Akira was, obviously, the launch off point for Anime in the west, and the movie was great. But later on I read the Manga, and they were so much richer than the movie. It seems like a 12-episode Anime would be perfect for Akira. And it would probably be successful, because everybody knows/loves it.
20th Century Boys is a bit... odder. I've read the Manga twice, and I know that there's a live action film, but the work seems so much better suited to Anime. I don't know how it's held up -- certainly no one on KIA2 mentions it. It's also not great -- the build up is fantastic, but the denouement is... odd.
Just wondering if there's a reason for this, or if it's just an historical quirk.
Question: why do we need them? Why do we need to make film adaptations of stories that are perfectly fine enough on their own? Why do we need to treat everything that isn't a movie or a TV show as a lesser art form and as the first draft for the so-called masterwork that those two mediums are?
Anime is usually just an advertisement for the original book / video game.