10005:

I decided to make my length measurements standardized, one episode = 24 minutes, so instead of looking at the number of separate files a series sported, I looked at the amount of minutes the series lasted in total and then divided it by 24, arriving at the actual standardized length of a series no matter how it was originally presented to the public.

The standard episode of anime lasts 24 minutes, for those curious why I decided to standardize everything by 24 minute increments.  This meant Yama no Susume shrank in size, and every other series in my rankings either stayed the same or grew in size.  Sometimes enormously.  Pretty Cure, One Piece, and Naruto grew by 50-100+ episodes in length.  Lots of shows grew by one or two or four eps.  Adding everything up, the new total of episode length anime everyone needs to watch at least once before dying is 10005.  That's the current true length of my top anime rankings.

In an eyeblink I've already crested the magic 10,000 barrier.  Anime has reached a new milestone without slowing down.  With the number of season 2's and season 3's that have been announced, I could see anime reaching 11,000.  There's still more Pretty Cure, One Piece, Fairy Tail and Bleach coming in large numbers.  Of course that would take years, who knows how many, but it's awesome that it's even possible.

With at least 36 great anime franchises already announced to be receiving meaningfully high quality sequels in the future 11,000 is basically in the bag.  All you would need from there is a few new announcements in the years to come, and there's always new announcements being made all the time.  We don't know which great anime series will suddenly resume next like Spice & Wolf did, but inevitably somebody does.

And as of today, I've rewatched all 10005 episodes of this great anime, fully proving all 10005 episodes' worth as must-see tv.  These aren't canned sardines on offer here, it's all proven gourmet lobster.

Just as Aoi has climbed the very high Mt. Fuji and finished Yama no Susume, I've climbed this very high number of 10005 not once but twice and finished my anime rewatch project.  I get to see the sunrise too.

Now when people look at the length of my series they can confidently compare between shows and see their size relative to each other.  Standardized formats are great.  For instance, Naruto is three episodes longer than Fairy Tail as things stand, but that will change soon with the beginning of Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest.  Soon Fairy Tail will overtake Naruto as the second longest shonen action series.  (Filler doesn't add to a series' length and all of Bolt is filler, so Naruto can't grow beyond its current length).  They can also see that yes indeed Broken Blade is longer than the minimum 12 episodes and therefore qualifies to be in my rankings.

More accurate, informative data is always better.  It takes a lot of work to get it, but once gotten it's gotten forever, so it's always worth the effort.