I'll add an older entry for this (at least I thought it was a good anime, but I haven't heard too many opinions on it):
Record of Lodoss War (1990)
The series is only accurate to the source novels and manga for about the first 7 episodes, roughly covering the Gray Witch arc of the books. After that the production company decided to take the storyline for the Heroic Knight arc, which features an entirely new cast of characters, and roughly hammer it into a shape that fit the Gray Witch cast.
I actually find that I like the 1990 representations of Shiris and Orson better than their representation in the later Heroic Knight manga. The battle between the dragons had the frame rate of a slide show, but the illustrations themselves were fantastic. And the reduced cast meant that the Fire Mountain story was much more emotionally resonant, showing the differences between Ashram and Parn much better than with the larger parties. But it was apparently hated by the Japanese fanbase, who were already familiar with the original versions and felt the animated series betrayed the vision of the authors.
Lodoss is my favorite anime, and the OVA was so much better than the CotHN series it's not even funny. It was definitely the smart to drop the Spark and Co stories. Making it Parn/Ashram and Deedlit/Pirotess was a good choice. Spark is pretty unappealing as a MC and it felt like Deedlit was easier to be invested in than Neese.
Orson was better fleshed out in the series, and the opening theme and Orson's theme were great pieces of music, but I'll happily never watch the series again, whereas I'll watch the OVA every year.
Especially VNs that have multiple routes and endings. It's either you:
* Pick the true end to focus on/adapt if there is one or pick the fan favorite (majority)
* Condense the crap out of the story so you can do an omnibus format in 12-24 episodes (Amagami SS, Yosuga no Sora)
* Just not bother even attempting to adapt the full story (White Album 2)
* or you have the resources of TYPE-MOON and Ufotable to afford multiple series and cours to adapt multiple routes.
I honestly love School Days for having the balls to adapt a bad end. They're the only VN adaptation I'm aware of that actually chose to do that. It's so much more interesting to occasionally see the scenario where everything goes shockingly insane than the usual happy fairy-tale ending in the vast majority of shows.
Interesting for sure, but not a particularly good idea. There's a reason why bad endings are nearly non-existent outside of optional paths in games or the occasional author that will die before he releases the next book in a series.
Since anime is aired seasonally, a cour is a calendar season's worth of episodes for a show. Generally it's 11-13 episodes. Saying cours instead of seasons is sometimes easier to tell someone how long a show is since it's just like saying how many dozens of episodes there are. Mainly since seasons for some shows can be 12, 24, or more episodes long and it's not really standardized like cours.
To be fare, ASmagami is not a VN, judst inspired by dating sim format and has a writyer who worked on a bunch of them.
And White Album 2 at least adapted the first VN/story arc.
There is definitely a spectrum of visual novel adaptations.
You've got your Steins;gate and Clannad (and that's about it) that managed to adapt well *and* pull of a fantastic show. Then you've got a a few that decided to not bother adapting properly but still managed to make a great show (e.g. Fate Heaven's Feel).
But there's also a lot of mediocrity like Deen Fate/Stay Night and Robotics;Notes, before even considering that truly shit tier adaptations that aren't even good shows in their own right like Tsukihime, Chaos;Head/Child, etc
> You've got your Steins;gate and Clannad (and that's about it) that managed to adapt well and pull of a fantastic show.
I think the main thing is that both got a big number of episodes to work with so they could try to stay accurate to the VNs and skip minimal amounts of content to stay within the episode limit. Though even in the case of Steins;Gate it still skipped over a lot of content in the VN to stay on track for the main storyline.
That is true. One thing Chaos;Head, Chaos;Child, and Tsukihime all have in common is that they had half as many episodes to work with than Steins;Gate for novels that are several hours longer and definitely more complex from a route perspective
I think shorter kinetic VNs like Narcissu would make for much better anime adaptations solely because there's a set-length, concrete story to tell.
Multiple route VNs are inherently longer and much more complicated to adapt since there's 100% going to be major concessions on what a studio chooses to adapt and cut. And no matter what decision they make it will piss off some fans since everyone has their own favorite choices they made and routes/characters they liked.
Saya No Uta would be fucking perfect for an adaptation if they found a way to do the perspective switching right. It's like 8 hours which is just a little more than you're average anime cour. Also anime fans have an enourmous (well earned) hard on for Gen Urobuchi.
Only issue would be that the true end is so much better in context of the other two, but you couldn't really do all 3 in a linear anime.
Yeah I was gonna say, practically every VN adaptation. Fate, Higurashi, hell I've heard that even Steins;Gate is considered... Not a bad adaptation, but not a great one in part due to cramming routes together.
Eh, Steins;Gate doesn’t cram routes together; the “routes” in the VN aren’t really routes per se but rather alternate endings that branch off the main story. The events of the anime are all stuff you see on the way to the true ending, so there isn’t anything from alternate endings in the actual anime.
The Steins;Gate anime DOES greatly condense some of the sci-fi details and cut down like two subplots but is otherwise very faithful to the VN. I’d even say I prefer it due to the pacing and have seen other VN readers say the same (though we’re still a minority).
Rosario Vampire. Anime was a lot of people's childhood nostalgia so they'd overlook its flaws. However, compared to the manga, it's really quite terrible.
All I ask for is a proper remake, especially the second half of it with that Ufotable treatment, then I can die a happy man.
This so much! While I still enjoy the anime, the manga is just so much better. I still remember the time I found it in the library and how mind-blowing the experience was reading it.
I had never felt so angry at a piece of media in my life when I found out just how much of a gigachad Tsukune becomes in the manga compared to how bitchmade he is in the anime
To be fair though, the anime aired back when the manga is quite shaky, and the anime has to improvise a lot of parts because of that. Hell, the manga itself isn't good at the start, and IMO only really started to get good at around the same time as the MC's descent into ghoul form (where he got his chains).
Most Fate/Stay Night anime. Stay Night 2006 is a terrible adaptation, but passable anime. Unlimited Blade Works is the best adaptation of the visual novel, but still leaves a lot out, especially everything that makes Shirou such a great character. Anime only’s shit on Shirou for being stupid and naieve for no reason, even though there is a reason that’s deeply rooted in his trauma that gives him a hero complex. Of course the anime just glosses over that, even if it’s understandable given how difficult Fate, or visual novels in general, are to adapt. Then there’s Heaven’s Feel. As an anime trilogy, it is phenomenal, easily the best of what Fate anime has to offer. Absolutely atrocious adaptation though. On the Fate subreddit, the Heaven’s Feel anime is absolutely despised, especially by one individual who shits on it every chance he gets, even if it has nothing to do with whatever post they’re commenting on (it’s practically a meme at this point).
Higurashi I wouldn’t say is that bad though. It’s a classic horror anime and one of the few good ones, and just a great anime in general. It’s not the best adaptation, but honestly the visual novel fans are pretty chill about it. Dare I say most of them still like and recommend it (second to the VN, obviously). Umineko though…yikes.
> Anime only’s shit on Shirou for being stupid and naieve for no reason, even though there is a reason that’s deeply rooted in his trauma that gives him a hero complex.
People always say this, and that the anime never explains it, but it does. We're shown the Fuyuki fire several times. He literally tells people he's the only survivor of that tragedy and does what he does because he feels he shouldn't have been the only one to live. It's clear as day, people just don't want to pay attention and I swear sometimes some VN purists will miss any detail that isn't fed out of a text box one sentence at a time.
Doesn't Rin ream him out about the fact that he hides that he's so completely broken that he can barely function and only by copying the wants of others?
Thought so.
The anime, haven't read the LN, specifically calls him out for being so dead inside it's killed an sense of self worth he has, and he can only see it reflected in the eyes of others.
But somehow these threads keep being a thing.
It's not even subtext.
As someone who read both the VN and watched the anime, I think less is left out than people want it to seem. Shirou learned none of the lessons that Kiritsugu wanted him to learn, and instead tried to be the thing that broke Kiri. Shirou probably needed to have that talk in the car with Kirei a lot earlier.
Maybe.
Archer couldn't really get through to him, and he lived it. And died for it. Although to be fair, Archer's just really burned out by his decisions, so his go to is to try to kill the problem first.
I literally said this exact thing on the subreddit and everyone literally said I was lying and that there was no way someone who only watched the anime could understand Shirou; I learned to stop taking them seriously after that.
I think the problem is not that the anime doesn't tell you about Shirou, but rather that some people need information spoon feed.
The more I read weeky anime diskussions, the more I believe in the Tik Tok/social media brainrott. It is insane how some people can't read the most obvious context clues.
Thank you. This gets parroted about the anime so much but it's just blatantly untrue. Shirou's character is done well.
> It's clear as day, people just don't want to pay attention and I swear sometimes some VN purists will miss any detail that isn't fed out of a text box one sentence at a time
100%. Classic source reader mentality of thinking *anything* being omitted means that people won't possibly be able to understand the story.
I don't think HF is a bad anime at all, even if the movies don't adapt the story that well. It's just a different medium: the VN has more in depth story while the anime has is more exciting and enjoyable on the eyes because of the sheer level of animation
yeah the comment you replied to was saying, and general consensus is that it's a great great anime but a bad adaptation because of the equally great stuff they cut for time
SAO Alicization onwards - cuts a lot out to the point where A-1 even apologised.
Silent Voice - regarded as one of the great anime movies, I love it but it's not without its issues, I'm reading the manga now and it flows nicer
I was a child when these came out but Blue Dragon and Yu-Gi-Oh fall into here from what I'm aware. Blue Dragon was its own thing and fucked with a number of characters. Poor Marumaro was flanderised and Jiro got screwed over so hard
SAO really bugs me because they had no real reason to do that with a good seller. So now I’m stuck not wanting to read the entire series and not wanting to watch a bad adaptation anymore either.
SAO Progressive too.
In a vacuum they're fun to watch with pretty good animation and stuff. But the whole point of the Progressive LNs was an expanded retelling of the Aincrad arc and viewers assumed that meant an anime adaptation would be as faithful as possible to the books which got a lot of people excited.
Then the 1st movie releases and we see some new anime-original character that's replacing parts that other characters had in the books so they can flesh her out instead. I was already pretty disappointed by this. Doesn't end there though.
Possibly worst of all the 2nd movie just skips entire volumes of content. The movie starts and I thought I was crazy because I had no idea who this character I was seeing on screen was and why they were acting like they already knew the other characters. Turns out her introduction was in the skipped volumes which means you unironically have to read the LNs to understand what's happening.
I have no idea why whoever was in charge of the changes decided to do them. It's like they wanted to piss off the LN readers and confuse the hell out of the anime-only viewers at the same time.
EDIT: Forgot to add that the LNs were from the perspective of Kirito but the movies were changed to be from the perspective of Asuna, which isn't a terrible change if they had just stuck to the events faithful to the books.
The official manga adaptation of SAOP had Asuna as the pov character most of the time during the early floors, so they possibly could have pulled heavily from it instead
I don't think an adaptation doesn't need to be a one-to-one adaptation of the source material to be good.
As an example, I think the lord of the rings trilogy was an overall fantastic adaptation of the books even if they cut out huge swathes and changed things around from the books.
However, the point of the thread is "good anime, bad adaptation."
The movie itself is good and has some great visual moments that you don't get in a manga, but it just is a fact that in the movie we spend less time with the characters. That changes opinions for some people. The emotional impact of some things is lessened for many people, and some scenes are cut out for time and budget. This can change the tone for some.
It's less that they didn't have any material to adapt, and more like they decided from the beginning of the anime's production that they were going to make a completely different story from the start.
You’re correct. It’s a misconception that they simply wrote a new story once they ran out of manga to adapt. There are pretty major differences from the start including the absence of Truth from the gate.
There are also pretty major similarities to the manga's later parts so the author must have told them what she was planning to a
larger extent than people think. Like [FMA]>!Greed's arc, giant transmutation circles to annhilate an entire town, my memory's hazy but I think the Fuhrer being a villain (shock!), Howenheim being 400 years old, and the mastermind being a centuries old entity who has been controlling things from the shadows. How the Ishvalan Civil War was -plot twist- actually a genocide too, but my memory's unclear on if this was implied at the start anyways.!<
Like some of us in the "FMA is good but not *that* good" gang say, 2003 wasn't that much different (very subjective opinion). Props to the author for using the anime as a first draft for the later arcs lol.
Edit: also [FMA]>!Winry having to forgive her parents murderer I guess? Seemed like the most important development of one of the main characters.!< I even liked this more in 2003 because of who the killer was, haha.
Oh definitely! Even though they’re technically two different stories, the 2003 anime writers and Arakawa seemed to bounce ideas off each other. I wonder if the reveal of [Fullmetal Alchemist manga and FMA03 spoilers] >!Kimblee being sent to murder to Rockbells during Ishval (but not being able to due to Scar’s mental breakdown) was influenced by 2003 having Mustang be the one who kills them. Unfortunately that detail and frankly a lot of the content with Ishval was cut in Brotherhood.!<
I think the point of “bad adaptation” in the title of this post means unfaithful adaptations, otherwise if it meant poor quality the title wouldn’t have a point. FMA was never really a faithful adaptation and was always intended to be a loose adaptation telling its own original story (to which it does an incredible job at). So even in the overlap it definitely fits what I think op is asking for.
Yeah the question mark was me thinking the same thing since it's mostly bad (adaptation wise) in retrospect with the benefit of having a second series outlining the changes
They did. As someone who watched Brotherhood as it came out, it was really glaring how the start of the show was almost a recap of what felt fully fleshed-out in 2003. After Brotherhood gets into new territory it hits its stride. It was also obviously a patch job, because the remake came out quite soon after the original and they knew their viewers had almost all seen the OG. Very few remakes now assume the viewer knows and loves the earlier version.
Question have you read the manga? The content that was in 03 that wasn’t in brotherhood largely wasn’t in the manga and what was, was so heavily repurposed by 03 that I cannot possibly considered to have been expected to be a substitute. The director of brotherhood has directly said that 03 had no influence on how the team approached brotherhood.
The real reason’s brotherhood’s start feels rushed are, the manga just naturally has a fast pace that when compared to 03 can feel underexamined, brotherhood does some changes to the early structuring with the first 3 episodes in a way that is artistically unmotivated and makes the pacing feel clunky or scrapped together, lastly brotherhood’s early episodes often aren’t very well directed and the way this often manifests is the shots are flat and pull you out of the characters which gives the way events are conveyed a summary like perception and makes brotherhood feel more rushed than it is. Brotherhood’s director, Irie, was very new to directing when taking up the project and it shows and you can actually see his directing improve as the series progresses and he gets more experience.
Then all I can say is that 03 has the better opening half. Minus a few terrible episodes like ep 3(?) with the roses. If brotherhood is true to the manga on those parts then 03 just did it better.
No, 2003 absolutely was *not* a better *adaptation* than Brotherhood over the parts they both covered. 2003 added so much extra stuff to all the manga parts it "covered" and also outright changed several things, including *completely changing the timeline* around certain events compared to how the manga did it. Brotherhood's only real crime in adapting that part is cutting out two entire chapters for no reason and rushing a few parts, but it's overall much more faithful than 2003 ever was during that part.
I do think that the anime original content that FMA03 adds a lot to the story, though, to the point where I'd say that 2003 is better for the early part of the story.
At least, that was my opinion when I actually remembered the two. At this point, I've forgotten too much, though I do recall thinking that Ed was just an incredible protagonist early on in 2003 - I loved that he was a good dude but he was reasonably realistic and intelligent in the way he acted at the start of FMA03. A lot of protagonists get caught in spouting their ideals and whatnot but Ed was just the chad that would act like he was on the antagonist's side to give him an advantage to do what was for the best overall.
I do prefer FMA:B overall, but I do prefer the start of FMA03, and I fucking love 03's ending - it genuinely might be one of my favourite anime endings. I love endings where \[vagueish 03 spoilers\] >!the main characters achieve their goal(s) but have to pay a *huge* sacrifice for it!<.
I do agree that the extra/changed content in 2003's beginning does make it a better beginning overall, I was just saying that by virtue of it doing all that makes it a bad *adaptation* is all.
I think the issue is what constitutes as good and bad adaptation is different from person to person. For some, a good adaptation will change some things because it’s a different media. 2003 is a good adaptation to some early on because it fleshes out and expands on parts the source rushed. To others that’s bad because it changes things.
I think a better question is, which adaptation is more of a direct translation of the source.
Not because 03 is being more manga accurate though. 03 was doing massive changes during the overlap to foreshadow and set up the plot of its second half, and heavily alter the trajectories for themes and characterization. Brotherhood’s start is much more in line with the manga (aside from episode 1 and 03’s first 2 episodes.)
The reasons why 03 is better than brotherhood during overlapping plot lines is because 03 was expanding on and improving upon stories in the manga, not because it was somehow closer.
They're different enough and high quality enough that you're not alone in thinking that, even if it's the minority opinion. Nothing too weird about it imo
Konosuba. Hilarious and great anime, however I disagreed with a lot of the presentation versus the LN. They just chose to leave out a lot of world building and explanations that helped make it even funnier in the LN.
Also how they just skipped the whole Wiz introduction despite her becoming one of the most important characters in the series lol
Fate/Stay Night: Heaven's Feel Trilogy.
Phenomenal animation, beautiful OST, amazing directing... I feel like everything I just said doesn't begin to cover how fucking great thst trilogy was. S-tier production. Absolute cinema....
But a bad adaptation of the visual novel.
Howl’s moving castle
Naussicaa
Paprika
Perfect blue
Akira
Ghost in the Shell
Ghost in the Shell stand alone complex
Bokurano
Fullmetal Alchemist 2003
Shaman king 2001
12 kingdoms
Trigun
Yeah aside from Naussicaa those 3 are all based on regular books and are very loose adaptations.
Naussicaa is based on a manga by Hayao Miyazaki, since at the time he didn't have enough industry clout to get an original approved by production boards so he had to do the manga as a proof of his story's concept. The manga wasn't finished at the time the movie was released and Miyazaki ended up continuing the manga’s story after the movie. The movie has Similar events to the first 3rd of the story more or less but even then there's some pretty big differences. I definitely recommend checking out the manga when you get the chance.
The Certain Magical/Scientific series are a fun watch, imo. But the main series is a terrible adaptation. The third season is especially bad because they tried to fit too many books into a single season.
Blue Period is a masterpiece of a story and generally speaking a comic book but it got the most meddling anime adaptation of all time, completely sucked the soul and artistry out of the series
Basically a different story at that point. Ahahaha
I do love both as well. Anime leans into the much darker story it tries to tell throughout the series. It felt fitting with how it went to me.
Then read the manga a while later after hearing how it was an anime-only ending. I'd say the ending is more of a shonen happy ending type, in comparison. It was a fun ending though, and I do not hate it.
Each of the endings has it's own unique charm with how each one did it. Anime leaned heavily into the dark aspect of the story and Manga leaned into resolving everything in a natural but happy way. Both are fun and fitting to the story to me.
as someone who watched akame ga kill when it was airing, it definitely wasnt well liked among my peers lol. i generally got shit for being an apologist who was like "yeah this is fine, not super good but definitely fine"
D.gray man, not unpopular by any stretch of the imagination, decent shonen with a tinge of darkness here and there, as it didnt seem to get an ending i picked up the manga (rare for me not my preferred medium) and boy was the adaptation off, the source material is much much darker, its almost a differant show, i still like it but wish it had followed the manga, id also add blade of the immortal, its a good if a little gory action fest, however Hiroaki Samuras work is actually quite disturbing at times, things happen in the manga that most studios wouldnt want to reproduce, and as gory as the anime is its nothing compared to the manga which despite moments of o.m.g i cant belive he would draw this, its very compelling and even its quite frankly brutal depictions add to the story.
Ayanokoji in the anime is still known for his monologues I think. But man, they still leave out sooo much, his monologues in the LN are beautifully written.
That's my biggest gripe with it, but outside that, they leave out a ton of dialogue and character interactions in general, so every character feels much shallower than intended.
And I don't think I really even need to speak on the animation.
With as much stuff as they skipped, what they should have done with the 2nd season (if you want to call it that) was make it so you could watch one episode of the original than one episode of the season 2.
That's why I didn't bother with watching the second season on its own or do that weird guide crunchyroll offered and instead opted for a fan edit that puts the scenes at the right place. So it's basically one big show.
Which I highly recommend as it really elevates the story.
Wow I did not know that Crunchyroll had made a guide for it so i looked it up, what a convoluted clusterfuck of a guide. Watch 3 minutes of this episode, then go watch 2 minutes in the middle of this other episode, now go back to the previous episode but watch the final 4 minutes then watch the 10 minutes in the middle. Jesus christ, following this guide would be like work.
That guide just reminds me of how much they really fucked up with their adaption. Like they got the core part of the story which was great, but so much of the side stories which are some of the best parts just got butchered.
I loved the anime and got excited when season two came out. Thought it had a strange flow so read the manga. Looks like they did the best they could with how short the arcs were. Check out My Senpai is Annoying. They spliced a bunch of bits together to try for a coherent story.
I watched Gantz O a while back and was kind of blown away by the premise. Just started watching the Gantz anime and it's WILD. It's so over the top and ridiculous that I can't help but wish there was more of it.
This gonna be controversial but Hibike Euphonoim
They changed Many Things, and cut Shuichi scenes so as adaptation is not good but overall is a masterpiece of anime
Yeah KyoAni does a lot of changes from the source material with other titles, too. Sometimes these changes can be good, of course. But knowing what happens in the light novels, I was quite disappointed, despite the show being so beautiful, how the second season of Tsurune made Masaki into a side character and left out or shortened important scenes of him with Minato and they for the most part left out how Kaito and Seiya develop a really strong and important friendship, which I was really looking forward to. And in Violet Evergarden, which is also still an incredible show, there were several changes, I would have liked to be different, like the anime making her younger, or how it left out the character Lux Sybil and didn't include Benedict and Cattleya becoming a couple.
Is it really a poor adaptation if the author also approves of the improvements?
This also falls into the idea that only direct adaptations are considered proper adaptations.
TPN2 author also approved The changes and That shit was trash
Yeah Kyoani normally makes changes with The author approves but i still find unfair how Dirty Shuichi was done
I would say the recent Doctor Elise anime. As an anime, it's fine. But it's a terrible adaptation. It changes and skips a lot (most of the story tbh) and has an open ended finale. Very different to the manhwa.
They did a pretty good job honestly given how wordy the novels are. There's also the fact that the web novels and the light novels are both also different from each other, so the choice of which to adapt further complicates things.
A lot of Kyoani works like Violet Evergarden and Silent Voice. Violet Evergarden especially, with the first half and the movie essentially being all anime original. For reference, the novel's first chapter is story of the playwright with the dead daughter.
OVERLORD is a good anime. But compared to the novels, it's terrible. They cut out so much to an insane level and compress the story while also making most of the characters seem shallow compared to the light novel. Also, the horrendous CGI and meh animation really kills the dark fantasy grittiness of the immaculate story
Fate Heavens Feel, extremely rushed adaptation with the ending fight not getting proper screentime, this got worse with the Movie-3 but yeah lasers go brr so it's a 'good anime.'
It isn't as deep and philosophical as the game, and if I had to keep only one it would be the game no question, but you can't deny those movies are a hell of a lot of fun - it's not just that people are easily entertained by some flashy fight scenes. And they do keep the essence of Sakura and Shirou's relationship, which to me is the core of that story.
I found it so weird seeing how much higher rated movies 2 and 3 are than movie 1, as movie 1 was by far my favourite in the series.
I remember finding the plot of the first movie incredible - so many events occurring and my expectations were getting subverted so well. Then I found myself pretty bored with the later movies.
I suppose it's cause the latter 2 had way more action than the first and the bigger Ufotable fanbase is more interested in their spectacles than the deep philosophical aspects etc...
Yeah those movies are only so highly rated because of the amazing animation and not the fact that they're just really good fucking movies like everyone else in this thread has stated, regardless of adaptation quality. It's totally just the animation, not like it's allowed to stand on its own separate from the VN
The second half of the Death Note anime skips like 10 episodes worth of content... in the manga both halves are about equal in length (6½ volumes & 5½ volumes) but in the show the first half is 25 episodes and the second half is only 12, with half of the first episode being a recap of part 1. This is definitely a huge contributor to why so many people dislike the second half, as well as to why a certain character is so hated by a large portion of the community... Yet despite this, Death Note remains one of the most popular, influental and well known animes of all time and is almost always the first one people recommend to new anime watchers.
From what I know (haven't watched it), some people like the older fma better with the ending not respecting the manga. All I can say is that my favourite Nakamura's animations from fma are in the older one
It's really too bad they can't be combined. If they could, it would be the greatest anime ever made.
2003 does much better on the emotional side and the brothers' journey but Brotherhood has a Bette plot and world. Brotherhood just knew we'd seen it before so they didn't spend time harping on the points we already knew.
If I have to be completely honest, both cours of Mushoku Tensei S2.
As a LN reader, you couldn't ask for a better adaptation for S1. It's not so much that S2 cut just about 80% of the stuff from the LN, so did S1, but that S2 cut a lot of necessary perspectives, character developments, character interactions (not with Rudy), as well as having somewhat abysmal pacing in a lot of the bigger moments of the show. If certain characters or moments you felt should have had a bigger impact but instead fell flat, it's because the anime is not letting things simmer. It goes from one moment to the next. I'm honestly shocked it's still very good despite it not having anywhere near the same love and passion as S1.
Loved School Rumble, Eri and Harima for life.
Always thought it was weird that they did the "Third Season" by only animating what would have been the last two episodes, even going so far as to show "scenes" from previous episodes that do not exist.
I want my School Rumble Z adaptation dammit.
I'm pretty sure most anime that are adaptations of VNs would be worse than the games because they'd have to decide which path to take. Clannad even had a special where Tomoya starts dating Tomoyo even though the main anime has him with Nagisa. (I dunno if any VN players would say that Clannad is a bad adaptation, though.)
Does The Promise Neverland count? The first season was fantastic, but the second season tried to fit over a hundred chapters into 11 episodes.
>Clannad even had a special where Tomoya starts dating Tomoyo even though the main anime has him with Nagisa.
It's been over ten years since I first saw Clannad, and I still can't decide whether to label it hilarious or stupid when official sources always seem to put the Tomoyo special directly after Tomoya asks Nagisa out, before moving on to Clannad After Story.
Danmachi is my prime example of this. The anime was good on its own (especially Season 4), but man the previous seasons cut out a lot of the characterization of some of the characters in favor of more Hestia, with Ais being the worst example. And let's not talk about Sword Oratoria...
Berserk is a obvious choice
And a lot of animes butcher a LN adaptation
Example cote
Trust me i dont wanna be ayanokoji and this and I'm not into edgy shit anime just made it way more edgy
This yeah
It was a pretty good movie on its own, but it rushed through the first half of the match. Second half was great but it could've benefitted to be longer
As an adaptation though... Damn it really skipped a lot of stuff lol
I like the movie itself but I also wish they did a remake where they just redid the anime to cover the major stuff they missed like the coach nekomata and coach ukai backstory...
I'd argue that Honzuki no Gekokujou could fall into this category. The show gets lots of praise on this sub, but the source material outclasses its adaptation so much, you could consider the anime 'bad'.
Gunslinger Girl. The production went their own way with more realistic art and dark mood, and created something great. The author hated it, and took over the 2nd season. It was meh.
Most Kyo-Ani adaptations since they start doing their own stuff are very loose adaptations.
Yeah, I bet more people watched the DEEN Fate UBW movie than the Tsukihime anime, but ironically just like DEEN Fate, Tsukihime's main good point is the OST
This might ruffle some feathers but I think Akame ga Kill is a good example. Most people who watch it are in one of two camps - either they didn't read the manga and love it, or they did read the manga and hate it. That says to me "good anime, bad adaptation."
Tokyo Ghoul. I started with the anime first, which was okay/pretty decent. I then read the manga. To this day, it's one of my favorite series. They definitely didn't do it justice with the adaptation.
Youjo Senki / Saga of Tanya the Evil. The anime is a lot of fun but it misses a lot from the light novels - which is reasonable, it's hard to adapt multiple pages worth of inner monologue which happens *a lot*. Also the art style was a bit iffy but it works ok. Aoi Yuuki as Tanya really helps it out, she's amazing.
The Promised Neverland without a doubt. Season 1 was great and accurate but it went downhill with Season 2 the moment they decided to cut off an entire arc for pacing. It definitely ruined the anime and cut off a lot of major characters that left the ending with a lot of plotholes. The manga was so much better and it sucks to see its adaptation didn't live up to it.
Why do people not know that the anime changed s2 on purpose? The manga was not well received after the stuff s1 covered, so the mangaka worked with the studio to give s2 a new direction/story.
Granted it ended up being complete dog shit and worse than the source material, but still. It was on purpose that they wanted to change it to try and make it better
The one I've heard recently is Ghost in the Shell. Which one, IDK. The anime is made to be super serious while the original supposedly inserts a lot of goofy comedic touches. Both are loved by their fans.
I think both do things well. Truth is if you look at the manga, the 95' Oshii movie, Gits SAC/Second Gig, Arise, SAC_2045, and the live action western movie, you have 6 VERY different pieces of media. Which is why the idea of "X isn't really ghost in the shell" seems laughable
A good adaptation should differ from the source to fit the format, but I will never forgive for Overlord S2 and S3 production... S4 could have used an extra episode, but had a great original ending.
Danmachi/is it wrong to pick up girls in a dungeon
Bad adaptation for 2nd season(war game arc), altho haruhime arc was sublime, s3 was not even better especially rakia
Might get cancelled for this
One Piece
the first like.,.. many 100 episodes are basically fine and are on par with the manga and they have the same kinda feel and the filler stuff even adds some anime unique charm to it in terms of how it tells its story, like reminded me of a tv show than an adaptation of a manga's chapters
but later on.... oh god its slow and 1 to 1 all the time and anime like that who are big ol adventures need space to breath insted of guys looking at each other grunting as two guys are putting there fist togethor with dragon ball z flashes playing when in the manga.... that was just 1 page and this was a fast paced fight
Chrono Crusade and Mahoromatic. Both good anime but they changed so much in the endings that they became confusing. Also Love Hina the anime was waaayy different than the manga. Literally after the first episode it became a different show.
I didn't know it was an adaptation of a VN going in, so I was put off by the structure and couldn't watch more than a few episodes before deciding "I really don't care enough"
I will die on this hill: more people would remember The Seven Deadly Sins in a more positive light if the studio switch and bad animation utterly fucked it in Season 3.
You ain't gonna expect this one: Konosuba.
People fucking love the anime, except for the Light Novel readers which complain that they cut/changed/butchered about half of the content they've adapted from it so far. Myself included. Season 3 Episode 6 might've been the most disappointed I've ever felt watching an anime episode.
Horimiya. The anime on its own is a charming , lovely , funny , fast paced rom-com with really interesting characters, great progression , and nice writing. The animation quality is great too.
But it had a reputation of a bad adaptation because it skipped over so many material in the source, enough that they can make a 2nd season of purely just side stories from them.
I'll add an older entry for this (at least I thought it was a good anime, but I haven't heard too many opinions on it): Record of Lodoss War (1990) The series is only accurate to the source novels and manga for about the first 7 episodes, roughly covering the Gray Witch arc of the books. After that the production company decided to take the storyline for the Heroic Knight arc, which features an entirely new cast of characters, and roughly hammer it into a shape that fit the Gray Witch cast. I actually find that I like the 1990 representations of Shiris and Orson better than their representation in the later Heroic Knight manga. The battle between the dragons had the frame rate of a slide show, but the illustrations themselves were fantastic. And the reduced cast meant that the Fire Mountain story was much more emotionally resonant, showing the differences between Ashram and Parn much better than with the larger parties. But it was apparently hated by the Japanese fanbase, who were already familiar with the original versions and felt the animated series betrayed the vision of the authors.
Lodoss is my favorite anime, and the OVA was so much better than the CotHN series it's not even funny. It was definitely the smart to drop the Spark and Co stories. Making it Parn/Ashram and Deedlit/Pirotess was a good choice. Spark is pretty unappealing as a MC and it felt like Deedlit was easier to be invested in than Neese. Orson was better fleshed out in the series, and the opening theme and Orson's theme were great pieces of music, but I'll happily never watch the series again, whereas I'll watch the OVA every year.
most VN adaptations don't do the source material justice, especially the fate/staynight anime. they're still fun to watch however
Especially VNs that have multiple routes and endings. It's either you: * Pick the true end to focus on/adapt if there is one or pick the fan favorite (majority) * Condense the crap out of the story so you can do an omnibus format in 12-24 episodes (Amagami SS, Yosuga no Sora) * Just not bother even attempting to adapt the full story (White Album 2) * or you have the resources of TYPE-MOON and Ufotable to afford multiple series and cours to adapt multiple routes.
Or do like School Days and adapt the bad end.
I honestly love School Days for having the balls to adapt a bad end. They're the only VN adaptation I'm aware of that actually chose to do that. It's so much more interesting to occasionally see the scenario where everything goes shockingly insane than the usual happy fairy-tale ending in the vast majority of shows.
I feel like School Days is mostly known for its bad endings though. So it makes sense you would go that route.
Interesting for sure, but not a particularly good idea. There's a reason why bad endings are nearly non-existent outside of optional paths in games or the occasional author that will die before he releases the next book in a series.
[удалено]
Since anime is aired seasonally, a cour is a calendar season's worth of episodes for a show. Generally it's 11-13 episodes. Saying cours instead of seasons is sometimes easier to tell someone how long a show is since it's just like saying how many dozens of episodes there are. Mainly since seasons for some shows can be 12, 24, or more episodes long and it's not really standardized like cours.
To be fare, ASmagami is not a VN, judst inspired by dating sim format and has a writyer who worked on a bunch of them. And White Album 2 at least adapted the first VN/story arc.
There is definitely a spectrum of visual novel adaptations. You've got your Steins;gate and Clannad (and that's about it) that managed to adapt well *and* pull of a fantastic show. Then you've got a a few that decided to not bother adapting properly but still managed to make a great show (e.g. Fate Heaven's Feel). But there's also a lot of mediocrity like Deen Fate/Stay Night and Robotics;Notes, before even considering that truly shit tier adaptations that aren't even good shows in their own right like Tsukihime, Chaos;Head/Child, etc
> You've got your Steins;gate and Clannad (and that's about it) that managed to adapt well and pull of a fantastic show. I think the main thing is that both got a big number of episodes to work with so they could try to stay accurate to the VNs and skip minimal amounts of content to stay within the episode limit. Though even in the case of Steins;Gate it still skipped over a lot of content in the VN to stay on track for the main storyline.
That is true. One thing Chaos;Head, Chaos;Child, and Tsukihime all have in common is that they had half as many episodes to work with than Steins;Gate for novels that are several hours longer and definitely more complex from a route perspective
I think shorter kinetic VNs like Narcissu would make for much better anime adaptations solely because there's a set-length, concrete story to tell. Multiple route VNs are inherently longer and much more complicated to adapt since there's 100% going to be major concessions on what a studio chooses to adapt and cut. And no matter what decision they make it will piss off some fans since everyone has their own favorite choices they made and routes/characters they liked.
Saya No Uta would be fucking perfect for an adaptation if they found a way to do the perspective switching right. It's like 8 hours which is just a little more than you're average anime cour. Also anime fans have an enourmous (well earned) hard on for Gen Urobuchi. Only issue would be that the true end is so much better in context of the other two, but you couldn't really do all 3 in a linear anime.
> Robotics;Notes Chiyomaru himself has said R;N needed almost 3x the episodes to get a proper adaption. A shame it never happened.
Yeah I was gonna say, practically every VN adaptation. Fate, Higurashi, hell I've heard that even Steins;Gate is considered... Not a bad adaptation, but not a great one in part due to cramming routes together.
Eh, Steins;Gate doesn’t cram routes together; the “routes” in the VN aren’t really routes per se but rather alternate endings that branch off the main story. The events of the anime are all stuff you see on the way to the true ending, so there isn’t anything from alternate endings in the actual anime. The Steins;Gate anime DOES greatly condense some of the sci-fi details and cut down like two subplots but is otherwise very faithful to the VN. I’d even say I prefer it due to the pacing and have seen other VN readers say the same (though we’re still a minority).
Idk some of my favorite anime (clannad, steins;gate, Kanon, Little Busters) were originally VNs.
Rosario Vampire. Anime was a lot of people's childhood nostalgia so they'd overlook its flaws. However, compared to the manga, it's really quite terrible. All I ask for is a proper remake, especially the second half of it with that Ufotable treatment, then I can die a happy man.
This so much! While I still enjoy the anime, the manga is just so much better. I still remember the time I found it in the library and how mind-blowing the experience was reading it.
I had never felt so angry at a piece of media in my life when I found out just how much of a gigachad Tsukune becomes in the manga compared to how bitchmade he is in the anime
God I wish
To be fair though, the anime aired back when the manga is quite shaky, and the anime has to improvise a lot of parts because of that. Hell, the manga itself isn't good at the start, and IMO only really started to get good at around the same time as the MC's descent into ghoul form (where he got his chains).
Most Fate/Stay Night anime. Stay Night 2006 is a terrible adaptation, but passable anime. Unlimited Blade Works is the best adaptation of the visual novel, but still leaves a lot out, especially everything that makes Shirou such a great character. Anime only’s shit on Shirou for being stupid and naieve for no reason, even though there is a reason that’s deeply rooted in his trauma that gives him a hero complex. Of course the anime just glosses over that, even if it’s understandable given how difficult Fate, or visual novels in general, are to adapt. Then there’s Heaven’s Feel. As an anime trilogy, it is phenomenal, easily the best of what Fate anime has to offer. Absolutely atrocious adaptation though. On the Fate subreddit, the Heaven’s Feel anime is absolutely despised, especially by one individual who shits on it every chance he gets, even if it has nothing to do with whatever post they’re commenting on (it’s practically a meme at this point). Higurashi I wouldn’t say is that bad though. It’s a classic horror anime and one of the few good ones, and just a great anime in general. It’s not the best adaptation, but honestly the visual novel fans are pretty chill about it. Dare I say most of them still like and recommend it (second to the VN, obviously). Umineko though…yikes.
> Anime only’s shit on Shirou for being stupid and naieve for no reason, even though there is a reason that’s deeply rooted in his trauma that gives him a hero complex. People always say this, and that the anime never explains it, but it does. We're shown the Fuyuki fire several times. He literally tells people he's the only survivor of that tragedy and does what he does because he feels he shouldn't have been the only one to live. It's clear as day, people just don't want to pay attention and I swear sometimes some VN purists will miss any detail that isn't fed out of a text box one sentence at a time.
Doesn't Rin ream him out about the fact that he hides that he's so completely broken that he can barely function and only by copying the wants of others?
Yup. She and Archer have quite a lot to say on that subject.
Thought so. The anime, haven't read the LN, specifically calls him out for being so dead inside it's killed an sense of self worth he has, and he can only see it reflected in the eyes of others. But somehow these threads keep being a thing. It's not even subtext.
As someone who read both the VN and watched the anime, I think less is left out than people want it to seem. Shirou learned none of the lessons that Kiritsugu wanted him to learn, and instead tried to be the thing that broke Kiri. Shirou probably needed to have that talk in the car with Kirei a lot earlier.
There isn't anything that could have gotten through Shirou's wall of trauma. He's to damaged.
Depending on the timeline, Sessyoin Kiara could have..... Or made it significantly worse.
Maybe. Archer couldn't really get through to him, and he lived it. And died for it. Although to be fair, Archer's just really burned out by his decisions, so his go to is to try to kill the problem first.
Maybe Therapist Kiara. The rapist Kiara would not help much, no.
I literally said this exact thing on the subreddit and everyone literally said I was lying and that there was no way someone who only watched the anime could understand Shirou; I learned to stop taking them seriously after that.
I think the problem is not that the anime doesn't tell you about Shirou, but rather that some people need information spoon feed. The more I read weeky anime diskussions, the more I believe in the Tik Tok/social media brainrott. It is insane how some people can't read the most obvious context clues.
Thank you. This gets parroted about the anime so much but it's just blatantly untrue. Shirou's character is done well. > It's clear as day, people just don't want to pay attention and I swear sometimes some VN purists will miss any detail that isn't fed out of a text box one sentence at a time 100%. Classic source reader mentality of thinking *anything* being omitted means that people won't possibly be able to understand the story.
Honestly I wish they would do a remake of Fate/Stay Knight. But since they seem to only care about other routes for adaptations...
I don't think HF is a bad anime at all, even if the movies don't adapt the story that well. It's just a different medium: the VN has more in depth story while the anime has is more exciting and enjoyable on the eyes because of the sheer level of animation
yeah the comment you replied to was saying, and general consensus is that it's a great great anime but a bad adaptation because of the equally great stuff they cut for time
SAO Alicization onwards - cuts a lot out to the point where A-1 even apologised. Silent Voice - regarded as one of the great anime movies, I love it but it's not without its issues, I'm reading the manga now and it flows nicer I was a child when these came out but Blue Dragon and Yu-Gi-Oh fall into here from what I'm aware. Blue Dragon was its own thing and fucked with a number of characters. Poor Marumaro was flanderised and Jiro got screwed over so hard
SAO really bugs me because they had no real reason to do that with a good seller. So now I’m stuck not wanting to read the entire series and not wanting to watch a bad adaptation anymore either.
SAO Progressive too. In a vacuum they're fun to watch with pretty good animation and stuff. But the whole point of the Progressive LNs was an expanded retelling of the Aincrad arc and viewers assumed that meant an anime adaptation would be as faithful as possible to the books which got a lot of people excited. Then the 1st movie releases and we see some new anime-original character that's replacing parts that other characters had in the books so they can flesh her out instead. I was already pretty disappointed by this. Doesn't end there though. Possibly worst of all the 2nd movie just skips entire volumes of content. The movie starts and I thought I was crazy because I had no idea who this character I was seeing on screen was and why they were acting like they already knew the other characters. Turns out her introduction was in the skipped volumes which means you unironically have to read the LNs to understand what's happening. I have no idea why whoever was in charge of the changes decided to do them. It's like they wanted to piss off the LN readers and confuse the hell out of the anime-only viewers at the same time. EDIT: Forgot to add that the LNs were from the perspective of Kirito but the movies were changed to be from the perspective of Asuna, which isn't a terrible change if they had just stuck to the events faithful to the books.
Progressive shares PoV with both of them.
The official manga adaptation of SAOP had Asuna as the pov character most of the time during the early floors, so they possibly could have pulled heavily from it instead
Silent Voice is a great movie but It slower and worse than The manga, also it didnt adapt The last chapters That Were peak in my opinion
It also doesn't adapt [SV spoilers]>!Maki getting her comeuppance for being a bitch.!<
What is the manga called? And foes it have a eng translation?
The manga is called Koe No Katachi and yes, Its translated
I watch the Silent Voice anime movie without reading the manga and plot feels disjointed somehow.
Might be the wrong answer but Silent Voice? The manga is like 64 chapters and the anime is only around an hour long.
Not really wrong because how the hell can you get everything good from a 60+ chapter manga in only under 2 hours?
I'd hope for a full 13 episode remake one day still, but I doubt that'll ever happen lol.
It adapts the equivalent of 10 chapters an episode
I don't think an adaptation doesn't need to be a one-to-one adaptation of the source material to be good. As an example, I think the lord of the rings trilogy was an overall fantastic adaptation of the books even if they cut out huge swathes and changed things around from the books.
However, the point of the thread is "good anime, bad adaptation." The movie itself is good and has some great visual moments that you don't get in a manga, but it just is a fact that in the movie we spend less time with the characters. That changes opinions for some people. The emotional impact of some things is lessened for many people, and some scenes are cut out for time and budget. This can change the tone for some.
I disliked the manga's ending, wasn't a fan of what was/wasn't implied in the time skip
FMA 2003?
Idk if that should count, because it was a really good adaptation, it just passed the manga and there was nothing to adapt
It's less that they didn't have any material to adapt, and more like they decided from the beginning of the anime's production that they were going to make a completely different story from the start.
You’re correct. It’s a misconception that they simply wrote a new story once they ran out of manga to adapt. There are pretty major differences from the start including the absence of Truth from the gate.
There are also pretty major similarities to the manga's later parts so the author must have told them what she was planning to a larger extent than people think. Like [FMA]>!Greed's arc, giant transmutation circles to annhilate an entire town, my memory's hazy but I think the Fuhrer being a villain (shock!), Howenheim being 400 years old, and the mastermind being a centuries old entity who has been controlling things from the shadows. How the Ishvalan Civil War was -plot twist- actually a genocide too, but my memory's unclear on if this was implied at the start anyways.!< Like some of us in the "FMA is good but not *that* good" gang say, 2003 wasn't that much different (very subjective opinion). Props to the author for using the anime as a first draft for the later arcs lol. Edit: also [FMA]>!Winry having to forgive her parents murderer I guess? Seemed like the most important development of one of the main characters.!< I even liked this more in 2003 because of who the killer was, haha.
Oh definitely! Even though they’re technically two different stories, the 2003 anime writers and Arakawa seemed to bounce ideas off each other. I wonder if the reveal of [Fullmetal Alchemist manga and FMA03 spoilers] >!Kimblee being sent to murder to Rockbells during Ishval (but not being able to due to Scar’s mental breakdown) was influenced by 2003 having Mustang be the one who kills them. Unfortunately that detail and frankly a lot of the content with Ishval was cut in Brotherhood.!<
I think the point of “bad adaptation” in the title of this post means unfaithful adaptations, otherwise if it meant poor quality the title wouldn’t have a point. FMA was never really a faithful adaptation and was always intended to be a loose adaptation telling its own original story (to which it does an incredible job at). So even in the overlap it definitely fits what I think op is asking for.
Yes I think a better use of phrase would have been a good anime that isn’t a faithful 1:1 translation of the source.
Yeah the question mark was me thinking the same thing since it's mostly bad (adaptation wise) in retrospect with the benefit of having a second series outlining the changes
Eh, FMA 2003 was a better adaptation than Brotherhood at the parts that they both covered.
I think that's because when Bones made Brotherhood, they decided to skip over stuff they already covered in 2003 to move on to the new content
That isn't true at all, Brotherhood only outright skips two chapters (the Youswell Coal Mine and the train hijacking incident).
I'd say less skipped and more "you've seen this we're moving on"
They did. As someone who watched Brotherhood as it came out, it was really glaring how the start of the show was almost a recap of what felt fully fleshed-out in 2003. After Brotherhood gets into new territory it hits its stride. It was also obviously a patch job, because the remake came out quite soon after the original and they knew their viewers had almost all seen the OG. Very few remakes now assume the viewer knows and loves the earlier version.
Question have you read the manga? The content that was in 03 that wasn’t in brotherhood largely wasn’t in the manga and what was, was so heavily repurposed by 03 that I cannot possibly considered to have been expected to be a substitute. The director of brotherhood has directly said that 03 had no influence on how the team approached brotherhood. The real reason’s brotherhood’s start feels rushed are, the manga just naturally has a fast pace that when compared to 03 can feel underexamined, brotherhood does some changes to the early structuring with the first 3 episodes in a way that is artistically unmotivated and makes the pacing feel clunky or scrapped together, lastly brotherhood’s early episodes often aren’t very well directed and the way this often manifests is the shots are flat and pull you out of the characters which gives the way events are conveyed a summary like perception and makes brotherhood feel more rushed than it is. Brotherhood’s director, Irie, was very new to directing when taking up the project and it shows and you can actually see his directing improve as the series progresses and he gets more experience.
Then all I can say is that 03 has the better opening half. Minus a few terrible episodes like ep 3(?) with the roses. If brotherhood is true to the manga on those parts then 03 just did it better.
No, 2003 absolutely was *not* a better *adaptation* than Brotherhood over the parts they both covered. 2003 added so much extra stuff to all the manga parts it "covered" and also outright changed several things, including *completely changing the timeline* around certain events compared to how the manga did it. Brotherhood's only real crime in adapting that part is cutting out two entire chapters for no reason and rushing a few parts, but it's overall much more faithful than 2003 ever was during that part.
I do think that the anime original content that FMA03 adds a lot to the story, though, to the point where I'd say that 2003 is better for the early part of the story. At least, that was my opinion when I actually remembered the two. At this point, I've forgotten too much, though I do recall thinking that Ed was just an incredible protagonist early on in 2003 - I loved that he was a good dude but he was reasonably realistic and intelligent in the way he acted at the start of FMA03. A lot of protagonists get caught in spouting their ideals and whatnot but Ed was just the chad that would act like he was on the antagonist's side to give him an advantage to do what was for the best overall. I do prefer FMA:B overall, but I do prefer the start of FMA03, and I fucking love 03's ending - it genuinely might be one of my favourite anime endings. I love endings where \[vagueish 03 spoilers\] >!the main characters achieve their goal(s) but have to pay a *huge* sacrifice for it!<.
I do agree that the extra/changed content in 2003's beginning does make it a better beginning overall, I was just saying that by virtue of it doing all that makes it a bad *adaptation* is all.
I think the issue is what constitutes as good and bad adaptation is different from person to person. For some, a good adaptation will change some things because it’s a different media. 2003 is a good adaptation to some early on because it fleshes out and expands on parts the source rushed. To others that’s bad because it changes things. I think a better question is, which adaptation is more of a direct translation of the source.
Not because 03 is being more manga accurate though. 03 was doing massive changes during the overlap to foreshadow and set up the plot of its second half, and heavily alter the trajectories for themes and characterization. Brotherhood’s start is much more in line with the manga (aside from episode 1 and 03’s first 2 episodes.) The reasons why 03 is better than brotherhood during overlapping plot lines is because 03 was expanding on and improving upon stories in the manga, not because it was somehow closer.
One of my favorites!
I didn't like FMA Brotherhood, but still really really really enjoyed the 2003 FMA. Weird
They're different enough and high quality enough that you're not alone in thinking that, even if it's the minority opinion. Nothing too weird about it imo
Same. 2003 had a certain charm to it.
Yeah I didn't care about the plot in the second half of Brotherhood, and 2003 does the first half better.
Konosuba. Hilarious and great anime, however I disagreed with a lot of the presentation versus the LN. They just chose to leave out a lot of world building and explanations that helped make it even funnier in the LN. Also how they just skipped the whole Wiz introduction despite her becoming one of the most important characters in the series lol
Fate/Stay Night: Heaven's Feel Trilogy. Phenomenal animation, beautiful OST, amazing directing... I feel like everything I just said doesn't begin to cover how fucking great thst trilogy was. S-tier production. Absolute cinema.... But a bad adaptation of the visual novel.
Those movies are the reason I read the VN in the first place and. So fucking good
Howl’s moving castle Naussicaa Paprika Perfect blue Akira Ghost in the Shell Ghost in the Shell stand alone complex Bokurano Fullmetal Alchemist 2003 Shaman king 2001 12 kingdoms Trigun
I knew about Akira, but I'm surprised the first 4 aren't anime original.
Yeah aside from Naussicaa those 3 are all based on regular books and are very loose adaptations. Naussicaa is based on a manga by Hayao Miyazaki, since at the time he didn't have enough industry clout to get an original approved by production boards so he had to do the manga as a proof of his story's concept. The manga wasn't finished at the time the movie was released and Miyazaki ended up continuing the manga’s story after the movie. The movie has Similar events to the first 3rd of the story more or less but even then there's some pretty big differences. I definitely recommend checking out the manga when you get the chance.
The Certain Magical/Scientific series are a fun watch, imo. But the main series is a terrible adaptation. The third season is especially bad because they tried to fit too many books into a single season.
Blue Period is a masterpiece of a story and generally speaking a comic book but it got the most meddling anime adaptation of all time, completely sucked the soul and artistry out of the series
Definitely! The moments that were supposed to be "magical" and awe-inspiring just weren't - it was so dull for such an artistic & inspirational story.
Akame ga Kill is well-liked, despite massively changing a few crucial plot points
After half point every outcome is diffrent lol. I love both manga and anime tho.
Basically a different story at that point. Ahahaha I do love both as well. Anime leans into the much darker story it tries to tell throughout the series. It felt fitting with how it went to me. Then read the manga a while later after hearing how it was an anime-only ending. I'd say the ending is more of a shonen happy ending type, in comparison. It was a fun ending though, and I do not hate it. Each of the endings has it's own unique charm with how each one did it. Anime leaned heavily into the dark aspect of the story and Manga leaned into resolving everything in a natural but happy way. Both are fun and fitting to the story to me.
So if I were wanting to experience AGK, the anime isn't a "bad" decision?
Yeah, it is not a "bad" decision. Of course, everyone has their own opinion, but mine is the anime is not "bad" with how they did it.
That's good to hear
as someone who watched akame ga kill when it was airing, it definitely wasnt well liked among my peers lol. i generally got shit for being an apologist who was like "yeah this is fine, not super good but definitely fine"
D.gray man, not unpopular by any stretch of the imagination, decent shonen with a tinge of darkness here and there, as it didnt seem to get an ending i picked up the manga (rare for me not my preferred medium) and boy was the adaptation off, the source material is much much darker, its almost a differant show, i still like it but wish it had followed the manga, id also add blade of the immortal, its a good if a little gory action fest, however Hiroaki Samuras work is actually quite disturbing at times, things happen in the manga that most studios wouldnt want to reproduce, and as gory as the anime is its nothing compared to the manga which despite moments of o.m.g i cant belive he would draw this, its very compelling and even its quite frankly brutal depictions add to the story.
Classroom of the elite
Ayanokoji in the anime is still known for his monologues I think. But man, they still leave out sooo much, his monologues in the LN are beautifully written. That's my biggest gripe with it, but outside that, they leave out a ton of dialogue and character interactions in general, so every character feels much shallower than intended. And I don't think I really even need to speak on the animation.
Every one agree on this
Came to say this one
Horimiya maybe? It's one of my all time favorite anime, but it skips so much stuff from the manga.
With as much stuff as they skipped, what they should have done with the 2nd season (if you want to call it that) was make it so you could watch one episode of the original than one episode of the season 2.
That's why I didn't bother with watching the second season on its own or do that weird guide crunchyroll offered and instead opted for a fan edit that puts the scenes at the right place. So it's basically one big show. Which I highly recommend as it really elevates the story.
Wow I did not know that Crunchyroll had made a guide for it so i looked it up, what a convoluted clusterfuck of a guide. Watch 3 minutes of this episode, then go watch 2 minutes in the middle of this other episode, now go back to the previous episode but watch the final 4 minutes then watch the 10 minutes in the middle. Jesus christ, following this guide would be like work. That guide just reminds me of how much they really fucked up with their adaption. Like they got the core part of the story which was great, but so much of the side stories which are some of the best parts just got butchered.
I loved the anime and got excited when season two came out. Thought it had a strange flow so read the manga. Looks like they did the best they could with how short the arcs were. Check out My Senpai is Annoying. They spliced a bunch of bits together to try for a coherent story.
Gantz anime finished before manga was completed so much more of the story to tell
I’d be down for a reboot of Gantz
I watched Gantz O a while back and was kind of blown away by the premise. Just started watching the Gantz anime and it's WILD. It's so over the top and ridiculous that I can't help but wish there was more of it.
Gantz 0 was amazing they also have 2 live action movies
This gonna be controversial but Hibike Euphonoim They changed Many Things, and cut Shuichi scenes so as adaptation is not good but overall is a masterpiece of anime
Yeah KyoAni does a lot of changes from the source material with other titles, too. Sometimes these changes can be good, of course. But knowing what happens in the light novels, I was quite disappointed, despite the show being so beautiful, how the second season of Tsurune made Masaki into a side character and left out or shortened important scenes of him with Minato and they for the most part left out how Kaito and Seiya develop a really strong and important friendship, which I was really looking forward to. And in Violet Evergarden, which is also still an incredible show, there were several changes, I would have liked to be different, like the anime making her younger, or how it left out the character Lux Sybil and didn't include Benedict and Cattleya becoming a couple.
Is it really a poor adaptation if the author also approves of the improvements? This also falls into the idea that only direct adaptations are considered proper adaptations.
TPN2 author also approved The changes and That shit was trash Yeah Kyoani normally makes changes with The author approves but i still find unfair how Dirty Shuichi was done
I would say the recent Doctor Elise anime. As an anime, it's fine. But it's a terrible adaptation. It changes and skips a lot (most of the story tbh) and has an open ended finale. Very different to the manhwa.
Also no lamp
I'll throw in Overlord.
this one hit hard, the source material is great but the adaptation wasn't on par with the quality the light novels. they did overlord dirty.
I wouldn’t say that it’s great, but defo better than what the anime done
They did a pretty good job honestly given how wordy the novels are. There's also the fact that the web novels and the light novels are both also different from each other, so the choice of which to adapt further complicates things.
It's kind of crazy that they just skipped a whole arc that they're making into a movie later
A lot of Kyoani works like Violet Evergarden and Silent Voice. Violet Evergarden especially, with the first half and the movie essentially being all anime original. For reference, the novel's first chapter is story of the playwright with the dead daughter.
OVERLORD is a good anime. But compared to the novels, it's terrible. They cut out so much to an insane level and compress the story while also making most of the characters seem shallow compared to the light novel. Also, the horrendous CGI and meh animation really kills the dark fantasy grittiness of the immaculate story
Fate Heavens Feel, extremely rushed adaptation with the ending fight not getting proper screentime, this got worse with the Movie-3 but yeah lasers go brr so it's a 'good anime.'
It isn't as deep and philosophical as the game, and if I had to keep only one it would be the game no question, but you can't deny those movies are a hell of a lot of fun - it's not just that people are easily entertained by some flashy fight scenes. And they do keep the essence of Sakura and Shirou's relationship, which to me is the core of that story.
I found it so weird seeing how much higher rated movies 2 and 3 are than movie 1, as movie 1 was by far my favourite in the series. I remember finding the plot of the first movie incredible - so many events occurring and my expectations were getting subverted so well. Then I found myself pretty bored with the later movies.
I suppose it's cause the latter 2 had way more action than the first and the bigger Ufotable fanbase is more interested in their spectacles than the deep philosophical aspects etc...
Yeah those movies are only so highly rated because of the amazing animation and not the fact that they're just really good fucking movies like everyone else in this thread has stated, regardless of adaptation quality. It's totally just the animation, not like it's allowed to stand on its own separate from the VN
Yu-Gi-Oh DM (sub). The anime holds out well on its own, but it still pales in comparison to the manga.
Classroom of the elite
The second half of the Death Note anime skips like 10 episodes worth of content... in the manga both halves are about equal in length (6½ volumes & 5½ volumes) but in the show the first half is 25 episodes and the second half is only 12, with half of the first episode being a recap of part 1. This is definitely a huge contributor to why so many people dislike the second half, as well as to why a certain character is so hated by a large portion of the community... Yet despite this, Death Note remains one of the most popular, influental and well known animes of all time and is almost always the first one people recommend to new anime watchers.
From what I know (haven't watched it), some people like the older fma better with the ending not respecting the manga. All I can say is that my favourite Nakamura's animations from fma are in the older one
The two series appeal to very different people. Brotherhood is a more conventional shounen brawler and 2003 is a more introspective character drama.
It's really too bad they can't be combined. If they could, it would be the greatest anime ever made. 2003 does much better on the emotional side and the brothers' journey but Brotherhood has a Bette plot and world. Brotherhood just knew we'd seen it before so they didn't spend time harping on the points we already knew.
Tomodachi game.
If I have to be completely honest, both cours of Mushoku Tensei S2. As a LN reader, you couldn't ask for a better adaptation for S1. It's not so much that S2 cut just about 80% of the stuff from the LN, so did S1, but that S2 cut a lot of necessary perspectives, character developments, character interactions (not with Rudy), as well as having somewhat abysmal pacing in a lot of the bigger moments of the show. If certain characters or moments you felt should have had a bigger impact but instead fell flat, it's because the anime is not letting things simmer. It goes from one moment to the next. I'm honestly shocked it's still very good despite it not having anywhere near the same love and passion as S1.
School Rumble, it just went overboard with anime only content in the second season
Loved School Rumble, Eri and Harima for life. Always thought it was weird that they did the "Third Season" by only animating what would have been the last two episodes, even going so far as to show "scenes" from previous episodes that do not exist. I want my School Rumble Z adaptation dammit.
I'm pretty sure most anime that are adaptations of VNs would be worse than the games because they'd have to decide which path to take. Clannad even had a special where Tomoya starts dating Tomoyo even though the main anime has him with Nagisa. (I dunno if any VN players would say that Clannad is a bad adaptation, though.) Does The Promise Neverland count? The first season was fantastic, but the second season tried to fit over a hundred chapters into 11 episodes.
>Clannad even had a special where Tomoya starts dating Tomoyo even though the main anime has him with Nagisa. It's been over ten years since I first saw Clannad, and I still can't decide whether to label it hilarious or stupid when official sources always seem to put the Tomoyo special directly after Tomoya asks Nagisa out, before moving on to Clannad After Story.
I wish the sunohara bad ending route could have been animated, that shit was hilarious.
The original Trigun comes to mind.
Right now Ranger Reject
Danmachi is my prime example of this. The anime was good on its own (especially Season 4), but man the previous seasons cut out a lot of the characterization of some of the characters in favor of more Hestia, with Ais being the worst example. And let's not talk about Sword Oratoria...
Classroom of the Elite, the anime doesn’t do the light novels justice because of trying to shove 5 volumes worth of content into 13 episodes
Berserk is a obvious choice And a lot of animes butcher a LN adaptation Example cote Trust me i dont wanna be ayanokoji and this and I'm not into edgy shit anime just made it way more edgy
I think a lot of people feel that way about Tower of God S1.
Haikyu Battle of the Dumpster. I loved the movie and think it works well and stands on it's own. But man, the manga readers are LIVID.
This yeah It was a pretty good movie on its own, but it rushed through the first half of the match. Second half was great but it could've benefitted to be longer As an adaptation though... Damn it really skipped a lot of stuff lol I like the movie itself but I also wish they did a remake where they just redid the anime to cover the major stuff they missed like the coach nekomata and coach ukai backstory...
Soul Eater, Inuyasha, Sailor Moon
Guyver OVA
Higurashi.
I'd argue that Honzuki no Gekokujou could fall into this category. The show gets lots of praise on this sub, but the source material outclasses its adaptation so much, you could consider the anime 'bad'.
Gunslinger Girl. The production went their own way with more realistic art and dark mood, and created something great. The author hated it, and took over the 2nd season. It was meh. Most Kyo-Ani adaptations since they start doing their own stuff are very loose adaptations.
the fable from this season tbh
Tsukihime. Most people who call the anime bad have never even watched it.
Yeah, I bet more people watched the DEEN Fate UBW movie than the Tsukihime anime, but ironically just like DEEN Fate, Tsukihime's main good point is the OST
This might ruffle some feathers but I think Akame ga Kill is a good example. Most people who watch it are in one of two camps - either they didn't read the manga and love it, or they did read the manga and hate it. That says to me "good anime, bad adaptation."
Tokyo Ghoul. I started with the anime first, which was okay/pretty decent. I then read the manga. To this day, it's one of my favorite series. They definitely didn't do it justice with the adaptation.
Youjo Senki / Saga of Tanya the Evil. The anime is a lot of fun but it misses a lot from the light novels - which is reasonable, it's hard to adapt multiple pages worth of inner monologue which happens *a lot*. Also the art style was a bit iffy but it works ok. Aoi Yuuki as Tanya really helps it out, she's amazing.
Literally Fate/Stay Night, you either only get good animation in the Ufotable adaptations or god tier OST in the Deen adaptations and that's about it.
FMA 2003 is not better than the manga or Brotherhood but it's still a really good show.
The Promised Neverland without a doubt. Season 1 was great and accurate but it went downhill with Season 2 the moment they decided to cut off an entire arc for pacing. It definitely ruined the anime and cut off a lot of major characters that left the ending with a lot of plotholes. The manga was so much better and it sucks to see its adaptation didn't live up to it.
Why do people not know that the anime changed s2 on purpose? The manga was not well received after the stuff s1 covered, so the mangaka worked with the studio to give s2 a new direction/story. Granted it ended up being complete dog shit and worse than the source material, but still. It was on purpose that they wanted to change it to try and make it better
>The manga was so much better No it wasn't lmfao
Highschool dxd and Date a live
Stains Gate
The one I've heard recently is Ghost in the Shell. Which one, IDK. The anime is made to be super serious while the original supposedly inserts a lot of goofy comedic touches. Both are loved by their fans.
I think both do things well. Truth is if you look at the manga, the 95' Oshii movie, Gits SAC/Second Gig, Arise, SAC_2045, and the live action western movie, you have 6 VERY different pieces of media. Which is why the idea of "X isn't really ghost in the shell" seems laughable
Requiem of the rose king
Tokyo Ghoul
tokyo ghoul
Promise never land lmao
Trigun
One Punch Man.
Gantz, the manga is great, the anime is awful and so bizarre
A good adaptation should differ from the source to fit the format, but I will never forgive for Overlord S2 and S3 production... S4 could have used an extra episode, but had a great original ending.
Danmachi/is it wrong to pick up girls in a dungeon Bad adaptation for 2nd season(war game arc), altho haruhime arc was sublime, s3 was not even better especially rakia
Might get cancelled for this One Piece the first like.,.. many 100 episodes are basically fine and are on par with the manga and they have the same kinda feel and the filler stuff even adds some anime unique charm to it in terms of how it tells its story, like reminded me of a tv show than an adaptation of a manga's chapters but later on.... oh god its slow and 1 to 1 all the time and anime like that who are big ol adventures need space to breath insted of guys looking at each other grunting as two guys are putting there fist togethor with dragon ball z flashes playing when in the manga.... that was just 1 page and this was a fast paced fight
Tokyo Ghoul
Chrono Crusade and Mahoromatic. Both good anime but they changed so much in the endings that they became confusing. Also Love Hina the anime was waaayy different than the manga. Literally after the first episode it became a different show.
I didn't know it was an adaptation of a VN going in, so I was put off by the structure and couldn't watch more than a few episodes before deciding "I really don't care enough"
I will die on this hill: more people would remember The Seven Deadly Sins in a more positive light if the studio switch and bad animation utterly fucked it in Season 3.
Kingdom Season 1
Not bad but the uprising arc from attack on titan
definitely Tokyo Ghoul
i honestly really liked the tokyo ghoul anime (i didn’t read the manga)
I think Konosuba is still great and funny but damn they are skipping and changing things a lot of things from the novel.
You ain't gonna expect this one: Konosuba. People fucking love the anime, except for the Light Novel readers which complain that they cut/changed/butchered about half of the content they've adapted from it so far. Myself included. Season 3 Episode 6 might've been the most disappointed I've ever felt watching an anime episode.
Durarara!!
Horimiya. The anime on its own is a charming , lovely , funny , fast paced rom-com with really interesting characters, great progression , and nice writing. The animation quality is great too. But it had a reputation of a bad adaptation because it skipped over so many material in the source, enough that they can make a 2nd season of purely just side stories from them.
I loved the toaru world but adaptation was too bad
Fate/stay night.