History MissingEpisode / AnimeAndManga

* ''Kocchimuite! Miiko'' has one chapter skipped from the 35th volume in the official Indonesian release due to the heavy LGBT themes that Indonesian MoralGuardians considered obscene. However, the newly introduced character, Natsuki is still shown in the character introduction page despite his debut chapter are skipped.

* Indonesian official translation of ''Kocchimuite! Miiko'' has a chapter being skipped from the 35th volume release due to the heavy LGBT themes that Indonesian MoralGuardians considered obscene. However, the newly introduced character, Natsuki is still shown in the character introduction page despite his debut chapter are skipped.

* Indonesian official translation of ''Kocchimuite, Miiko!'' has a chapter being skipped from the 35th volume release due to the heavy LGBT themes that Indonesian MoralGuardians considered obscene. However, the newly introduced character, Natsuki is still shown in the character introduction page despite his debut chapter are skipped.

* Indonesian official translation of ''Kocchimuite, Miiko'' has a chapter being skipped from the 35th volume due to the heavy LGBT themes that Indonesian MoralGuardians considered obscene. However, the newly introduced character, Natsuki is still shown in the character introduction page despite his debut chapter are skipped.

* Indonesian official translation of ''Kocchimuite, Miiko'' has a chapter being skipped from the 35th volume due to the heavy LGBT themes that Indonesian MediaWatchdogs considered obscene. However, the newly introduced character, Natsuki is still shown in the character introduction page despite his debut chapter are skipped.

** "[[Recap/PokemonS1E38ElectricSoldierPorygon Electric Soldier Porygon]]", the infamous episode that gave viewers epileptic seizures. It was only aired once in Japan, where the strobe effect employed caused seizures in some Japanese kids. And then a whole lot more Japanese people got sick when the news reported on it by ''showing the clip that was giving people seizures!'' This wasn't the only episode where the effect was employed, but while the previous episodes had the strobe effect removed, this episode was simply pulled. As such, the episode is extremely rare to find, with copies being taken off of video-sharing websites like Platform/YouTube. In fact, anime had been like this for years and it wasn't until the Porygon episode that this kind of thing stopped.

** "[[Recap/PokemonS1E38ElectricSoldierPorygon Electric Soldier Porygon]]", the infamous episode that gave viewers epileptic seizures. It was only aired once in Japan, where the strobe effect employed caused seizures in some Japanese kids. And then a whole lot more Japanese people got sick when the news reported on it by ''showing the clip that was giving people seizures!'' This wasn't the only episode where the effect was employed, but while the previous episodes had the strobe effect removed, this episode was simply pulled. As such, the episode is extremely rare to find, with copies being taken off of video-sharing websites like Website/YouTube. In fact, anime had been like this for years and it wasn't until the Porygon episode that this kind of thing stopped.

** When ''Anime/HealinGoodPrettyCure'' was first brought Western side by Website/{{Crunchyroll}}, they ended up starting on Episode 13 (the series had been on hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic). It would be a few months before they would get and sub the first twelve episodes.

** The ''Anime/YuGiOh5Ds'' dub skipped about a dozen episodes, jumping from Yusei's duel with Placido straight to the setup for the duel with Team Ragnarok and skipping over the Crimson Devil arc as well as the duel with Team Taiyo. This was followed up by 4Kids cutting the rest of the series after the duel with Aporia, meaning that the whole storyline with the Arc Cradle was cut alongside finding out who ZONE really was, and the final duel between Yusei and Jack was also removed due to this. These episodes were eventually released with official subtitles on Website/{{Crunchyroll}}, as well as ''GX'' season 4.

*** The real reason is that those episodes of ''GT'' were lighthearted comedy in the vein of the original ''Manga/DragonBall'', which wasn't nearly as popular in the West. Creator/{{FUNimation}} chose to skip these in favor of the more action-packed, ''DBZ''-style episodes, clearly knowing their audience (as a result of this ironically [[AmericansHateTingle GT actually got better ratings in the U.S. than it ever did in Japan]]). Of course, this was also the era when ''GT'' had a ThemeTuneRap.

* The first English dub of ''Anime/RoyalSpaceForceTheWingsOfHonneamise'' was a hastily made, badly edited Amercanization called ''Star Quest'', commissioned on the cheap by Bandai after they decided to [[ShortRunInPeru premiere the unreleased film at the Chinese Theater in Hollywood as a marketing ploy]]. It was never officially released on home video and never seen again until a copy was uploaded onto the Internet Archive by WebAnimation/WalrusGuy. (No, really, THAT WalrusGuy)

Lost episodes are common in {{anime}} which has been imported for broadcast.

* The last two episodes of ''Anime/DotHackSign'' weren't broadcast on US television. There wasn't anything objectionable in the episodes[[note]]they were practically filler (one featured Mimiru interacting with a character that is run by three players; the other featured everyone just hanging out at a big party).[[/note]], the distributors just didn't want fans to be able to record every episode and make a "complete box set".
** Actually, this is part of a common practice in Japan, of releasing bonus episodes made specifically for the [=DVD=]s. The episodes were never part of the Japanese broadcast, either, and were only available on the Japanese home media release as well. More appropriate to this trope would be episode 14, Evidence, a clip show which was skipped on both the Japanese and US releases, despite being broadcast in both countries. The episode was eventually included as a bonus episode on the final volume of each set.
* In German dub of ''Manga/AttackNumberOne'', three episodes were not translated, due to "inappropiate content". These however are included as bonus on the German DVD sets.

** The 19th episode "Wild Horses" was banned for a time after Space Shuttle ''Columbia'' disintegrated during re-entry on February 1, 2003. In the Remix collection, the space shuttle is renamed ''[[WhatDidYouExpectWhenYouNamedIt Challenger]]'' in that particular episode - which, if you think about it, really isn't that much better, seeing as how the real ''Challenger'' was also destroyed in flight on January 28, 1986.

*** More material was cut out of the edited version of the first two seasons. At that moment, ''fifteen'' episodes' worth of material were edited out, including most of the first episode and Tenshinhan's Z-era introduction to name a few. In addition to that, an episode created for the edited broadcast (Episode 10: "Escape From Piccolo", edited down from the uncut episodes 9 and 10) was skipped over in '96 due to objectionable content and only reinstated on the home release and on television in '98 after making the jump from syndication to Cartoon Network, while another episode was initially skipped over in the first run because it featured a bunch of people trapped inside a burning building and was originally scheduled to air shortly after 9/11.

* The finale of ''Anime/ExcelSaga'' was never broadcast in Japan, and many other markets, because it was '''intentionally''' made too indecent for broadcast. Even the length of the show (a full minute too long) was unsuitable for broadcast. Fittingly, the episode is titled "Going Too Far".

** The Crystal Ball focuses on a decaying old witch who imprisons a beautiful princess in her castle, and every night performs a demonic ritual where she bites said princess, and drains all her blood. This restores her youth for about a day, and the princess is left a decaying corpse, but regenerates in about a second. What makes it worse is that this happens every night.
*** This episode was actually dubbed, but was never released. The dubbed version cut out the biting scenes, and had the witch use her magic to make the princess switch ages with her.

* The English Dub of ''Anime/AThousandAndOneNights'' once existed back in 1969 (which cut out about 20 minutes), but it only played in very few theaters, where it bombed and was lost until 2020, when Creator/DiscotekMedia rediscovered a print with the dub and included it with its Blu-Ray release.
* Episode 48 of the English-dubbed 2001'' Manga/{{Cyborg009}}'' series was this for the longest time, until a rip from an Australian Toonami broadcast surfaced. The "Yomi Group" recap and the alternate-universe "God's War" OVA arc were also dubbed, but never aired in the US and remain near-impossible to find, other than fans' accounts of them having aired overseas. This was eventually averted in 2019, when Discotek Media released the series on Blu-Ray with all episodes intact and dubbed. This release, which took two years to complete, needed extensive restoration for the dub.

* ''Anime/AbunaiSisters: Koko & Mika'' is generally regarded as one of the worst anime ever made. (For some reason, Production I.G. were behind it.) It aired on a subscription-only TV channel in Japan (with an English dub - subtitled in Japanese) for supposedly 10 episodes. Only two episodes were ever released on DVD, and have been uploaded to the Internet. The other eight episodes are presumably still locked away in the archives of the anime studio or the TV station, so unless you ever find somebody in Japan who recorded the episodes, chances are they aren't going to ever be taken out of the vaults.

* Out of the 59 episodes produced for ''Big X'', only episodes 1 [[note]] Originally, this episode was missing until it was eventually discovered that animation historian, Jerry Beck, owned a copy of it, unaware of its rarity. After Beck and Creator/{{TMS Entertainment}} agreed that he could keep the film reel, he professionally transferred it over to the studio, and thus making the episode survive. [[/note]], 11, and 40-59 survive.

** All the manga chapters that had the character Gachakko [[note]] A female robot duck featured early in the manga's run who pestered Doraemon and Nobita. [[/note]] were never reprinted due to the creators' eventual dislike towards her.
*** Funnily enough, Gachakko appeared in the 1973 show.
** The special episodes of the 2005 anime are skipped in all of the international dubs for unknown reasons.
** The American dubs of the 2005 anime and the manga are selected episodes, see here, [[http://doraemon.wikia.com/wiki/Doraemon_in_North_America]] that focus more on action/adventure rather than [[AnAesop life lessons]]. Unless the [[Creator/BangZoomEntertainment dubbing company]] changes their mind, there will be many lost episodes for the U.S., the dub for which ended after 52 episodes.

* An episode of the anime ''Anime/GhostStories'' was banned before it even aired in Japan, due to complaints from viewers about [[MonsterOfTheWeek the Kuchisaki-Onna, based off a Japanese folktale]], being insensitive to those with cleft palate disorder (as in the myth, she had a deformed mouth). The episode has never been released to DVD or broadcast anywhere, as a result of this (though considering what [[GagDub the English dub]] could have done with material like that, perhaps it's for the best).
* Episode 60 of ''Harris no Kaze'' only exists in picture with no audio.
* The 2007 film adaptation of ''Manga/JojosBizarreAdventurePhantomBlood'' could only be watched during its brief theatrical run in Japan. The film's theatrical run was standard for anime films of the time, but any chances of it being released on home video were shattered after A.P.P.P. got themselves into hot water due to a scene of DIO reading the Qur'an in the ''Stardust Crusaders'' OVA. However, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOUDdJRvn2Q a university student was able to get a hold of the first 16 minutes of the film]] from an audio professor (actually the film's composer, Marco D'Ambrosio, who had given the footage to a substitute teacher to hand out for an assignment), and it is the only way to watch the film. However, there is no voice acting, and most of it is in animatic form. However, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tB66laScBPU the trailer for the film]] is still viewable and features fully animated clips with voice acting.

** Though, the entire 1st Series can be found online, episodes 26 and 28 are only available in Chinese. But the second half of the latter was included as additional material on the DVD box sets. The 2nd Series is only lacking episodes 85-99.

* Because parodies are not explicitly protected under Japanese copyright law, the first episode of ''Anime/OsomatsuSan'' (which featured spoofs of ''Manga/AttackOnTitan'', ''Manga/{{Haikyuu}}'', ''Anime/UtaNoPrinceSama'', ''Anime/LoveLive'', ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'', ''Franchise/SailorMoon'', and ''Anime/DragonBallZ'', among others) was pulled from streaming sites and the show's DVD release. This happened again in Episode 3, where one skit was a parody of ''Literature/{{Anpanman}}'', which caught the attention of a network executive who is a childhood fan of ''Anpanman'' and forcibly removed it henceforth.

* Episodes 16A and 47A of the 1967 anime of ''Manga/{{Perman}}'' are missing. In addition, episodes 4A, 17A, 39A, and 45B only exists in picture with no audio.
* Out of the 104 episodes produced for the 1966 anime of ''Robotan'', very, ''very'' few of them survive. This is because Daiko Advertising threw out the film reels sometime after the show was cancelled. The surviving episodes ended up as collector's items and the film reels to two of them (with no audio) were sold on Yahoo Japan's auction service back in 2010.

* Episode 5A of ''Umeboshi Denka'' only exists in picture with no audio.
* ''Zen-chan Tsū-chan'' was never re-aired since 1978 and no episodes were known to exist. However, a movie based on anime still exists as two people watched it on September 24, 2016, but is never put online.

* Whenever the original ''Anime/AstroBoy'' series is shown in Japan, the episodes are not from the original recordings, but are actually redubbed from the American edits of the episodes. This is because all original records of the series have been destroyed, because of financial reasons. Long story short: the masters were destroyed by NBC, who hadn't the room to retain them; when they offered to return them to Mushi Productions, Mushi — which was going through bankruptcy at the time — told them they were unable to accept them back and to just do whatever they normally did with unwanted masters. In fact, the practice of destroying copies, line arts, voice recordings or never-aired episodes was very common prior to the early 80's - God knows how much priceless original material has been destroyed.

* After that whole defamation controversy, add ''Manga/{{Gintama}}'' episode 232 to the list; also counts as an ''{{inverted}}'' NoExportForYou because Crunchyroll had already uploaded the episode on their site before the controversy and continued streaming it for several weeks after it had been pulled in Japan.
** It still airs in other countries that broadcast a dubbed version of Gintama (such as the Philippines), albeit in a [[{{Bowdlerise}} heavily edited version]].
* A borderline case exists with the manga ''Manga/KuniGaMoeru''. The manga, which chronicled a Japanese family in Manchuria from the late Taisho era on through the end of World War Two, included a chapter dealing with the [[UsefulNotes/SecondSinoJapaneseWar Nanking Massacre]]. A group of people complained that the reference photos that the artist used for depictions of the incident were inaccurate and in their opinion forgeries. This same group further... um... [[PoliticallyCorrectHistory disputes the historical accounts of the Massacre]]... and so put pressure on Shueisha, the publisher, to suspend the manga (it was later reinstated and allowed to finish) and remove the offending 21 pages from all but the original serial magazine run. If you can't find a original copy of the issue of ''Young Jump'' the uncensored version ran in or find the few pages posted on the net here or there, it is pretty much a lost episode.
* The episode "Someday in the Rain" from ''[[Literature/HaruhiSuzumiya The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya]]'' (written by the original creator) was adapted to prose form in an issue of ''The Sneaker'', but so far has not been included in any volume of the novels.

* The last US DVD volume of ''Anime/SDGundamForce'''s first season went out of print and was mysteriously not reprinted with the other 8, resulting in an unresolved {{cliffhanger}} for those who didn't pick it up while it was available.
* One episode of ''Anime/SuperDimensionFortressMacross'' was briefly ''literally'' missing, as in a courier accidentally left the master reels of the finished episode on a train. Fortunately, they were able to recover the film, rather than have to reshoot the episode all over again.

* The original Creator/FourKidsEntertainment dub of ''Franchise/OnePiece'' skipped a number of episodes (read: nearly ''forty'') during its run on 4Kids TV and Cartoon Network. Part of this was accomplished by cutting slower-paced episodes together, but much of it was due to ''skipping entire story arcs'' to introduce "marketable" characters more quickly, leading to some truly gargantuan [[DubInducedPlotHole plot holes.]] The episodes stopped being "missing" in the US after Toei yoinked the license and gave it to Creator/{{FUNimation}}, who promptly got to work on making an uncut release, (and even went back to redub the 4Kids dubbed episodes for consistency's sake).

* The alleged [[Main/{{Gorn}} guro]] OVA ''Anime/SakiSanobashi'' is this, as no verifiable footage, stills or production information of the OVA exist, [[PopCultureUrbanLegends if it ever existed at all]].

* In some regions in Japan, ''Manga/TheRoseOfVersailles'' was CutShort due to scheduling conflicts, and therefore ended on an alternate version of Episode 24. However, because of the circumstances surrounding its production, this version was withheld from rebroadcasting, and never released on home media and/or put in any streaming service where the anime itself is available. This resulted in this version of episode 24 to be referred to as a "Phantom Episode". However, in 2020, a user on Twitter was known to have possessed a recording of the episode, but couldn't upload it online [[ScrewedByTheLawyers due to Japanese copyright laws]].

* In some regions in Japan, ''Manga/TheRoseOfVersailles'' was CutShort due to scheduling conflicts, and therefore ended on an alternate version of Episode 24. However, because of the circumstances surrounding its production, this version was withheld from rebroadcasting, and never released on home media and/or put in any streaming service where the anime itself is available. This resulted in this version of episode 24 to be referred to as a "Phantom Episode". However, in 2020, a user on Twitter was known to have possessed a recording of the episode, but couldn't upload it online [[ScrewedByTheLawyers due to Japanese copyright laws]].

Common in {{anime}} which has been imported for broadcast.

* The first season of ''Anime/DragonBallGT'' lost fourteen of the sixteen episodes when first shown on Creator/CartoonNetwork, and were replaced by a single, American-only recap episode, to pick up the pace of the storyline. The missing episodes were later shown for its second run, which was advertised as ''Dragon Ball GT: The Lost Episodes''. [[BatmanGambit It's worth noting that fanboys had been trashing these episodes since 1997, but the second they were "lost", they were in hot demand]].
** The real reason is that those episodes of ''GT'' were lighthearted comedy in the vein of the original ''Manga/DragonBall'', which wasn't nearly as popular in the West. Creator/{{FUNimation}} chose to skip these in favor of the more action-packed, ''DBZ''-style episodes, clearly knowing their audience (as a result of this ironically [[AmericansHateTingle GT actually got better ratings in the U.S. than it ever did in Japan]]). Of course, this was also the era when ''GT'' had a ThemeTuneRap.
** However, episode 16 "Giru's Checkered Past" did not air during its second run due to the American-only episode taking its place. "Giru's Checkered Past" didn't air in America until February 22, 2012 on {{Creator/Nicktoons}}.
* In the original run of the edited version of ''Anime/DragonBallZ'', two episodes were pulled. One was early on; a filler episode where young Gohan gets lost in a cave during his wilderness training and encounters a grouchy robot, who ends up becoming fond of him and [[spoiler:sacrifices his life to save Gohan]]. The reasons for pulling this episode are unknown. The other occurred on Toonami, after Freeza impales Krillin on his horns; in the first half of the episode, Freeza continually tortures him until he's lost nearly all the blood in his body. This episode was merged with the episode afterwards.
** More material was cut out of the edited version of the first two seasons. At that moment, ''fifteen'' episodes' worth of material were edited out, including most of the first episode and Tenshinhan's Z-era introduction to name a few. In addition to that, an episode created for the edited broadcast (Episode 10: "Escape From Piccolo", edited down from the uncut episodes 9 and 10) was skipped over in '96 due to objectionable content and only reinstated on the home release and on television in '98 after making the jump from syndication to Cartoon Network, while another episode was initially skipped over in the first run because it featured a bunch of people trapped inside a burning building and was originally scheduled to air shortly after 9/11.
* 15 episodes of ''Manga/DoctorSlump'' were skipped when the anime first aired in Hong Kong due to their unacceptable contents. Those episodes would aired there almost three decades later, but only in the late night time slot, and with a [[TheOtherDarrin different dubbing cast.]]
* ''Anime/MazingerZ'': In Spain thirty-two episodes from the first season were broadcast. The first season was fifty-seven-episodes long. They were aired out of order, too.
* ''Anime/SailorMoon'':
** The Creator/DiCEntertainment dub threw out six episodes entirely: 2, 5, 6, 20, 42, and 67. Most of these were not seen (legally) in the US until the uncensored, subtitled [[Creator/ADVFilms ADV]] release in 2003. Even that did not include episode 67, from the ''R'' season (a BeachEpisode with no relation to anything else in the show, featuring unexplained plesiosaur-like animals in the modern day). It was claimed by an ADV representative that Creator/NaokoTakeuchi despised that episode (as did the director), and that Toei refused to license it, although the episode showed up in other countries' adaptations. Later, it was clarified that ADV had obtained its masters from [=DiC=], whose materials lacked the episode. It wasn't seen legally in the US until 2015 when it was included in Viz's simulcast of the original anime, and later in their dub.
** [=DiC=] supposedly skipped over Episodes 2 because of a scene with Umino lifting up the teacher's skirt, a scene of possessed students throwing rocks into the school building, and themes involving fortune telling. Episode 5 was supposedly skipped because of a scene with Shingo kicking Luna, and Episode 6 was possibly skipped because of a sequence where Usagi disguises herself as an "adult" (a skimpy outfit with an exposed midriff) in order to infiltrate an adults-only jazz club. However, other than one or two scenes with easily editable objectionable content, these were most likely skipped due to [=DiC=] wanting to burn through "solo Sailor Moon" episodes as quickly as possible. Episodes 20 and 67 were both beach filler episodes and skipped because they contributed nothing to the plot. Episode 42 on the other hand was a flashback episode that revealed Minako/Sailor Venus's past, and was likely skipped because it gave the rest of the Sailor Scouts little-to-no screentime, even if it was still an important episode to Venus' character arc. Some of these episodes (such as the Fortune Teller and the Haunted Beach episode) were adapted into Scholastic's junior novels. A FanEdit of the[=DiC=] dub was created in 2022 to include the missing episodes.
** Episodes 119 and 152 (from the ''S'' and ''[=SuperS=]'' seasons respectively) were initially skipped by Cartoon Network and Toonami because the monsters-of-the-day were too revealing, and they had to be sent back to Cloverway for further digital paint editing. Because the production and broadcast was so rushed, Toonami had no choice but to skip them during the show's first run. Both eventually aired in reruns. Episode 119 also happens to be a very important episode, since it was Hotaru's debut as Sailor Saturn, and skipping it created glaring plot holes.
** The ''[=SuperS=]'' special episode (with three shorts) was also skipped on TV and home video in North America and not seen legally until Viz licensed the franchise and included it in their release. The ''R'' movie short, ''Make Up! Sailor Senshi'' (which is mostly a clipshow that establishes the characters) and the ''[=SuperS=]'' movie short ''Ami's First Love'' (a mini-movie focusing on Ami/Sailor Mercury) were also missing until Viz got the franchise, and included them in their theatrical screenings and home video releases.
** Until 2015, the ''Sailor Stars'' season had never been shown in the US, due to licensing for Sailor Moon being revoked outside of Japan before Cloverway/Pioneer could get to them. As above, this changed with Viz's acquisition of the series.
** Episode 89 was skipped in several countries, but oddly not in the [=DiC=] dub. That and the fact that it was a clip show led many fans to think it was made by [=DiC=], even though it was part of the Japanese run.
** The Swedish dub skipped episodes with "too much music". Only the first two seasons aired.
** The Albanian dub skipped the third and fifth season entirely. Aside from Rini's returning in the third season, and already being a Senshi, there were really no plot holes.
** In Poland, three episodes were skipped: 45 and 46 were skipped because Polsat (the station that aired Sailor Moon in Poland) got the package that excluded these episodes (though it's entirely possible the true reason was all the violence and deaths), and 133 was skipped to avoid possible offense to Catholics. It's worth noting that both cases of this trope here caused plot holes, as episodes 45-46 were the first season's finale and 133 marked Diana's debut. Thankfully, when Classic was rerun in 2011, the finale was included.
*** This almost happened again in Stars, where Polsat initially intended to skip episodes 196-200 due to, again, onscreen deaths and the nudity in episode 200 to boot; however they were aired in the end due to being the finale of the whole series.
** In South Korea, many episodes were skipped due to content and cultural reasons, including most of Rei's debut episode. In fact, [[UsefulNotes/KoreansInJapan ANY scene showing Rei's temple, or Rei wearing her shrine priestess uniform were cut]], and episodes featuring the shinto shrine frequently within the episode were cut or merged (this was because their dub was trying to remove as many references to Japan as possible, due to the two countries' bitter relationship). Other episodes with a large amount of "inappropriate" content were also cut (including too much kanji, lip-locking, violence, sexuality, and frightening images). In all, only 157 of the 200 episodes aired, leaving forty-three episodes unaired.
* The original Creator/FourKidsEntertainment dub of ''Franchise/OnePiece'' skipped a number of episodes (read: nearly ''forty'') during its run on 4Kids TV and Cartoon Network. Part of this was accomplished by cutting slower-paced episodes together, but much of it was due to ''skipping entire story arcs'' to introduce "marketable" characters more quickly, leading to some truly gargantuan [[DubInducedPlotHole plot holes.]] The episodes stopped being "missing" in the US after Toei yoinked the license and gave it to Creator/{{FUNimation}}, who promptly got to work on making an uncut release, (and even went back to redub the 4Kids dubbed episodes for consistency's sake).
* The HotSpringsEpisode of ''Manga/OutlawStar'' was dropped from the dub on Cartoon Network, since it'd take too long and cost too much money to digitally cover the sheer number of naked breasts and crotch on the female characters and tone down some of the sexually suggestive lines. There does exist an edited version for pre-watershed screening, but due to the adult content of the episode, the edit has a vastly shorter run time. The episode ''was'' shown, although with some apparent cuts, on the short-lived CNX Channel in the UK and is available on DVD uncut and uncensored. This eventually got averted in 2018 when the revived Toonami block aired it with mild edits.

* ''Anime/PokemonTheSeries'' is notorious for this among the fan community. Most of these are only missing from non-Asian dubs (all sourced from the English dub), but there are a lot of examples:
** "[[Recap/PokemonS1E18BeautyAndTheBeach Beauty and the Beach]]" was a BeachEpisode, for one, but it really got itself banned for the scene where James cross dresses to enter the swimsuit contest with fake breasts, and then taunts Misty that his boobs are larger ''while inflating them''. Also, excluding Nurse Joy and Officer Jenny who don't appear in this episode, every main character in the series so far (including Professor Oak, Gary and his cheerleaders, and even Ash's mother, Delia) is seen in a swimsuit. A clip from this episode where Ash gives Delia the swimsuit contest trophy (Which he was given for saving the contest from Team Rocket, but he had engraved to Delia) on the beach actually appears in flashback form in the later episode "Hypno's Naptime", confusing viewers for years. A heavily-edited version aired three years later in 2000, but even that one was never shown again. This caused severe dialogue changes in the next episode, which featured a twin (actually cousin) of one of the characters from this episode that in the original vehemently objected to confusion with her twin. Of course...
** That next episode was "[[Recap/PokemonS1E19TentacoolAndTentacruel Tentacool and Tentacruel]]". It aired just fine then and years afterward, until 9/11. It was [[DistancedFromCurrentEvents taken out of rotation]] for a scene where a giant Tentacruel smashes up a building, even though the building didn't look anything remotely like either of the Twin Towers, and even though that very scene was (and remained) part of the opening titles. There were other reasons, too, with the character Nastina using military style weapons during the fight scenes. It didn't come back until the ChannelHop to Creator/CartoonNetwork a few years later.
** "[[Recap/PokemonS1E23TheTowerOfTerror The Tower of Terror]]" was also banned after 9/11 solely on the basis of the name, and Cartoon Network couldn't pry the rights for it until late ''2007''. It's understandable they'd want to [[DistancedFromCurrentEvents distance themselves from current events]], but that's an extremely loose definition of "current" (for context, this was well over a year after the channel-hop). It was the middle part of an important three-episode mini-arc, to boot.
** "[[Recap/PokemonS1E35TheLegendOfDratini The Legend of Dratini]]" was banned from the beginning because of a ton of gun play, including two characters getting guns to their heads and one character shooting off about [[BottomlessMagazines a hundred rounds]] at Team Rocket from two revolvers to interrupt their motto. Extra fun when in later episodes, Ash suddenly has 30 Tauros we never saw him catch, because he caught them here. Also could have been trouble since this is where the gang gets to the Safari Zone they had been searching for for a couple of episodes, but luckily the previous episode just happened to feature a nature preserve that just happened to be right next door to the Safari Zone, which is also supposed to be a nature preserve. It was pretty easy to edit dialogue to make ''that'' episode the Safari Zone and actually make things more logical than they were before. This episode has never been available for legal viewing in the US or any country that used the [=4Kids=] adaptation as basis. More detailed reasons are {{discussed}} by [[http://dogasu.bulbagarden.net/comparisons/kanto/ep035.html Dogasu's Backpack.]]
** "[[Recap/PokemonS1E38ElectricSoldierPorygon Electric Soldier Porygon]]", the infamous episode that gave viewers epileptic seizures. It was only aired once in Japan, where the strobe effect employed caused seizures in some Japanese kids. And then a whole lot more Japanese people got sick when the news reported on it by ''showing the clip that was giving people seizures!'' This wasn't the only episode where the effect was employed, but while the previous episodes had the strobe effect removed, this episode was simply pulled. As such, the episode is extremely rare to find, with copies being taken off of video-sharing websites like Website/YouTube. In fact, anime had been like this for years and it wasn't until the Porygon episode that this kind of thing stopped.
*** The delay caused by ''Electric Soldier Porygon'' caused two episodes to be delayed and run as specials ("[[Recap/PokemonHolidayHiJynx Holiday Hi-Jynx]]" [[note]]which, oddly enough, was ''also'' pulled from rotation after a single viewing in America due to racist allegations, and in 2013 was retconned out of existence by The Pokémon Company International along with two other episodes for the same reason (all three are still online though)[[/note]] and "[[Recap/PokemonSnowWayOut Snow Way Out!]]"), five episodes were rescheduled, and one was canceled altogether (a New Year's Eve episode).
*** This is the only episode from the Pokemon franchise that OLM refuse to export anywhere, even in other Asian countries, because of this incident. Some reports even state that the episode was banned by the ''Japanese government'' (though there is no real evidence to back up this claim). However, according to Creator/MaddieBlaustein, Meowth's voice actress at the time, 4Kids had actually dubbed the episode, but the producers demanded the episode be withdrawn regardless, likely due to the controversy (or at least the fear of controversy) that even ''airing'' the episode would cause (Though Creator/VeronicaTaylor, Ash’s voice actress at the time, claimed otherwise, claiming it wasn't dubbed as 4Kids never even received the episode). The incident also forced OLM to go back and dim the flashing effects in earlier episodes, making the pre December-1997 versions highly sought after (some of those original versions actually wound up being given to 4Kids).
** In South Korea, "[[Recap/PokemonS1E4ChallengeOfTheSamurai Challenge of the Samurai]]" was because of [[UsefulNotes/KoreansInJapan tensions between it and Japan at the time]], and five other episodes were banned because the Korean {{Media Watchdog}}s knew that those episodes would discriminate their culture.
** After all this Season 1 madness, things ticked down a lot, but a few more missing episodes turned up. Two episodes depicting the first-generation Jynx have been pulled from rotation in the US (see that article for more details), though "Holiday Hi-Jinx" is still available on videocassette and DVD if you look closely enough. ClipShow episodes in later seasons were skipped because, really, who wants to watch a ''Pokémon'' clip show?
** To add to this list, there were four episodes from ''Anime/PokemonTheSeriesRubyAndSapphire'', one of them being Wattson's Gym battle, where they only aired twice overall. This was after the massive three-month hiatus before the next season began after these episodes aired. Though it's considered "missing" for a [[ScrewedByTheNetwork completely different reason]].
** The ''Ruby and Sapphire'' episode "[[Recap/PokemonS7E32TheBickerTheBetter The Bicker the Better]]" has been banned in Norway and a few other countries due to its GirlsVsBoysPlot being considered an endorsement of sexism.
** Similar to the ''Black Jack'' example above, the ''Ruby and Sapphire'' episode "Shaking Island Battle! Barboach vs. Whiscash" was scheduled to air in November 2004 in Japan but never did, as the plot dealt with Whiscash causing earthquakes in an island. A month before its scheduled broadcast, a real earthquake struck Japan's Niigata Prefecture, and after initially postponing the episode, the producers decided to drop the episode entirely. The only trace of its existence is the preview for the episode made before the quake.
** And the two-part episodes in the ''Anime/PokemonTheSeriesBlackAndWhite'' series that would finally introduce Team Plasma. According to some previews and WordOfGod, a lot of scenes showed a city being severely damaged. Then the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_and_tsunami 2011 Japan earthquake]] happened, and you have to take these episodes off of the grill. The ''Black and White'' series was run to its conclusion without the two-parter ever airing [[note]]The two-parter ultimately ended up becoming CanonDiscontinuity[[/note]], and TV Tokyo maintains that they will air the episodes only when scheduling permits it in the future, which could be a ''long'' time given how intricate and specific to marketing scheduling around this franchise is.
*** This also caused a follow-up episode (revolving around Cilan fishing) to get removed, as it would've directly addressed the events of the Team Plasma episodes. It was originally made to set up a small arc in which Bianca joins the group and Iris catches an Emolga. When the episode aired, it was edited to retcon the episode's placement in the story, and the ending was changed to have Bianca leave the group. The episode after she joined the group was aired in its original slot and quickly given new narration explaining that Bianca had joined the group off-screen to avoid any continuity snarls.
** In Japan at least, the "Pikachu and Pichu" short ended up getting pulled from circulation in 2009 out of shame when [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noriko_Sakai#Drug_scandal narrator Noriko Sakai's drug scandal]] leaked out. The other option was re-recording the narration with another seiyuu. Whatever the case, the last known release of this short ''anywhere'' was on an R1 DVD reissue of the first three movies in 2009. Unfortunately, it's been speculated, all the other early Pikachu shorts appear to have been banned from export to other countries as well in the aftermath (as evidenced by their not appearing on international Blu-ray releases from other companies after the original distributor lost the rights), so the damage done may have been greater than anyone had believed at the time.
** An ''Anime/PokemonTheSeriesXY'' episode titled "An Undersea Place to Call Home!", involving a shipwreck, was pulled after the South Korean ferry ''MV Sewol'' capsized. It eventually aired, but in a first for the series, it actually aired first (ironically enough) in South Korea instead of Japan. Because the episode was aired out-of-continuity, for the English dub, the narrator spoke in past-tense.
** The ''Anime/PokemonTheSeriesSunAndMoon'' episode "[[Recap/PokemonS21E21SatoshiAndNagetukesaruTouchdownOfFriendship Ash and Passimian! Touchdown of Friendship!!]]" was flat-out skipped over for English dubbing due to concerns over Ash wearing makeup to look like a Passimian potentially resulting in further accusations of blackface and racism, especially as the Black Lives Matter movement was starting to pick up steam.

* The 2007 film adaptation of ''Manga/JojosBizarreAdventurePhantomBlood'' could only be watched during its brief theatrical run in Japan. The film's theatrical run was standard for anime films of the time, but any chances of it being released on home video were shattered after A.P.P.P. got themselves into hot water due to a scene of DIO reading the Qur'an in the ''Stardust Crusaders'' OVA. However, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOUDdJRvn2Q a university student was able to get a hold of the first 16 minutes of the film]] from an audio professor (actually the film's composer, Marco D'Ambrosio, who had given the footage to a substitute teacher to hand out for an assignment), and it is the only way to watch the film. However, there is no voice acting, and most of it is in animatic form. However, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tB66laScBPU the trailer for the film]] is still viewable and features fully animated clips with voice acting.

* ''Moetan''[='s=] sixth episode, "The First Date", never aired for "various reasons", which, given the evidence, appeared to be "hype up sales for the [=DVD=]s." It worked, at least.
* Whenever the original ''Anime/AstroBoy'' series is shown in Japan, the episodes are not from the original recordings, but are actually redubbed from the American edits of the episodes. This is because all original records of the series have been destroyed, because of financial reasons. Long story short: the masters were destroyed by NBC, who hadn't the room to retain them; when they offered to return them to Mushi Productions, Mushi — which was going through bankruptcy at the time — told them they were unable to accept them back and to just do whatever they normally did with unwanted masters. In fact, the practice of destroying copies, line arts, voice recordings or never-aired episodes was very common prior to the early 80's - God knows how much priceless original material has been destroyed.
** One episode only aired once in Japan at all because series creator Creator/OsamuTezuka hated it so much he had the master destroyed. As it turned out, though, a copy of the master had already been sent to America for dubbing. Only the dubbed version was ever aired, and in the 1990's was even released on VHS as "Astro Boy: The Lost Episode". The audio elements, which survived the destruction of the original master, was later synched with the English video copy for home video releases.
** The first two episodes of the 1982 ''Astro Boy'' remake were dubbed as a single one-hour episode. In reruns, however, the special was cut down to the length of a normal episode. Because all of the material about the creation of Atlas was cut (and that the cut-down version of the special is the only version of it that exists in any usable condition), it made subsequent episodes about Atlas, some of which actually contained flashbacks to the cut material, somewhat baffling. It was only when the original episodes were released in subtitled form on DVD that most English-speaking fans finally understood Atlas' origins.
** One episode of the 2003 version was not dubbed, due to being centered around ''Peter Pan''. While rights to the ''Pan'' stories are in the public domain in most countries, they are held under perpetual copyright in the United Kingdom by the Great Ormond Street Hospital. To prevent this foreign copyright issue, the episode was replaced by a clip show.
* An episode of the anime ''Anime/GhostStories'' was banned before it even aired in Japan, due to complaints from viewers about [[MonsterOfTheWeek the Kuchisaki-Onna, based off a Japanese folktale]], being insensitive to those with cleft palate disorder (as in the myth, she had a deformed mouth). The episode has never been released to DVD or broadcast anywhere, as a result of this (though considering what [[GagDub the English dub]] could have done with material like that, perhaps it's for the best).
* Creator/YoshiyukiTomino had episode 15 of ''Anime/MobileSuitGundam'' ("Cucuruz Doan's Island") removed from both foreign broadcasts and DVD / Bluray collections. The reasons cited are particularly OffModel animation and an unspecified beef Tomino had with the episode's director. (all he'll say on the matter is "He knows what he did.") The episode is still freely available in Japan and was dubbed in Italian for the original 1981 release.
** For the US broadcast, the fortieth through forty-second episodes were never aired, because Creator/CartoonNetwork took the show off the air four episodes from the end due to the events of 9/11[[note]]Though many fans suspect that this was just a convenient excuse CN used to get out of their contract when the show performed poorly[[/note]]. The final episode ("Escape") was eventually run at the end of the year as part of New Year's Evil, a special marathon celebrating the villains of Creator/{{Toonami}}, when Char Aznable was voted surprisingly high among viewers' favorite villains (even beating out long-time fan-favorite ComicBook/TheJoker and only being a little behind Zechs, the resident CharClone from the more-popular ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamWing'').
** The dub for the original movie trilogy has gone out of print and Sunrise refuses to rerelease it due to the poor dubbing and ununiform naming convention (the Principality of Zeon was referred to the "Duchy of Zeon" and the Gundam being pronounced phonetically "Gun-dam" instead of "Gun-dahm" among others)
* Nippon's "Anime/GrimmsFairyTaleClassics" did have dubs for all of the episodes, but many were unaired in the U.S., or were pulled from reairing. To be averted with Discotek Media's SD-BD release, which will include every episode uncut in both Japanese with English subtitles and with the English dub.

* Franchise/{{Transformers}} Anime:
** Several episodes of ''Anime/TransformersRobotsInDisguise'' only aired once in the US or not at all[[note]]''Attack from Outer Space'', ''Landfill'' and ''Sky-Byte Saves the Day''[[/note]] due to the show premiering only a few days before [[DistancedFromCurrentEvents September 11th]]. ''The Secret of the Ruins'' where Megatron crashes trough a skyscraper was also heavily edited in order to remove all references to said event, with the original version having never been released in any form. Not even on the otherwise uncensored UK DVD release by Maximum Entertainment.
** The ''Anime/TransformersEnergon'' episode "Return! Our Scorponok" was never dubbed into English for some strange reason. The episode is important to the plot most notable in how it cements the rivalry between Ironhide and Scorponok, and there's nothing particularly objectionable about it, so its absence is a complete mystery. The fact that it was featured in an online listing for the dub (named "Scorponok's Scars") makes it even more strange.
*** There are rumors that its absence is also what caused the non-canon [[BizarroEpisode ''Distribution'']] (which originally aired as a TV-special in Japan, meant to celebrate the 500th Transformers episode) to receive a dub in order to keep up the episode numbering.
** The Japanese version of the ''Anime/TransformersEnergon'' kinda-sorta sequel series ''Anime/TransformersCybertron'' originally had a two-parter opening episode. But for the English broadcast these where heavily cut down and combined into a single one. The full version of the second episode did eventually air as a bonus once the series finished, but the actual first episode has never gotten an English release.
* The Hungarian, Romanian and Polish broadcast of ''Anime/TransformersCybertron'' was all about this. For starters, the pilot episode was out-right omitted from the start. The series went on until about episode 16, after which the whole thing was constantly repeated multiple times. ''Finally'', Creator/CartoonNetwork got a hold of the rest of the series, and it aired further, before all of a sudden stopping at some point during the final arc. It went on to be repeated again, this time including the pilot. However when only a handful of episodes were left, guess what? The 1 year run of the show had come to an end, meaning it had to be pulled off the screen with only the last few episodes missing. The show was never re-aired ''or'' released on DVD.
** At least with regards to Hungary, the show has been picked up again by another cartoon station and has aired beginning from April '14. So after almost a decade, those remaining episodes have seen the light of day, even if with a new dub.
* Again from Hungary, both ''Anime/DragonBallZ'' and ''Manga/InuYasha'' have had a very troubled past, as originally neither series got to be aired in their entirety, nor have they been released fully on VHS tapes or DVD's. The reasons for this are difficult to decipher, and tons of UrbanLegends have come into being because of them. However the real reason goes along the following lines: one of the country's main commercial TV stations, RTL Klub, had exclusive rights to airing the shows. Due to their violent nature, however, they were forced to push up the rating to the whopping [[SameContentDifferentRating 18+]] (changed to 16+ in 2002, to no effect) age-range. The channel started protesting, which eventually lead to a lawsuit. Long story short, RTL decided to just cancel the shows, as a late night time-slot would have destroyed the ratings. The regular ''DB Z'' schedule was cut off after episode 121, but the late night airings didn't work out, and the series was canceled after that. Eps 122-137 came out on VHS some time later, but that was it. Animax also held broadcast rights for ''Manga/InuYasha'', but only for episodes that had already been shown on RTL. And, as their luck would have it, the final 63 episodes have never been aired.
** After the broadcasting rights to ''DBZ'' had expired, a fan undertaking purchased almost the entire dub, which then got leaked to the internet -- granted, it was based on the badly translated and censored French version, but that's better than nothing. Only episodes 227-231 were still missing. Further, in 2012, another channel called [=Viasat6=] picked up the series again, so after a 14 year wait, the post-121 episodes have finally been shown on TV for the first time, including the five "lost" episode dubs which haven't been seen anywhere priorly. The same can't be said for ''[=InuYasha=]'' -- all episodes of the base-series were dubbed, but the missing ones have never been released anywhere.
** Many other series got either ScrewedByTheNetwork or hit with NoExportForYou in the same manner. Episodes 44-192 of ''Anime/PokemonTheSeriesRubyAndSapphire'', seasons 2-5 of ''Anime/YuGiOh Duel Monsters'', seasons 2-4 of ''Anime/YuGiOhGX'', and about 80% of ''Anime/BakutenShootBeyblade'' and ''Anime/MetalFightBeyblade'' have never been shown, despite that some of these had indeed been dubbed.
*** ''Anime/YuGiOhGX'' has started airing in February '14, again courtesy of [=Viasat6=] [[DuelingDubs and their new dub]]. This time, it got canceled after two seasons, though allegedly rights have been secured for the entire series (or at least its shortened American version).
** The first handful of episodes of the Hungarian ''Manga/DragonBall'' have allegedly been lost for good since their broadcast in the late '90s. The dubbing company did not archive the series and the rest of the dub only exists [[KeepCirculatingTheTapes thanks to TV recordings]]. Whether the show's old TV network or any distributors happen to have the missing dubs, they haven't shown interest in revealing it for over three decades.
* ''Anime/CodeGeass'' had two ClipShow "half" episodes, outright labeled X.5; the staff [[WordOfGod openly admitted]] that they threw together these episodes to give them some "breathing room" because [[TroubledProduction they weren't as far ahead]] in their scripts as most anime are. Creator/BandaiEntertainment didn't even bother dubbing these episodes for the American release, resulting in a couple of Missing Episodes that nobody will miss all that much.
* International releases of the ''Manga/RurouniKenshin'' anime are missing two episodes that only aired during the initial Japanese TV broadcast. They were both clip shows that mixed episode footage with live action shots of plushies of the show's characters bridging the sequences.
** Also, while it is available in the Creator/MediaBlasters release, the last episode (95) was not licensed by [[DuelingDubs Sony]]; which means that countries who based their dubs off that version (read: pretty much every country outside North America) never aired it.
* One episode of ''Anime/SuperDimensionFortressMacross'' was briefly ''literally'' missing, as in a courier accidentally left the master reels of the finished episode on a train. Fortunately, they were able to recover the film, rather than have to reshoot the episode all over again.
* The episode "Someday in the Rain" from ''[[Literature/HaruhiSuzumiya The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya]]'' (written by the original creator) was adapted to prose form in an issue of ''The Sneaker'', but so far has not been included in any volume of the novels.
* The 13th episode of ''VisualNovel/GreenGreen'' is missing from the North American DVD release due to its graphic sexual nature.
* The entire final season of ''Anime/YuGiOhGX'' was "lost" to American viewers, leaving the series to end on the depressing note of Jaden/Judai never returning from the alternate dimension.
* The ''Anime/YuGiOh5Ds'' dub skipped about a dozen episodes, jumping from Yusei's duel with Placido straight to the setup for the duel with Team Ragnarok and skipping over the Crimson Devil arc as well as the duel with Team Taiyo. This was followed up by 4Kids cutting the rest of the series after the duel with Aporia, meaning that the whole storyline with the Arc Cradle was cut alongside finding out who ZONE really was, and the final duel between Yusei and Jack was also removed due to this. These episodes were eventually released with official subtitles on Website/{{Crunchyroll}}, as well as ''GX'' season 4.
* ''Anime/SonicX'' had an entire season produced, yet it never aired in Japan. The series had actually been cancelled after the first series (first and second season) due to very poor ratings, but thanks to the growing popularity in international markets, Creator/TMSEntertainment was commissioned by France to produce a second series (third season) with 26 additional episodes. The third season could only be seen in Japan through rental streaming services, and a DVD release for that season is still unavailable there to this day.

* ''Manga/SazaeSan''
** The show has only aired most of its episodes once, and never released them to home video. It was due to a request the creator made before her death. But during the 40th anniversary show, they aired some 1970's episodes, which is why it was a special event. This was eventually averted, as Fuji TV made an agreement with Amazon in 2018, allowing older episodes of the show to stream on Amazon Prime.
** Another hard to find thing about Sazae-san is a RunningGag that appeared at the end of each episode from 1969 to 1991, in which Sazae would toss a bean or rice cake in the air and would catch it in her mouth at the end of each show, which was often imitated by viewers. In 1990, a child choked to death doing this, and just like the ''Series/HawaiiFive0'' episode "Bored She Hung Herself" [[note]]which was also banned when someone in RealLife tried to imitate the stunt shown on TV, though ''Hawaii Five-0'''s didn't involve eating tossed food[[/note]], it vanished off the face of the earth, and was replaced with a rock-paper-scissors game between Sazae and the viewers at home.
* After that whole defamation controversy, add ''Manga/{{Gintama}}'' episode 232 to the list; also counts as an ''{{inverted}}'' NoExportForYou because Crunchyroll had already uploaded the episode on their site before the controversy and continued streaming it for several weeks after it had been pulled in Japan.
** It still airs in other countries that broadcast a dubbed version of Gintama (such as the Philippines), albeit in a [[{{Bowdlerise}} heavily edited version]].

* It's a common belief that ''Manga/PhantomThiefPokemon7'' ended on a CliffHanger despite the cover glaringly noting it's the first volume. In reality it had more chapters, however the chapters were never put into volumes.
* When ''[[Anime/OjamajoDoremi Magical DoReMi]]'' was brought to the United States, episode 30 was skipped because it had religious references and kids walking around unsupervised in a graveyard.
** The South Korean dub skipped any episodes that referenced Japanese culture or contained offensive content. These included episodes 22, 27, 29, 30, 33, 41 and 47 of Season 1, episodes 10, 11, 13, 14, 24, 29, 35, 39 and 45 of Sharp, episodes 8, 9, 10, 13, 15, 29, 33, 40, 41 and 46 of Motto, and episodes 19, 23 and 29 of Dokkan. This was averted with Naisho, where all episodes were dubbed. This created some plot holes in the series, like the level 6 exam in the Season 1 being skipped because the episode took place at a sushi restaurant.
* ''Manga/{{InuYasha}}'' had 11 episodes skipped in Latin America (or, well, at least in Brazil): first were the two-parters "The Woman Who Loved Sesshoumaru" (133-134) and "The Tragic Love Song of Destiny" (147-148); apparently Televix (the company who distributed the anime around those parts) didn't license them due to they being a separate license (that is, they were considered television ''specials'', not episodes). Then the last seven episodes went unaired, for no particular reason, leaving viewers hanging.
* The last two episodes of ''Anime/DotHackSign'' weren't broadcast on US television. There wasn't anything objectionable in the episodes[[note]]they were practically filler (one featured Mimiru interacting with a character that is run by three players; the other featured everyone just hanging out at a big party).[[/note]], the distributors just didn't want fans to be able to record every episode and make a "complete box set".
** Actually, this is part of a common practice in Japan, of releasing bonus episodes made specifically for the [=DVD=]s. The episodes were never part of the Japanese broadcast, either, and were only available on the Japanese home media release as well. More appropriate to this trope would be episode 14, Evidence, a clip show which was skipped on both the Japanese and US releases, despite being broadcast in both countries. The episode was eventually included as a bonus episode on the final volume of each set.

* Despite being aired in the UK and clips from the episode were used in character spots, the ''Anime/TenchiMuyo'' special, ''Space Police Mihoshi's Space Adventure'' was never aired in the US. For good reason, too, including three of the characters crucified, a rape attempt and Anime/PrettySammy's transformation baring more skin that most magical girls should.
** There was also a ''Anime/TenchiInTokyo'' special that was included only in its Laserdisc release which had the girls kidnap Tenchi away, forcing Sakuya to come to his rescue in a parody of ''Film/GameOfDeath''.
* Before its highly successful 1979 anime and still popular 2005 successor, ''Manga/{{Doraemon}}'' had its first attempt at an anime series back in 1973. Despite it having good ratings and was considered to have new episodes produced, Nippon Television Douga faced financial problems and eventually went bankrupt. After the studio went defunct, the film reels to the series were sold to cover debt. The series briefly reran from July 24 to August 3, 1979, however, it was taken off the air by the request of Shogakukan, who didn't want the 1979 anime to be affected by the predecessor and have kids confused by the two anime being aired simultaneously. After that, the series disappeared for nearly two decades until the surviving episodes were eventually found at Creator/{{Imagica}} in 1995. Whatever few (as in, VERY few) episodes that still remain are sometimes shown at fan conventions, but other than that, there is no 1973 Doraemon anime to speak of. [[NothingIsScarier Kind of creepy to think about.]]
** Of the 52 segments made for the 1973 show, 19 are confirmed to survive. Plus two more in picture only with no sound.
** All the manga chapters that had the character Gachakko [[note]] A female robot duck featured early in the manga's run who pestered Doraemon and Nobita. [[/note]] were never reprinted due to the creators' eventual dislike towards her.
*** Funnily enough, Gachakko appeared in the 1973 show.
** The special episodes of the 2005 anime are skipped in all of the international dubs for unknown reasons.
** The American dubs of the 2005 anime and the manga are selected episodes, see here, [[http://doraemon.wikia.com/wiki/Doraemon_in_North_America]] that focus more on action/adventure rather than [[AnAesop life lessons]]. Unless the [[Creator/BangZoomEntertainment dubbing company]] changes their mind, there will be many lost episodes for the U.S., the dub for which ended after 52 episodes.
* Chapter 83, the infamous "lost chapter" of ''Manga/{{Berserk}}'' in which [[spoiler:Griffith meets the Idea of Evil]], was never reprinted due to the author believing it gave away too much of the plot too soon.
* In German dub of ''Manga/AttackNumberOne'', three episodes were not translated, due to "inappropiate content". These however are included as bonus on the German DVD sets.
* Episode 33 of ''Anime/OyakoClub'' was unaired for unknown reasons.
* The last US DVD volume of ''Anime/SDGundamForce'''s first season went out of print and was mysteriously not reprinted with the other 8, resulting in an unresolved {{cliffhanger}} for those who didn't pick it up while it was available.
* The footage to the previews of episodes 25, 27, and 28 of ''Anime/EsperMami'' were destroyed. The audio to them survives and were included on a special DVD.
* ''Anime/AbunaiSisters: Koko & Mika'' is generally regarded as one of the worst anime ever made. (For some reason, Production I.G. were behind it.) It aired on a subscription-only TV channel in Japan (with an English dub - subtitled in Japanese) for supposedly 10 episodes. Only two episodes were ever released on DVD, and have been uploaded to the Internet. The other eight episodes are presumably still locked away in the archives of the anime studio or the TV station, so unless you ever find somebody in Japan who recorded the episodes, chances are they aren't going to ever be taken out of the vaults.
* Episode 48 of the English-dubbed 2001'' Manga/{{Cyborg009}}'' series was this for the longest time, until a rip from an Australian Toonami broadcast surfaced. The "Yomi Group" recap and the alternate-universe "God's War" OVA arc were also dubbed, but never aired in the US and remain near-impossible to find, other than fans' accounts of them having aired overseas. This was eventually averted in 2019, when Discotek Media released the series on Blu-Ray with all episodes intact and dubbed. This release, which took two years to complete, needed extensive restoration for the dub.
* Sometime in the mid 2000's an English dub of Creator/{{Sanrio}}'s ''Anime/OnegaiMyMelody'' was aired on an unknown Asian Creator/CartoonNetwork channel. The English version was called [[MarketBasedTitle "My Melody's Magical Adventure"]]. A clip of one episode was uploaded to [=YouTube=] in poor quality but was deleted at an unknown time.
* Out of the 59 episodes produced for ''Big X'', only episodes 1 [[note]] Originally, this episode was missing until it was eventually discovered that animation historian, Jerry Beck, owned a copy of it, unaware of its rarity. After Beck and Creator/{{TMS Entertainment}} agreed that he could keep the film reel, he professionally transferred it over to the studio, and thus making the episode survive. [[/note]], 11, and 40-59 survive.
* Episode 60 of ''Harris no Kaze'' only exists in picture with no audio.
* Episodes 16A and 47A of the 1967 anime of ''Manga/{{Perman}}'' are missing. In addition, episodes 4A, 17A, 39A, and 45B only exists in picture with no audio.
* Out of the 43 episodes produced for ''Animated Travels: Marco Polo's Adventures'', episodes 1 and 43 survive. The other 41 episodes were wiped by Creator/{{NHK}}.
* Out of the 104 episodes produced for the 1966 anime of ''Robotan'', very, ''very'' few of them survive. This is because Daiko Advertising threw out the film reels sometime after the show was cancelled. The surviving episodes ended up as collector's items and the film reels to two of them (with no audio) were sold on Yahoo Japan's auction service back in 2010.
* Because parodies are not explicitly protected under Japanese copyright law, the first episode of ''Anime/OsomatsuSan'' (which featured spoofs of ''Manga/AttackOnTitan'', ''Manga/{{Haikyuu}}'', ''Anime/UtaNoPrinceSama'', ''Anime/LoveLive'', ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'', ''Franchise/SailorMoon'', and ''Anime/DragonBallZ'', among others) was pulled from streaming sites and the show's DVD release. This happened again in Episode 3, where one skit was a parody of ''Literature/{{Anpanman}}'', which caught the attention of a network executive who is a childhood fan of ''Anpanman'' and forcibly removed it henceforth.

* Episode 5A of ''Umeboshi Denka'' only exists in picture with no audio.

* When the 1st and 2nd Series of ''Manga/NintamaRantarou'' were released on DVD box sets by [=NBCUniversal=] Entertainment Japan in 2004 and 2005, episodes 26, 28, 56, 73-75, and 98-100 were not included. Apparently, this was due to NHK losing the masters to them.
** Though, the entire 1st Series can be found online, episodes 26 and 28 are only available in Chinese. But the second half of the latter was included as additional material on the DVD box sets. The 2nd Series is only lacking episodes 85-99.
** Worse is the case of the Latin American dub, it covered the first three series and only one and a half episode has been found.
* ''Zen-chan Tsū-chan'' was never re-aired since 1978 and no episodes were known to exist. However, a movie based on anime still exists as two people watched it on September 24, 2016, but is never put online.
* A borderline case exists with the manga ''Manga/KuniGaMoeru''. The manga, which chronicled a Japanese family in Manchuria from the late Taisho era on through the end of World War Two, included a chapter dealing with the [[UsefulNotes/SecondSinoJapaneseWar Nanking Massacre]]. A group of people complained that the reference photos that the artist used for depictions of the incident were inaccurate and in their opinion forgeries. This same group further... um... [[PoliticallyCorrectHistory disputes the historical accounts of the Massacre]]... and so put pressure on Shueisha, the publisher, to suspend the manga (it was later reinstated and allowed to finish) and remove the offending 21 pages from all but the original serial magazine run. If you can't find a original copy of the issue of ''Young Jump'' the uncensored version ran in or find the few pages posted on the net here or there, it is pretty much a lost episode.
* Episode 33 of the anime ''Manga/BoboboboBobobo'' was never dubbed in America as it is a clip show/recap episode.
* The English Dub of ''Anime/AThousandAndOneNights'' once existed back in 1969 (which cut out about 20 minutes), but it only played in very few theaters, where it bombed and was lost until 2020, when Creator/DiscotekMedia rediscovered a print with the dub and included it with its Blu-Ray release.
* Episode 93 ("Shodō de Kokoro o no ni suru zo" / "Kotatsu o Katadzukeru zo" / "Buriburi Eiga Shōkai da zo" [[note]] This is a live-action segment promoting the then upcoming movie "Crayon Shin-chan: The Hidden Treasure of the Buri Buri Kingdom". [[/note]]) of ''Manga/CrayonShinChan'' hasn't been re-released since its initial broadcast in Japan, and is known to have been skipped in the show's Spanish, Korean, and Chinese dubs. Even the [[https://www.tv-asahi.co.jp/shinchan/storylog/list/1994.html official Japanese episode list]] doesn't list any of the 3 segments of the episode. TV Asahi hasn't publicly stated a reason for any of these situations. Although the first segment can easily be found in volume 8 of the manga, the entirety of episode 93 in anime form is very rare, and fan recordings of the initial broadcast only exist in private fan circulations.
** A total of [[https://web.archive.org/web/20190917122346/http://crashinsti.shikisokuzekuu.net/zeitschrift.html 10 stories released during the very beginning of the series' serialization in Manga Action]][[note]] Stories 1-3, 6-7, 11-14, and 17. [[/note]] haven't been reprinted in Japan, nor released internationally. This is because series creator Yoshito Usui supposedly felt CreatorBacklash about their rather controversial content [[note]] For example, the first story has a scene in which a bashful Shin-chan hides under Yoshinaga's dress and does something that gets her sexually aroused. This leads her to hit his head with a hammer so hard that it bleeds. [[/note]] and requested for those stories to never be seen again in any shape or form. None of them have been uploaded anywhere online, so these missing stories can only be found in old September 4-December 25 1990 issues of Manga Action, which are very rare.
* The short-lived English dub of ''Anime/SpeedRacerX'' skipped 4 episodes in its 13-episode run, those being episodes 4, 9, 12 and 16. Possibly due to the heavy presence of firearms in the first three (which this dub consistently removed from the remaining episodes) and bombing threats in the fourth, though, as they were all unimportant to the main TournamentArc, they might also have been removed simply to trim the fat and reduce episode count. Some scenes from these episodes were inserted back into the remaining ones in a different context, ''Franchise/PowerRangers''-style.
* The South Korean dub of the 2007 ''Manga/HappyHappyClover'' anime is currently lost with [[https://blog.naver.com/psyke47/220657361526 the only remaining footage being from a Korean website]] that shows the [[AlternativeForeignThemeSong Korean dub's theme song]] called "Beautiful Day". Besides footage of the theme song, the only remaining evidence of the dub's existence is through Korean websites and screenshots. South Korean was the only country that was able to dub the anime, [[NoExportForYou since it never got dubbed to other parts of the world.]]

** [=DiC=] supposedly skipped over Episodes 2 because of a scene with Umino lifting up the teacher's skirt, a scene of possessed students throwing rocks into the school building, and themes involving fortune telling. Episode 5 was supposedly skipped because of a scene with Shingo kicking Luna, and Episode 6 was possibly skipped because of a sequence where Usagi disguises herself as an "adult" (a skimpy outfit with an exposed midriff) in order to infiltrate an adults-only jazz club. However, other than one or two scenes with easily editable objectionable content, these were most likely skipped due to [=DiC=] wanting to burn through "solo Sailor Moon" episodes as quickly as possible. Episodes 20 and 67 were both beach filler episodes and skipped because they contributed nothing to the plot. Episode 42 on the other hand was a flashback episode that revealed Minako/Sailor Venus's past, and was likely skipped because it gave the rest of the Sailor Scouts little-to-no screentime, even if it was still an important episode to Venus' character arc. Some of these episodes (such as the Fortune Teller and the Haunted Beach episode) were adapted into Scholastic's junior novels.