As I’ve mentioned before I’m working my out of anime normie territory. I’m currently watching Ah My Goddess (yes I know, but it’s a catchy show) and I know it’s based on a manga so I was wondering if anime adaptations do a better job than here in the west. I know Japan isn’t perfect but it seems like they value the source material a lot more than they do here. Or am I mistaken?
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Anime adaptations are much more of a wildcard in terms of better or worse.
Generally, the spectacle and superficial aspects will be better in the anime. Action/fighting series benefit the most from this. Whereas gag and drama fare better in manga simply because you aren't being forced along at a pace and can appreciate without pausing/rewinding.
Also anime are notorious for getting greenlit the moment a series becomes popular, and then overtaking it. Leading to either entirely made up conclusions or endless filler to try and give the manga some lead time before repeating the cycle. DBZ's most infamous "scream for an entire episode" was a unique example of this to not need constant filler, by simply dragging out the material as long as possible instead of needing to make shit up that is often low quality and full of plotholes.
Its not a black/white thing. Most are fine in either sense. Heck you aren't even factoring in how a huge portion of manga are adapted from light novels, so its already a game of source material to begin with. One of my favorite series, Welcome to the NHK, has a manga so wildly different from the light novel that it is closer to a complete remake instead of an adaptation. Leaving the anime to pick and choose bits of both when it was made. Yet all three are better in their own way. The light novel is somber and melancholic, with the only laughs you get being from sheer discomfort. The manga is brutal, and far more cruel while still being able to laugh at how ridiculous it all is. The anime is sterilized (all the drug use removed, the sex plots are much more "anime fanservice" instead of realistic horrors) and closer to a romantic comedy with a unique theme.
Personally, I always just stick with the manga versions in general, simply because that works better for me in terms of how I coomsoom. And scanlation is still mostly passion projects by fans, while subbing is almost all corporate Crunchyroll garbage.
Hitori bocchiiiiii~
Damn, what a trip. Reminds me I need to read the LN one day. Also, its worth noting that while most subs are corporate garbage now, back in NHK's day most if not all things that matter have decent fansubs. I know you didn't imply otherwise I'm just clarifying for the peanut gallery.
Yeah, back in those days Crunchyroll was just another fansub hosting site (and one of the worst) that only stuck around by sucking corporate cock and being a great place to prey on underage, low self esteem weebs.
Most people weren't there at the time, but I was. When CR rolled out its Myspace ripoff system, it was notorious for just how easy it was to pick up whatever slutty degenerate E-girl/E-boy to send you their probably illegal nudes.
Generally with anime adaptations if the original author raises an objection to something in the adaptation, the production has to stop and address it. I don't think they are required to but they do it out of respect for the original author. It has happened a few times over the years. That is MUCH better than what we do here.
That stated, if you do request to stop it, that's a LOT of money in the aether that needs addressing, so you better wind up having a good reason. They'll respect it, but you're paying with social capital per hour of stopped work.
Some anime use their source material as literal storyboards.
In The few examples I have read that is generally the case. Although it’s kind of hard to gauge now because in the West they go out of their way to adapt things poorly these days.
I remember back in the DC animated universe they would still do a good job translating the story even if they had to change some things, even making the definitive versions of a lot of characters. I think in Japanese media there’s just more quality control, at least for now.
Here in the west lately there is the phenomenon of showrunners who seem to hate the source material. Thanks! I’ll check those out
I agree about DC animated shows from back in the day.
Anime adaptations can be excellent or they can be terrible. It definitely depends on a title by title basis on how much they respect the source material.
Some anime adaptations even surpass the source material in quality.
Other anime bring shame and dishonor in how much they butcher the source material.
Examples of great anime adaptations: FMA Brotherhood
Kaguya-Sama Love Is War
Kimetsu No Yaiba
Jujutsu Kaisen
Spy x Family
Examples of the worst anime adaptations:
Promised Neverland Season 2
Tokyo Ghoul Season 2
Berserk 2016 anime
I recommend always doing some research to see what fans say on whether a specific title is better read as a manga or watched as an anime.
Not going to lie. When I first heard of it, just based on the premise, I thought I would hate it. I only watched it because some of my friends wanted to.
I am happy to say I was very wrong. It's fucking hilarious and I am glad they forced me to see it.
Sounds interesting. What’s it about exactly?
The synopsis is this
"In the senior high school division of Shuchiin Academy, student council president Miyuki Shirogane and vice president Kaguya Shinomiya appear to be a perfect match. Kaguya is the daughter of a wealthy conglomerate family, and Miyuki is the top student at the school and well-known across the prefecture. Although they like each other, they are too proud to confess their love, as they believe whoever does so first would lose. The story follows their many schemes to make the other one confess or at least show signs of affection."
Basically the boy and girl both engage in elaborate schemes to try to be the one being confessed to. Imagine Death Note level planning/overthinking in an attempt to get your crush to confess to you.
The show is much better than the synopsis and my explanation sounds like.
Cool! Sounds good. Thank you
I even recommended it to friends who don't like romance anime at all and so far everyone has loved it.
It is definitely hilarious.
Can confirm, it's uproaringly funny.
The only downside is the entire premise, of that "battle of love and war," is dropped way too early into the series. Something like 80 chapters into the 280 total it loses that angle to become "how they overcome their trauma" arcs.
Its still great and I enjoyed it the whole way through, but the anime is going to lose a lot of what people liked about it soon because they've run out of those chapters to work with and are going to hit the "long multi part drama" episodes instead.
The ishigami arc kind of already got into that kind of arc and I think it was received generally well. But yeah it will be interesting to see how well it is received if or when the anime passes the culture festival arc.
Ishigami has multiple very long arcs dealing with his stuff. They've only covered part of it.
Its also the first of them. It was well recieved in the manga too, until that was all the manga did (and they pulled some deus ex machina bullshit to "resolve" Ishigami's because the author was in a hole so they could move on). Then there came a bunch, including the Ice arc which idk anyone who likes, all the way until the ending.
Yeah ice was rough in the manga, especially coming off the high right before it. Hoping it comes off a bit better binging it in anime form instead of waiting a week for a chapter then being annoyed.
I want to add Shadow House as a in between of good and bad. I like the animation, the music, the characters but why the fuck did they add anime only stuff? That's in general why I don't like some adaptions, stop adding needless stuff that makes no sense. The 1999 version of hunter x hunter did it Pretty well, added some extra scenes in between to enhance the plot. I am by no means a purist in that regard, if something makes something flow better do it please.
To explain one point of your list: promised neverland, the first season is amazing, the second cuts out 100 chapters to give it an ending, cutting out the most looked forward to arc since the announcement of a second season.
I forgot Berserk 2016 existed, why can't they just make a good adaption of everything that exists?
I enjoyed Shadows House, having not read the source material I even recommend it to friends. I understand they wrote out an "important" character, or one that will become important later on, and the little interlude at the end of season 1 was filler, but I don't think the filler fundamentally changed anything, and it left it on a nice ending note.
Just because something is changed, does not make it automatically bad. Chrono Crusade is probably the most stark example, the anime outpaced the manga, and so they made up the ending wholesale. It's about demons and the church hunting them, and so they have some big fight with vampiric demon cultists trying to make hell on Earth, and then gave a "the rest of their lives in 5 minutes" ending denouement that is in-character and fitting. The manga? Aliens from Mars. They're all aliens from Mars, and the whole "church vs demons" thing is thrown out because they're actually martians, and the church just happened by coincidence to be able to fight them, stressing that it was happenstance. But aliens from other planets may be on the way~. It's a Shamallamalan level dumb tweeeeest, and hurts the series for its existence, and the anime that played it straight was much better. Even though it changed the source material. Because the source mangaka went nuts.
Fullmetal Alchemist is a big example of an anime that diverged wildly, simply because the manga hadn't been finished yet so they had to make stuff up.
Then the same team made FMA Brotherhood which followed the manga extremely closely.
I actually prefer the first one but Brotherhood was the big success that everyone remembers fondly. It's interesting to see how they made different choices in the first and second, for those stories that are the same. But I liked some of the original one-off eps in the first FMA.
Here are three websites that list the filler (what they call things not in the manga) in popular series:
Maybe this can help you find something to watch.
Thanks!
Some anime adaptations drastically diverge from source material. Vandread and Love Hina are two examples that come to my mind.
Monster is one of the best I found when I looked for stuff made before the last decade.