Filler is something that’s par for the course when it comes to anime. It’s generally a topic that causes fans to roll their eyes in frustration, but every now and then, you get some good moments that only exist when someone decides to deviate from the source material for a few (or a LOT) of episodes. When done right, filler can be great (I will always be thankful for Bakugo riding into battle on top of a red sports car), but it can also be an absolute slog to get through. Certain anime series have so much filler that entire seasons aren’t part of the canon, which begs the question: which anime has the most filler episodes?
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The anime with the most filler episodes
Not to sound cliche, but I was actually surprised when I found out the answer to this. As someone who watched Naruto and its filler arcs (yes, I said ARCS), I assumed it would be the series with the most filler. If not Naruto, then maybe One Piece or Pokémon (based solely on the fact that those series have over a thousand episodes).
Those are all part of this top ten list from the blog Anime Galaxy Official, but none of them are on top of that list. Naruto is at number two with One Piece at number seven and Pokémon at number three. The anime with the most filler is, apparently, Detective Conan (Case Closed). Gintoki over at Anime Galaxy Official reported back in April that out of 1039 episodes of Detective Conan, 440 are filler. And with the series still going, there’s a chance for that number to increase.
Pokémon is also still on the air so we could get more filler there, too. Naruto is technically over (unless you count Boruto), so we won’t be seeing any more filler episodes from it. That being said, according to Robert Milakovic over at Fiction Horizon, Naruto does have the most filler episodes in a row. “The longest filler arc belongs to Naruto, it spans from episode 136 to 219, which makes it a total of 83 fillers in a row.”
The largest percentage of episodes
Along with looking at what series had the most filler episodes, I was curious about what the percentages looked like because of one particular series: Trigun. The original Trigun anime is fairly short with only 26 episodes, but with the announcement of the new series, fans pointed out that the original is predominantly filler! Out of those 26 episodes, 17 of them are filler. Even if it doesn’t have 440 filler episodes like Detective Conan, more than half of its run time is filler—something I didn’t realize when I watched it because I enjoyed all the episodes so much.
Milakovic looked at the percentage of filler episodes and confirmed that Trigun does have the highest percentage at 65%. About 42% of Detective Conan is filler because of how many episodes it has compared to its canonical episodes. So, which has the “most” filler? The one with the hundreds of episodes, or the one where most of the anime is filler?
Which came first? The filler or the egg?
(Featured image: Pierrot)
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