalos gang is forced to take part in a sidequest with Guest-Star Party Member Korrina for several episodes that hardly anyone got invested in due to there being no payoff in the end for helping her complete her quest to properly use a Lucarionite. It takes until Ash gets his seventh Gym Badge before Team Flare even appears. At this point, the plot pics up momentum, especially when Ash's Greninja obtains an exclusive form.
    • Alola: Coming off the high from the XY&Z saga, the plot changed drastically from one where Ash travels from Gym to Gym to earn Badges to one where he attends a Pokémon School. Not only does Ash generally stay in one place, but the human cast size is the largest of any series, with Ash and five other recurring classmates. The Island Trials are present as well, but the pace is a bit slower due to how many characters the show has to juggle. Of the 146 episodes, the first major arc that isn't focused on a trial or obtaining a Z-Crystal are mostly Slice of Life filler. The plot goes by faster by the third arc, though the tournament arc lasts 16 episodes. Not bad considering this is the one where Ash finally wins a Conference, but even this includes filler, with the gang facing a Giant Space Flea from Nowhere just to add some drama along to the climax.
    • Galar/Journeys: 136 episodes. The show has one main arc: the World Coronation Series. However, despite mostly focusing on one plot, the show does its best to avert this. Ash and Goh never stay in one place for very long, as the series takes place all over the world rather than staying in Galar getting the eight badges. Instead, each major battle that isn't against Team Rocket is part of the tournament arc. The World Coronation Series takes the place of a Wyndon Conference, with many trainers around the world taking part. The show generally did a great job at keeping the pace up. In the west, where it moved exclusively to streaming on Netflix, multiple dubbed episodes release at the same time in chunks, preventing any backlash about waiting for the plot to move on. The final tournament takes 13 episodes cumulatively to complete, but in a change from previous series, it is bridged by episodes focusing on Goh and Chloe that aren't counted towards the tournament arc. Even after the tournament arc ends, it is quick to resolve the other characters' myth arcs in 3 episodes. However, while the final battle between Ash and Leon is well-received, the relatively weak animation for several major battles in the series coupled with Goh’s controversial reception had many people counting down the days until Journeys ended.
  • In Reborn! (2004), the Future Arc, which lasted 146 chapters out of a total of 271 chapters. This means that arc is actually longer than the rest of the arcs combined! The storyline had been stretched to the point where battles have just been rehashed (e.g. the choice battle which ended up amounting to nothing other than a bit of exposition at the end) as well as introducing new characters that could have only been done to stretch the plot: "Let me introduce you to the real 6 Funeral Wreaths!" Thus rendering all of the other battles utterly pointless. The introduction of the motorbikes also adds to the meaningless filler since they were only used for five minutes before being destroyed.
  • The Asgard arc in Saint Seiya. One of the main appeals of Saint Seiya is that the fights, while epic, would last about one episode with a couple of exceptions. The problem with the Asgard arc is that every fight consisted of one of the Saints encountering a God Warrior, fight for about three episodes, the God Warrior gives a backstory and it repeats all over again. One fight in particular lasts four episodes. Ratings dropped so much that the series was Cut Short with the comparatively short Poseidon Saga and then no Hades Saga until years later. Unsurprisingly, this is the one arc that is 100% anime-only.
  • Shaman King:
    • The Golem arc is known for being a very slogging read to get through since a good chunk of it is focused on Chocolove's past, his being killed, the fight with the berserk golem and finally Chocolove coming back to finish the battle with his newfound power. Did not help that this was meant to be in between a Tournament Arc.
    • The final battle against Hao in the manga likewise wound up being this since it had the character being forced to fight the Patch Tribe before finally reaching him. Not helped at all that the manga had been cancelled before the group could finally reach him. The pacing did get a tad better once it was Un-Canceled though.
  • Sweet Blue Flowers:
    • The whole deal with Fumi's confession to Akira. Since the relationship between the girls is central to the story, this arc is stalled immensely, mostly by having a confused Akira run around in circles.
    • The first School Festival arc also dragged on much longer than necessary.
    • And then there's the whole story about Kyouko and Kou's engagement, which mainly seemed to serve to show that Kyouko is not lesbian after all.
  • Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- suffered from this by the final world, The Original Clow Country. It doesn't help that the story is one gigantic Continuity Snarl with a very interwoven plot.
  • Ultimate Muscle's Time Travel arc lasts for over five years, and goes on for more than 160 chapters. To put it in context, Yude spent more time on one tournament arc than any other arc previously.
  • Wolf Guy - Wolfen Crest had a very, very, Squicky arc fatigue when Ms. Aoshika was horrifically gang-raped by Haguro and his Yakuza for nearly 18 chapters.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!:
    • From the beginning of the Battle City Finals in Yu-Gi-Oh! (the finals mind you) to the end took 63 episodes, including a 24-episode Filler Arc that could not have been placed worse.note  This is almost as bad in the manga, where the entirety of Battle City lasts for 128 chapters, 77 of which cover the finals, and this is without a Filler Arc — long enough that readers began to lose interest, thus forcing Takahashi to drop several plot points from the final arc and its denouement. For perspective, the Duelist Kingdom arc takes only 73 chapters (40 anime episodes) from start to finish, and all other arcs are shorter.
    • Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's started out with a number of fairly quick arcs that led into each other: the initial "escape from Satellite" arc, which lasts around five, the prison arc, which goes for seven, and the Fortune Cup arc, a tournament that is introduced in Episode 13 and concludes in Episode 26. The following episode introduces the Dark Signers, which lasts for around 38 episodes, but is still paced fairly well and has a lot happening. Then the following episode introduces the concept of the WRGP, another, grander-scale tournament, as well as the larger conspiracy of Yliaster... and then spends 33 episodes more or less spinning its wheels, hopping between one-off Monster of the Week episodes, plot points that go absolutely nowhere, a whole six-episode arc dedicated to resolving a minor character's story, and minimal development of the actual ongoing narrative; you could cut the whole thing down to about five episodes and not be confused in the slightest when the actual tournament starts in Episode 98. And then the WRGP Arc lasted another 39 episodes, which, due to the tournament's structure, consisted mainly of several very overlong Duels (the shortest one is a two-parter, the second-shortest is a four-parter, and two of them are seven-parters), when prior Duels rarely went above two episodes in length and only one of the Duels (barring the attack on the city that takes place outside the tournament) is actually seriously tied in with the ongoing plot. Not helping matters at all is that the tournament's format also meant that only three main characters ever get any Duels, and nearly every match is ultimately won by local Invincible Hero Yusei. And if that wasn't enough, this still doesn't fully resolve the plot of Yliaster, leading to a further fifteen-episode arc. So that's a total of 87 episodes, more than half the show, that was dedicated to a single storyline that could likely have been wrapped up in less than half that.
    • The Synchro Dimension arc Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V started off with a clear purpose of rallying the dimension's people to fight against the evil Academia. The problem is that the characters are separated upon arrival (for some reason) and, given no direction, just run around like chickens with their heads cut off before getting arrested for suspicious activity. They then get thrown in jail, meet and befriend a prisoner, get caught during an escape, and are forced to take part in a Tournament Arc in order to show the authority of the city they're in that they are powerful enough to fight against Academia. While the padding allowed them to do some worldbuilding and introduce Crow and Shinji, the plot could have easily gone straight to the Friendship Cup and built on things there, rather than spend 13 episodes of the characters wandering around without a goal beyond "let's just get back together and go from there." What makes it particularly problematic is that the arc effectively began in episode 54 and ended in Episode 99, a 46-episode run, while the Xyz Dimension arc lasted about 14 episodes and the Fusion Dimension arc lasted around 23. This sounds bad before you realize that the entire first season had been about building up the conflict between Xyz and Fusion, while Synchro was tangentially involved at best, and most elements established in Synchro stayed contained to it.
    • Though the Zarc arc in ARC-V isn't actually that long, lasting five episodes, it falls into this for being dedicated to a single duel, and for four of those episodes just being all the other protagonists trying and failing to scratch him before getting flattened. The fact that it was pretty obvious from the beginning how it was going to end didn't help it. And then, even though the Big Bad is defeated, it gets followed up by eight episodes of rather directionless duels held together with the excuse of making an evil baby smile.
  • Yuri is My Job!:
    • The events of the month of July, in which, among other things, Mitsuki confesses to Hime and Hime nearly resigns from the salon stretch from the start of Volume 5 to near the end of Volume 8, about half of the series to that point. Minman acknowledged that the arc would drag on for a while, lampshading in Volume 7 that "We've spent the past three volumes of the series in the month of July!"
    • For anime viewers, the Blume election arc dragged on too long, taking up almost all of the second half of the first season. While this wasn't nearly as long as the aforementioned arc (lasting from the end of Volume to to just before the end of Volume 4), the length grew frustrating to people who wanted to see more of the main couple — Hime and Mitsuki — and/or didn't like Kanoko.

Myth Stall

Examples 

  • The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, REALLY Love You:
    • It's estimated that at the current rate of girlfriend introductions, it will take around 600 chapters just to reach Girlfriend #100. And each volume consists of 9 chapters, with the exception of Volume 1, which has 5 chapters, making for a quota meeting of around 68 volumes. Assuming a constant rate of 4 volumes per year, that would mean the manga would have to run for about 17 years for the harem to reach full capacity. And that's not even factoring in where the manga goes after that. For reference, by the time the anime aired (almost four years since the series debut), they had only gotten to a quarter of the promised heroines.
    • The catch is how you calculate the rate of girlfriend introductions. If you go with 25 girlfriends in 141 chapters, then you get 560-570 chapters for 100 girlfriends. If you go by number of chapters between girlfriends, then as of Matsuri's (#27) introduction in Chapter 159, it was nine chapters between girlfriends, which would give 657 chapters (73x9) for the rest, meaning an 816-chapter run (159+657), a quota of around 91 volumes, and a 23-year run to reach full capacity. (However, the average number of chapters between girlfriends has increased as the series has continued - around Chiyo's (#12) introduction, it was about six chapters between girlfriends - so the chapter and volume count could still get bigger by #100.)
  • This happened to the Ah! My Goddess manga; around the time it stopped being a Slice of Life series, it started to focus less and less on the series' old plot — Keiichi and Belldandy's glacial-paced relationship — and the series as a whole began to slow down significantly, taking four or five chapters to complete an arc that would initially be resolved in one or two. This also started to happen to the anime in the second season... and it was abruptly canceled. It didn't help any that the manga only released one chapter a month. Although the Nilfheim arc turned out to be a significant improvement (a lot of stuff happens, many minor characters from the past make cameos, and the main couple's relationship finally began to move forward again), the series ended right after that, 25 years after it began. Happily, it ended with their marriage.
  • Attack on Titan took about 65 chapters just to start explaining what the titans are and where they came from. That may not sound like much, but AoT is released only around once a month or so. Most of the world-building comes almost at random in small bits and pieces, choosing to focus more on the character interactions and politics of living in a Crapsack World than the world itself. Also, one of the manga's biggest questions — just what the hell Eren's father hid in his basement — only got revealed in September 2016, more than five years after the manga first started publication.
  • The entirety of Battle Angel Alita: Last Order qualifies as a Myth Stall. More specifically, there's the infamous "vampire" flashback arc that lasted two volumes, and the "Zenith of Things" Tournament Arc has been going on since Volume 4 of Last Order, and finished in 2014 with the sequel being far longer than the original manga.
  • Berserk has its first two volumes In Medias Res, with Griffith turned to The Dark Side as Femto and an enraged Guts wanting Femto's head. Several years and volumes of flashback later, Guts begins setting off on a quest to restore Casca to sanity. These issues released in 1997. He only arrived at the place where he can restore Casca in September 2016, and finally succeeded in February 2018, more than twenty years later. While that's not nearly as long as it sounds chapter-wise, the insanely detailed art style led to a very slow and irregular release schedule. There have been only about 300 chapters total since the series started back in 1990. And with the death of the manga's author in May 2021, the story stopped cold right then and there, though it was later announced in June 2022 that the story would continue via Miura's assistants at Studio Gaga under the supervision of his longtime friend and collaborator Kouji Mori (of Holyland and Suicide Island fame).
  • Bleach was notorious for this with its utterly slow pacing after the Daily Life arc. The Soul Society, Arrancar, and Blood War arcs always stalled the story for fights, fights, and more fights just to give screen time to supporting characters. Granted, the characters showed off new abilities but the battles were always a tug of war, and a few wound up ending with an outside source having to step in to finish the battle. When Ichigo finally confronts Big Bad Yhwach in the final arc, the battle is ridiculously short due to the fact the manga author's health was swiftly failing, leaving him unable to continue producing it and resulting in a rushed climax and ending.
  • Case Closed is, as of the end of 2019, at 97 books and 1036 collected chapters (uncollected chapters bring it over 1040 total, with the 300th case underway), although if you removed all the cases which don't progress the main or side plots, the numbers would likely be closer to 20 and 250.
  • Digimon Ghost Game: While the series alludes to a deeper plot, what with Gammamon's Superpowered Evil Side, the mysterious BlackTailmon which has strange powers, the even more mysterious BlackAgumon and BlackGalgomon appearing whenever GulusGammamon appears, a mystery is set up, but the vast majority of the series is a Monster of the Week plot that never alludes to this, making watchers annoyed at the lack of development.
  • D.N.Angel: The manga started in November 1997, and the only closure we have as-of-yet is the anime, which completely branched out into its own after it ran out of source material. But the fangirls are still waiting. Oh, yes, we're still waiting. As a matter of fact, Yukiru Sugisaki is infamous for her habit of starting another manga before finishing the one she was working on. The only manga she's ever actually finished is Rizelmine, which was a one-volume series.
  • While Fly Me to the Moon (2018) manages to cut through the Will They or Won't They? by having the main couple get together at the start of the series, the series can suffer from this for other reasons.
    • In Chapter 30, Nasa's apartment building burns down, resulting in him and Tsukasa planning on moving into a new apartment together at the back of their friend's bathhouse place. This was finally resolved over 100 chapters later in an anti-climactic fasion after the finale: because Tsukasa went missing and Nasa spent all his waking hours trying to find her, they missed their chance to move in, and decided to stay behind the bathhouse anyway.
    • The series occasionally drops hints at who exactly Tsukasa is, but only answered this question at the very end of the first series. In essence, Tsukasa has been 16 years old 1,400 times but ISN'T the girl from the bamboo cutter story like everyone assumed. She's actually a girl from the village who fell gravely ill shortly afterwards: her father was assigned to burn the elixir of life but instead used it to save her non-consensually. So far the second series is much more forthcoming about exploring this side of Tsukasa, even devoting the opening story of the second series to it, but this is at the expense of the occasional Cerebus Syndrome.
  • Glass Mask has got to be some kind of record holder — despite the fact the comic started in 1976, we still have yet to find out who will be cast as "The Crimson Goddess". On top of that, the Love Triangle hasn't actually resolved either. That's over forty years without resolution to two key plot points. The severe bouts of Schedule Slip haven't helped any either. There have been three different anime that have come out in that time, none of which even attempt a Gecko Ending to provide some semblance of resolution.
  • Hajime no Ippo: Regardless of which you consider the myth arc, Ippo fighting Miyata again or Ippo becoming the world champion, the series reached its 900th chapter with no signs of progress with either. In fact, the rematch with Miyata was steadily delayed for over five hundred chapters, a decade in real-world terms. Ippo and Kumi date for about as long, and never kiss once. Even worse, with Ippo losing his comeback match and mentally confirming that something's seriously wrong with him, readers had to confront the possibility that neither potential myth arc would be resolved. Certainly Ippo becoming world champion is dead as a story goal.
  • Heaven's Lost Property treads into this territory. You have two or three chapters with the plot moving ahead, albeit not very fast, and then four to six of filler that can range from "pretty funny" to "What the hell did I just read?" Add to that it's a monthly manga and the fact it's taking forever to get answers.
  • Infinite Stratos: Instead of moving the plot forward, the anime keeps introducing girls to Ichika's harem and putting too much focus on the harem antics. By the end of Season 2, the heroes are no closer to stopping Phantom Task than they were at the beginning, and the World Purge OVA is just an extended romantic fantasy almost entirely disconnected to the main plot. Not helping at all are Schedule Slips caused by the author's health problems. As of 2016, the franchise hasn't released any new content.
  • Inuyasha ran for twelve years. And from years three to eleven, the story progressed so slowly that you'd be forgiven for thinking it had completely stalled. Character relations changed somewhat throughout those years, but every time the story seemed to be coming to a climax, a Diabolus ex Machina would set everything back to square one. It's generally accepted even by fans of the series that over two-thirds of the chapters could be removed from the story's middle section, and the overall narrative wouldn't be impacted at all.
  • Monster Musume has been suffering this for a while regarding the primary question of the series — which member of his Unwanted Harem is Kimihito going to marry? It's become increasingly ridiculous as the series has gone on since things have progressed from human-liminal relationships being forbidden to the point where there are now dating services and singles' events specifically geared toward interspecies relationships. It's not helped by the side arcs that have focused on the supporting characters or the fact that publishing has slowed from roughly a chapter per month to one every four to five months.
  • Naruto:
  • The Myth Arc of Negima! Magister Negi Magi revolving around Negi's quest to find his father doesn't really start until around volume three, and even then it doesn't become the focal point of the series until Volume 18 or so. Several volumes later, Negi isn't even close to finding him and although some details of the backstory have been revealed, they don't help much to figure out what happened to Negi's father, especially after he's revealed to be the Lifemaker's current host. At the end Negi manages to save his dad somehow, but the whole problem is resolved offscreen with many unanswered questions.
  • The manga version of Neon Genesis Evangelion started in 1995, and it finally came to an end with Chapter 95. In July 2013. Yeah, that's 18 years later. Especially egregious considering that the manga only recounts what happened in the 26 episodes of the anime plus the alternate theatrical finale The End of Evangelion — all of which had been resolved since 1997. Unlike other adaptations, the manga stayed very close to the original anime and it didn't add any additional content except for slight change of order and the infamous scene of Kaworu killing a kitten. Understandably in a similar vein to the original anime, many fans began to question the sanity of the artist.
  • One Piece:
    • The manga was supposed to be five years long, but author Eiichiro Oda having fun with the plot stalled the bigger story's progression. A lot. Since the story's debut in 1997, protagonist Monkey D. Luffy isn't much closer to finding the One Piece than when he started. Besides that, there's not only been no answer as to where the One Piece is, there's been no answer as to what it is. Even when Luffy had the opportunity to get a hint as to what the titular One Piece even was, he turned it down, because he didn't want to know. Small wonder so many people have Commitment Anxiety when it comes to this series. It took until 2022, 25 years after the series began, for One Piece to finally move towards its Grand Finale. And this was after the four years it took for the story to make it past the Wano arc.
    • Consider the case of Fishman Island. Around 2001 or so, a fan asked if it would ever feature in the story. Oda's response: "Soon." Six years later, the Straw Hats set sail with Fishman Island as their next destination, only to spend a year's worth of story on what boils down to a side trip. Then, they're finally one stop away from Fishman Island, all they need to do is finish preparations on their ship... and the story gets sidetracked yet again. The focus was off of the Straw Hat crew in favor of just Luffy, showing his backstory and a desire to get stronger. In late 2010, the Straw Hats finally made it to Fishman Island, nine years after Oda's proclamation that they would arrive "soon."
  • Pokémon the Series:
  • A common complaint about Rent-A-Girlfriend is that the story drags out much longer than it needs to be. There are several instances throughout the series where it seems Kazuya and Chizuru are actually taking several steps forward and getting closer to one another, but little comes out of it and they often end up taking many steps back. Most chapters also don't cover much ground themselves, with several only covering a single date or other outing. In general, the pace is suited for a binge read, but once caught up, the ongoing weekly releases feel like a slow crawl.
  • Slow Start is about a girl who ends up entering high school a year late due to being sick for the entrance exams, resulting in her going to high school in a different town. A major plotline is her deciding whether to tell her friends about her unique situation since she considers it rather shameful. She only manages to do so after 92 monthly chapters.
  • Vinland Saga seems to be heading this way.
    • Chapter 54 ends with the line "End of Prologue." If 54 chapters of a weekly-turned-monthly-comic being a "prologue" doesn't give you an idea of how long the author plans to write this, then nothing will. Guess he's living up to the name "Vinland Saga."
    • The so-called Farmland Saga arc certainly exhibits arc fatigue. Since the author wanted to separate Thorfinn's life in slavery from his former life as much as possible, the pace is veeeery deliberate, and it takes several chapters for anything significant to happen. Stuff has started happening, however, and the pace has quickened once again.
  • The Wallflower: 28 volumes and counting, and Sunako and Kyouhei still haven't confessed seriously or even admitted they feel romantic love. That drumming sound you hear is the fans' heads banging against the wall.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V has the overall plot of Yuya rescuing Yuzu. It's properly introduced in Episode 47, they have a second meeting in Episode 92 and are immediately separated again, meet again in Episode 113, are separated again in Episode 115, and aren't permanently reunited all the way until Episode 148, the last episode of the series. That's about five episodes out of 102 where the two were actively sharing screentime.