Manga with the Most Controversial Endings

Key Takeaways

• Series are often rushed to end, leading to dissatisfying conclusions for fans of manga like Naruto and My Hero Academia.
• Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure usually has solid endings, but Stone Ocean left many fans divided due to major changes and unanswered questions.
• Bunny Drop started strong but took a dark turn by turning a heartwarming found family story into a controversial romance plot twist.

Stories can’t last forever, but publishers will do their best to milk a series until it’s dry as a bone. It’s hard for mangaka to tie their series up in a bow when they can be pressed to keep it going for as long as possible. Even worse, they could be made to end it before its plot even got going because its sales figures weren’t strong enough.

As a result, there are more manga that have had rushed endings than perfectly neat ones, like Demon Slayer and Jujutsu Kaisen. But they can consider themselves lucky as, while they could’ve been better, their endings didn’t court controversy. These manga conclusions left fans either disappointed, irritated, or regretting reading them in the first place.

This list contains spoilers!

10 Naruto

Ending on a Whimper

• Creator: Masashi Kishimoto.
• 72 Volumes, 700 Chapters.
• Available in English via Viz Media.

There’s giving people what they wanted, and there’s the ending to Naruto. It’s been rather polarizing, as some readers liked it, and many others didn’t. It was happy enough, with Naruto finally becoming Hokage of the village and starting a family with Hinata. He even got to bury the hatchet with Sasuke in their final battle. However, to many, it felt like a rush job tacked onto a rather unpopular arc.

Fans didn’t like Kaguya as a villain, nor Sasuke getting with Sakura after their characters flip-flopped in all sorts of messy directions. The ending was criticized for feeling like Kishimoto just wanted to close it off on a nice, round number instead of tying everything up neatly. That, or to leave some plot threads open for Ukyou Kodachi to tackle in Boruto. Either way, it could’ve been much better than it was.

9 My Hero Academia

When a Shōnen Hero Peaks in High School

• Creator: Kouhei Horikoshi.
• 42 Volumes, 430 Chapters.
• Available in English via Viz Media.

On the one hand, it feels a bit much to call My Hero Academia’s ending ‘controversial’ as it’s not the worst ending in the world. Yet it managed to irritate fans much more than other, similarly rushed endings like Bleach and Jujutsu Kaisen‘s conclusions. MHA saw Deku sacrifice the All-For-One quirk to save others. He gets his due respect for his sacrifice, and he graduates from school the way he started it: Quirkless.

He ends up becoming a teacher, helping others fulfill their dreams. It sounds nice, except it sped through a lot of key details and ended up feeling sadder than it was. Is he still in touch with his old school friends? Did he get with Ochako? The manga really felt like it was going to pair them up. Instead, it seems like Deku ended up alone, with just his students and a secret supersuit for company. Hooray(?).

8 Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 6: Stone Ocean

A Happy Ending That Asked More Questions Than It Answered

• Creator: Hirohiko Araki.
• 17 Volumes, 158 Chapters.
• Available in English via Viz Media.

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure has been lucky as most of its endings have been pretty well received. Even Part 6: Stone Ocean’s ending moved most fans. The souls of Emporio’s friends, thought lost forever, survived Pucci’s universe reset, and found much happier lives with him gone. Ermes’ sister survives, Anasui gets into a relationship with Jolyne, and they all get a fresh start with Emporio.

However, others weren’t so pleased because the people Emporio is reunited with aren’t the same ones he and the fans knew. They have different names (Eldis, Anakiss, and Irene), memories, and lives. Did it also change other beloved Jojo characters from the past? Or did it only change Stone Ocean‘s events? With debates like this, it’s become the most divisive ending in the series.

7 Flunk Punk Rumble

Is the Nerdy Girl a Ghost or Just Stupid?

• Creator: Miki Yoshikawa.
• 23 Volumes, 219 Chapters.
• Available in English via Chuang Yi Publishing.

Perhaps better known as Yankee-kun to Megane-chan, Flunk Punk Rumble was a neat romcom series about Shinagawa, a delinquent (or ‘yanki’ in Japanese), learning to love school through their nerdy best friend Adachi, who turned out to be an ex-yanki themselves. However, it ran into issues when its sales started lagging, and its publishers began butting heads with Yoshikawa on how to progress.

As a result, it ended on a weird note. Shinagawa wants to go to the same college as Adachi, but she just disappears out of the blue, so he goes through college life alone before becoming a teacher. It’s only then that she turns back up as a student. Some theorize that she’s a figment of Shinagawa’s imagination, like a cutesy Tyler Durden, but it’s likely a weak gag about her not being as smart as she looks.

6 The Two Faces of Misaki Hoshino

The Meet-Cute Turns Sour

• Creator: Kouhei Nagashii.
• 13 Volumes, 107 Chapters.
• Available in English via K Manga.

The Two Faces of Misaki Hoshino originally saw antisocial student Kobayakawa manage to befriend Hoshino, the most popular girl in school, when he discovered her secret: she covers up her face in makeup because she thinks she’s too ugly to make real friends. Readers thought the two would fall for each other as they got over their confidence issues. Except they find they’re not making any progress together, and break up to tackle their problems separately.

Next year, Kobayakawa is in a new class without any of his old friends, and Hoshino, sans makeup, sticks to her social group. It ends with Kobayakawa tentatively reaching out to others to make new friends. It’s a bittersweet conclusion, though one that rubbed most fans up the wrong way, as they felt Kobayakawa was actively shoving his old friends away to be forever alone. It received an additional epilogue that softened the blow, but it was still a sudden turn for readers to adjust to.

5 Food Wars! Shokugeki no Soma

Struggling to Finish Off the Last Course

• Creators: Yuki Morisaki and Yuuto Tsukuda (story), Shun Saeki (art).
• 36 Volumes, 325 Chapters.
• Available in English via Viz Media.

If Food Wars! Shokugeki no Soma’s fun fanservice-filled shōnen-ification of cooking didn’t do much for readers, the elaborately drawn dishes would’ve at least offered them a visual treat. But it was also hampered by pressure from the publishers as Tsukuda and Morisaki tried to keep the intrigue going with uninspired plot twists and cooking tournaments.

It shows in the ending too, where Soma leaves school and travels the world (while somehow still graduating). The side characters get some quick epilogues after largely being sidelined in favor of Soma, Erina, and his rival of the week. Erina becomes headmistress of the school, despite still being a student, and Soma gets to run the family restaurant despite never winning the BLUE tournament or beating Erina. It just ends because it had to end.

4 Prison School

Some People Never Learn

• Creator: Akira Hiramoto.
• 28 Volumes, 278 Chapters.
• Available in English via Yen Press.

When most people see a sex comedy like Prison School next to the term ‘controversial’, they might think someone took umbrage with the fanservice, or its creator tried to joke about something serious, and had it blow up in their face instead. But Prison School’s ending didn’t suffer by getting too close to the proverbial sun. It just had a damp squib of an ending.

Readers thought Kiyoshi was on the road to growing out of his perverted ways, and that he’d go off into the sunset with his crush, Chiyo. But nope, he gets outed as a perv in front of her. This causes Chiyo to become the school’s new misandrist head as Mari leaves school, accepting that Kiyoshi and his crew started off as losers and will remain losers. Some thought it was a fitting punchline, though not a very funny one after nearly 300 chapters.

3 Vampire Knight

Unhappily Ever After

• Creator: Matsuri Hino.
• 19 Volumes, 102 Chapters.
• Available in English via Viz Media.

Shōjo manga aren’t any better in the ending stakes, as they also have their messy, head-scratching conclusions. For example, Vampire Knight offered a neat love triangle where its protagonist, Yuki, was torn between Kaname, her vampire savior from the past, and Zero, her childhood friend and vampire hater. Eventually, it’s revealed why Kaname saved Yuki from danger years ago.

She’s a true blood vampire and is Kaname’s sister. That’s bad news considering she’s carrying Kaname’s child. He sacrifices himself in the hopes she’d live peacefully with Zero, only for her to kill herself in order to make him human. Waking up 1,000 years later, he raises his daughter and Yuki’s son with Zero. Calling it messy is an understatement.

2 Bunny Drop

Found Family Story Becomes a Bad Romance

• Creator: Yumi Unita.
• 10 Volumes, 62 Chapters.
• Available in English via Yen Press.

For most readers, Bunny Drop ended halfway through, where Daikichi went from being an irresponsible shirker to a reliable worker and parent to Rin, his grandfather’s illegitimate 6-year-old daughter. No one else in the family wanted to deal with her, so he did his best to act as her guardian. When kept to his perspective, it’s a lovely story. Then it skipped ahead by ten years.

Now the teenage Rin had to deal with high school and love. At first, it suggested she’d be with her childhood friend Kouki. Instead, she fell in love with Daikichi…her foster dad and nephew. But it’s okay because a plot twist revealed they’re not blood-related at all! So, they can live happily ever after in a Tennessee romance that soured everything that happened beforehand.

1 Platinum End

What Happens When God Dies?

• Creators: Tsugumi Ohba (story), Takeshi Obata (art).
• 14 Volumes, 58 Chapters.
• Available in English via Viz Media.

Death Note’s second half felt stretched, but it ended on a clear note that many found cathartic as Light got what was coming to him. By contrast, Bakuman had a happy ending with Takagi and Mashiro fulfilling their dreams, including Mashiro proposing to his girlfriend, Miho. However, Ohba and Obata’s next manga, Platinum End, had a much stranger conclusion.

Shuji, God’s chosen successor, felt his divine role didn’t really affect humanity one way or the other. So, he kills himself to wipe out Heaven and let people control their own fate. Shame it also wipes out all life on Earth, if not the universe too. It was meant to show how humanity spelled its own doom thanks to their hubris in thinking they knew everything while making most readers wonder what the hell they had just read.