Ending Fatigue tends to be a very common problem for manga, especially Shoujo. Sometimes the author adds in a note somewhere, flat-out admitting they don't know how/when to end it!
Specific works:
- Eiji from Bakuman。 references and defies this trope in-universe. When he first got published, it was on the condition that upon reaching number one, he'd be able to end a series of his choice. He meant his own; he wanted to end his series at its peak rather than drawing it out for profit to the detriment of its quality.
- The manga itself though, goes through some of this in its final arc, being about "ending a manga when it should end", going out of its way to mention it often, after a previous arc that amounted to a rehash of the message/story from a previous arc (including being the same antagonist doing "the same thing, just with more people"
- At the beginning of Bakugan: New Vestroia, the brawlers joined a resistance group that's trying to free the Bakugan enslaved by the Vestals. Then they had to stop the Vexos from destroying all the Bakugan on New Vestroia. Then they had to stop the Vexos from destroying the whole universe. By the time the brawlers are stopping Zenoheld's plan to end the whole universe, it feels like the climax had passed a long time ago. This was so bad that New Vestroia doesn't really seem to end as much as transition into Gundalian Invaders by the way it was ended.
- Happens in both the novel and manga adaptation of Battle Royale in regards to Kiriyama finally going down and ending the game, though the manga makes it more obvious. A student manages to land a hit on Kiriyama, he might be injured, but not dead. He was in a building that freaking explodes and he still survives it. Even after getting a shotgun blast to the stomach, a throwing knife into the eye and being shot through the cheek, he still gets up for the next hit.
- Cyborg 009 had a rough road getting to an ending, to say the least. The "Underground Empire of Yomi" arc was originally intended to be the Grand Finale, but fan outcry about the end of the arc (which involved both 002 and 009 dying after 009's battle against the Black Ghost leader) led Shotaro Ishinomori to continue the manga and retcon it so both of them were saved at the last minute. The manga then continued on for several self-contained chapters before Ishinomori attempted to give the manga another ending with the "Angels" arc, until Writer's Block led to him stopping midway through and taking a hiatus from writing. He would eventually return and restart the ending with the "Battle of the Gods" arc, but fan complaints about the arc being hard to follow and a particular controversial sex scene between 009 and 003 led to Ishinomori halting progress on that arc as well, leaving it with No Ending. The manga would eventually return and continue on for several more Story Arcs before Ishinomori finally began planning a true Grand Finale for the manga, "Conclusion: God's War", only to die before he could complete it. However, Ishinomori's son was able to use his father's notes to write out the arc and Cyborg 009 would finally reach it's conclusion in 2014, 50 years after the manga originally began.
- A common complaint about Death Note in manga form is that it drags through the second arc, largely because the author wanted there to be exactly 108 chapters. The anime, on the flip side, shoehorns as many as nine manga chapters into a single episode.
- After the death of Cherubimon in Digimon Frontier, the anime's pacing falls apart and the second half is just the main characters losing to the Quirky Miniboss Squad. Again and again and again. For eight episodes straight.
- The final arc of Eyeshield 21 (the World Youth Cup) was just one too many for a lot of the fans because the Devil Bats had already won the big game they'd be working towards from the start of the series and this just felt like a needless Post-Script Season. It was also comparatively poorly written. The creators seemed to agree, as they wrapped the arc very hastily. It segued surprisingly well into the series finale, though.
- In Fist of the North Star, just after Kenshiro defeated his long-time rival, older brother, and main antagonist Ken-Oh/Raoh, Ken finally manages to rescue his lover Yuria, gives farewells to all of his friends, and ends his farewells by literally Riding into the Sunset with Yuria by his side. The series could have ended perfectly right there, but it just kept going with a lot of recycled plots and enemies, plus adding a lot of completely out of nowhere backstories just for the sake of not wanting to end. The Asura arc manages to pick up the pace a bit, but then at the very end, after Kenshiro has defeated Raoh's elder brother, Kaioh and brought peace to the Land of Asura, the manga continues for another few arcs before finally coming to an end. Notably, the anime doesn't follow the series past the end of the Asura arc, leaving the last few arcs exclusively manga-only.
- The climax of Fruits Basket takes place around Volume 21 (c. 120-125), with the last two volumes being essentially an extended epilogue.
- There have been many discussion about this concerning Hellsing: the series ran for ten volumes, and the "end arc" is the Battle of London... which kicked off about halfway through the fourth. It took place over the course of one night, but given Hirano's record of Schedule Slip, the arc ran on for about eight years.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
- Part 5 hits the climax at the end of the final battle with King Crimson/ Diavolo... And then we get a four-chapter long flashback that does absolutely nothing for the plot, reveals nothing that we didn't already knew and reduces Giorno's rise to the head of the mafia into a footnote.
- And Part 7 does it again, Johnny has just defeated Funny Valentine, villain is defeated and the corpse can finally be put to rest, but Gyro dies in the process. At this point, it looks like a good way to close out for the next part as all things are coming to their close. Except now the corpse has been stolen again forcing Johnny to chase down the one responsible. As it turns out it's another Diego brought to this universe in between Funny's slow death from Tusk's ability. This ultimately served no purpose outside of the storage of the corpse and ended with Johnny getting disqualified from the race.
- Many fans complained about this in regards to Part 8, which ended after ten years and 110 chapters, making it the longest part by far. The part's Big Bad, Tooru, only revealed themselves at chapter 97, numerous plot points weren't addressed, and fans often complained that after the defeat of Tamaki Damo and the Josuke's identity being fully explained, that the plot has devolved into a game of keepaway regarding the rokakaka branch, with each villain's defeat introducing even more villains.
- Kaiji has the second arc's fight with "The Bog". It's easily the most intense Pachinko game of all time, but it goes on for so incredibly long that the tension starts to eat your brain. It's kind of justified in that The Bog was designed to be unbeatable, but wow. The sheer number of times it looks like a ball is going to make it through, championed by dramatic narration likening it to single tank breaching enemy lines and so on... and then doesn't, is astounding. Even the characters just want it to end. Eventually it's beaten, in the only way possible - sheer, mind-numbing attrition, clogging the machine up with so many balls that they can't possibly go anywhere but the final hole. And after all that, Kaiji STILL gets screwed out of most of his enormous, well-deserved earnings by the rat bastard Endou. Geez...
- MÄR falls into this in the anime, mainly due to excessive filler arcs but even without those, the climax of the series is a whopping seven episodes long. This is in direct contrast to the manga ending, which was considered rushed and anti-climatic.
- Naruto's 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.
- After the end of the war, the anime took a detour to adapt the Konoha Hiden novels, before finally ending the series on episode 500 with Naruto and Hinata's wedding.
- Negima! Magister Negi Magi: Rather than following up the Magic World arc (which has been build up as the endgame arc) with an epilogue, the manga goes on for 20 more chapters, focusing on the characters going back to their normal lives, reminiscing of their adventures, tying up (most of) the loose ends, having one more comedic situation serving as a last hurrah to the manga's Harem days, dealing with Asuna's last duty and finally getting into the series' Distant Finale.
- Pokémon: The Series:
- One of the many criticisms of Pokémon the Series: Black & White is its Decolore Islands Filler Arc of a final season. With the main plot of the series (Both Ash's badge quest and dealing with Team Plasma) over and done with, and several months before Pokémon X and Y would have been released, there's nothing more for Ash to do except head back to Kanto... a goal that takes several episodes of island-hopping to accomplish, and unlike the Orange Islands series, there's no original goal or motive for him (or the audience) to invest in. After 10 episodes of pure filler, we finally get one episode that is actually important to the plot, that being a character from Kalos who plays a somewhat major role in the first few episodes of the next series joining the group for the small remainder of the series. Granted, we have to sit through another 6 filler episodes before Ash finally reaches Kanto.
- After the big climax of Pokémon the Series: XY, there are still 4 episodes following it. Granted, important events do happen in these episodes, it's just that they're paced very slowly and they could have easily been merged together into only 3 or 2 episodes.
- 90% of the Pokémon movies have climaxes that make up half of the movie's running time. It's entirely possible to leave the room and get a snack without the story advancing. Additionally, quite a few have a secondary climax right when it looks like things might be wrapping up, often some loosely-connected disaster that the main Pokémon of the film has to stop (immediately-preceding Heel–Face Turn optional).
- Scrapped Princess either needed two fewer episodes or two more episodes, depending on how you look at it.
- The Seven Deadly Sins didn't just have a long ending, it had multiple false endings, with the sudden Face–Heel Turn ending of the reality warping cat being the most egregious out of the bunch. There's even a chapter called "The End" and guess what? It's not the end.
- Most of the longer works of Rumiko Takahashi face this problem. The longest one that didn't was probably Maison Ikkoku.
- The climax of Steamboy definitely gives the impression that the director was having too much fun piling one piece of epicness after another onto the battle and didn't want to stop. The worst bit is when the Steam Castle is brought down and we get the Patrick Stewart Speech decrying its hubris (which is even delivered by Stewart himself if you're watching the dub), and then it's revealed that the Castle will destroy London and they have to travel deep into its engine room to stop it.
- The original Super Dimension Fortress Macross. Transforming Mecha, action-packed space battles, a climactic final confrontation... and then nine episodes of Hikaru trying to make up his mind about if he loves Misa or Minmei more.
- The later chapters of The Wallflower betray the fact that the author doesn't know how to end the damn manga, with grindingly slow character development and pushing the Belligerent Sexual Tension beyond the point of the reader's endurance.
- In the Warrior Cats manga The Heart of a Warrior, the main villains are defeated two-thirds of the way through. The rest of the plot deals with Barley's brothers hanging around the barn, abusing Ravenpaw until Barley finally tells his brothers that they should get the hell off his property.
- The ending of Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V. The series-arching Big Bad is defeated eight episodes before the show ends. The final arc consists of tying loose ends and giving closure to some of the characters. This is padded out with a superfluous plotline about the protagonists trying to remember the past after a Cosmic Retcon. After that, the episodes follow a formulaic plot of "Yuya goes to X dimension and duels Y person." It really isn't helped by the plotline itself, involving trying to purify the spirit of the Big Bad by making the baby he's trapped in smile, already being a tough sell for a lot of people.
- YuYu Hakusho was intended to end with the blatantly climactic Chapter Black arc, but editorial management forced Yoshihiro Togashi to extend the series to one more story arc, which starts out about an approaching war, suddenly turns into a third Tournament Arc, the majority of which gets blatantly fast-forwarded through, and then ends with several random stories that indicate that Togashi had practically stopped caring at this point. The anime somewhat fixes things by cutting the random stories at the end out and making a better, more emotional series ending overall.
