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Forum - View topicWhat's So Bad About a Little Change?— A Look at Anime Adaptations
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SrkSano
 Posts: 277 |
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This was a well written article. It's a conversation I have with anime fans all of the time, if anime is better adapting manga 1:1 or taking liberties. Thanks for this!
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tintor2
 Posts: 2690 |
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Well, a lot of anime changed parts of the original manga to appeal to a younger demography, finding the main manga too dark. This led to the inclusion of children in Saint Seiya who are friendly with the protagonist in early episodes, the lack of a drunk Syaoran and Sakura in Tsubasa, Yusuke Urameshi and Shikamaru Nara never smoking, Kenshin having more friends to pass the free time, etc. There is also the pacing issues some series tend to suffer most notably Dragon Ball Z and Super which led to remasters Kai and Beerus. When it came to One Piece being streamed in Netflix, I was annoyed by the slowpacing, finding every thing took a lot of time for the main story to progress enough to quit it during the desert episodes. Still, there are times the anime manage to fix issues from the manga like the anticlimatic ending of YuYu Hakusho or Mob Psycho being backed up by fight sequences impossible to replicate unless you are Murata
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a_Bear_in_Bearcave
Posts: 600 Location: Poland |
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What I noticed is that speeding through the source material (or skipping big parts) is almost guaranteed way to end up with bad adaptation. Another that's likely to end badly is when anime is switching up chronology for no good reason.
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Lord Geo
Posts: 2995 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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Those kids are in the Seiya manga as well, but are only really seen at the very start to establish the orphanage that Seiya & Miho grew up in. The anime simply took those kids & had them appear more often (for, like you said, the kids watching to relate to), while also turning the orphanage itself into a home base-of-sorts for Seiya & his buds early on. Overall, though, Jairus is rock solid with everything he said in this piece. Another perfect example of an anime that diverges wildly from the source working out well is the original Eat-Man anime from 1997. When compared to the manga, Eat-Man '97 might as well be a completely unrelated series altogether, since the literal only thing that's carried over from the manga is the main character Bolt Crank being a roaming mercenary-for-hire who can eat inorganic material & reproduce it from his body. However, none of the stories are actually from the manga, while Bolt himself can be wildly different from his manga counterpart in regards to his personality. But, taken as its own thing, Eat-Man '97 is a stellar, esoteric, & contemplative series that won't work for some due to its eccentricities, limited animation, & often open-ended storytelling, but I absolutely love it. And, for those who want something more like the manga, there's Eat-Man '98, which adapts four stories from the manga's early volumes & includes two original stories conceived of by the original creator, Akihito Yoshitomi. I love Eat-Man '98 because I love the Eat-Man manga, but I also love Eat-Man '97 for doing its own thing. |
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mdo7
 Posts: 8218 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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Yeah same here!!! But to be honest, I'll say this to the fan: read the manga (or the light novel, or whatever the original material the anime was based on)!!! The manga will always be better majority of the time. Of course, there are exceptions where the anime adaptation can be better than the manga. |
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Beatdigga
 Posts: 5145 Location: New York |
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It’s a good time for this article as the American comic industry seems to be rethinking direct adaptations to compete with manga. Absolute Batman artist Nick Dragotta publicly asked DC to hire Studio Trigger to directly adapt his comic (to the fury of hardcore comic fans who called such an idea making comics ‘glorified storyboards’), Robert Kirkman has gone on repeatedly for the need for similar direct adaptations to drive people to comics, pointing out Invincible and wanting to adapt his Energon Universe comics in a similar direct fashion, and even Jim Lee, the Editor in Chief of DC Comics has pointed out that direct adaptations have helped the popularity of manga.
And yet things change due to the nature of the medium or the writer wanting to change things, like the aforementioned Robert Kirkman admitting he kind of sucked at writing women when making the Invincible comics and trying to fix that in the show by adding some female characters and giving the existing ones more agency and character. What was on the page in the 70s or 80s might not perfectly translate 40 years later. And sometimes people want a second go at the material. Which is fine. |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 7178 |
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The DragonBall manga always had the opposite problem of where they go through things a bit too quickly not all of which the anime could resolve (Goku and ChiChi & later Bulma and Vegeta getting together and marrying too quickly or off screen). But it does do things like give more focus or some backstory to certain characters or moments. |
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MarshalBanana
 Posts: 5731 |
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I used to be quite stern on how faithful an adaptation was, but overtime have softened on it. I'm currently watching Urusei Yatsura, and some of the bet episodes in that are anime original. Dororo does a great job of making something out of a cancelled Manga.
A big issue I find with Anime adaptations, is you either get an Anime original ending, which are generally not very good or a cliffhanger that is never resolved. Generally the source material is both ongoing and/or too long to adapt in only a few seasons. So it is more a case of ending at a satisfactory point in the story, like what Hunter X hunter did. |
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Otohiko
 Posts: 42 |
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Two additional things that came to mind reading this one:
- I've noticed that over the past decade or so, there has also been somewhat of a tendency among some manga creators to work with a future anime adaptation in mind, to a point where the manga becomes a sort of storyboard for cinematics. It's not necessarily a bad thing, and sometimes it works, but I've also seen how it erodes creativity in paneling and storytelling. Personally, I'd rather have two different versions of a story each of which take advantage of their respective formats' strengths, rather than having placeholders for the "final" version. - Since GONZO in the 2000s was mentioned - I think one of my favourite adaptations (albeit not from a Japanese source) is their phenomenal work on Gankutsuou, which is arguably still the best adaptation of the Count of Monte Cristo made for screen. Even if it drastically changes some aspects of the story, and is set in 30th century Space France, it's easily the most thematically faithful version when it comes to revenge and consequences. |
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Greed1914
 Posts: 5345 |
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I think that last part about commitment is the big difference maker. It isn't necessarily how closely an adaptation follows the source, but having a plan for when and how it deviates. FMA 03 benefited greatly from going into it with acknowledging at the planning stages that it wasn't going to be a direct adaptation, and allowing the anime crew to have the freedom to craft a story with a common foundation to the manga.
I kind of doubt we'll see something like that again. Not only did it have the author's blessing and the staff to pull it off, but also got a production committee that was ok with that many episodes on something that was simultaneously based off source material, but being approached like an anime original. Last edited by Greed1914 on Mon Feb 02, 2026 12:22 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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LinkTSwordmaster
 Posts: 814 Location: PA / USA |
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The original run of the FMA anime was absolute lightning in a bottle - I think the timing of its release had a lot to do with its success too, and it might be a bit surprising/controversial of me to say that part of it was due to how available the cast was publicly, at the time. Its accessibility to fans outside of actually sitting and watching the show in front of a TV was such a boon for it too.
Social media hadn't spun up yet, not to the magnitude that it's impossible to avoid it today. The original FMA anime was one of the first BIG English-dubbed anime that didn't sound like shite and had an engaging story. It's not to sell things like DBZ short, but you'd have 20+ minute-long episodes of weirdly-shaped characters standing around screaming, where FMA had two kids trying to stay alive in a world of adults at war, and hearing everyone sound like actual, real-speaking human people was insane for the time. On one end of the spectrum we can make nostalgic fun of how Ash Ketchum or Yugi Muto sounds under a 4Kids dub, and then on the other side there was the FMA cast - people that have gone on to do Critical Role and be some of the most famous (or infamous) names in the VA industry. If you met one or all of them at a Con? They always impressed. Stories, signings, very easy to ask questions or talk to. If you lived in a poor or sleepy area they were some of the most energetic and active folks present at the venue. If you went home and wanted to watch the show? Everyone was starting to have PS2s and DVD access, and Toonami wasn't as hard in these years to secure for your home as it had been when Pokemon launched. Nerding out over anime at the library? FMA was probably one of the easiest fandoms to find online, and the cast was always more than happy to pop in and chat most places. In the early/mid 2000's, FMA was its own little bubble community within the anime fandom at large, to an extent I don't think I've seen before or since. I think a big part of why Brotherhood didn't land as well when it launched.... was also the timing. That lightning in a bottle had passed. One of the main cast had grown up too much to reprise his same role. You were essential telling this incredibly insulated fandom that one of their most favoritest people in the world was unable to properly participate, that the story was rushed, and that the story they were already used to had changed? Worse still, the original aired in a time when all but the most hardest-core of fans had any sort of awareness of a difference in the Manga, that the repackaging of Brotherhood looked like an inferior product on every. level. I would argue that the original FMA holds up in a way that Brotherhood maybe has not, due to how much care was legitimately put into making it a great dub. I know they certainly tried to, but as the article points out, there were a lot of underlying problems with the foundation. Ironically, DQ7 Reimagined's review just got posted too, and is giving a similar vibe - in Brotherhood's case, it's a pleasant novelty to have a way to view the Manga story in anime form, but because it's so rushed, it's unfortunately never going to hit the same highs. I'd say "it would be interesting to see someone that never watched the original FMA to talk about their experience" but due to the first section of the show speeding to get to the new stuff faster, it's not exactly ideal to jump in blind either as a fresh viewer. It's crazy now, to think that something from 2003 might be considered vintage, that a modern fan might not ever know of now. Dear gawd, if they ever try making a third show and advertise "doing it correctly this time", I pray they don't even try and dub it, casting that would be some nightmare-daughter of a chimera that isn't going to appease anyone. And you KNOW SE of all companies is probably likely to try and do it.... ahhhhh.... |
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FishLion
 Crazy Fangirl Posts: 856 |
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Adaptations are so tough, I am very open to changes in theory, I love stuff liks Trigun Stampede and Devilman Crybaby. The issue is too many go off the rails in a completely bad way with no creative vision. Who Made Me a Princess is an adaptation of the webtoon I was really looking forward to. There were weird parts like the excising the reincarnation aspect without rewriting scenes to match it, but I was totally willing to roll with the punches and see where it goes. Then then final few episodes start to roll around and it's like a a different show. spoiler[We cut directly from comic scenes to having a magical giant beast fights that weren't in the book and weren't foreshadowed as a threat at any point. In universe the event is unprecedented but as writers changing the script they could have foreshadowed this possibility or built up to it more. Then the finale is a magical girl-esque pretty clothes and weapons appear out of nowhere to fight the big bad (who got impatient and ruined his carefully laid plans I guess?)]
What frustrated me about it was the lack of care, if they had foreshadowed these events or made Athanasia learn these powers over the course of the book (she learns magic over the course of the book but nothing like the finale) then maybe it wouldn't feel so haphazard and I would have been hyped! But as it is it felt like they adapted as many arcs as they comfortably had room for then completely change the tone and finale in a way that isn't inspired just to give it a finale. I have seen a ton of these attempts over the years to varying degrees of success. So I think the unspoken rule should be that you need to be ready to make your changes fit the whole story in a cohesive way. Don't hew closely to the original if you're going to make a U-turn when you're done with the source material, integrate the new stuff from the beginning to make sure the new adaptation works as a whole on it's own terms. Also, be prepared for those consequences, if you change a lot in season one you better have an idea for how season two will change too. If you can't figure out how to do either of those things,ake a straight adaptation that's as close as possible, enhance the original vision by adding flourishes but don't confuse the original work. |
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SrkSano
Posts: 277 |
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I agree that I usually prefer reading the manga. When I read the characters can sound like however I want them to sound like, any actor living or dead, or heck anyone I know in real life or they can have a completely imaginary voice. The music in the background can be whatever I want it to be, I don't have to worry about acquiring music rights or anything like that. There are so many liberties you have when you are reading. I suppose it is the same for some, but I have run into some people that just read the material, take in the story like they are reading a script and do not imagine anything beyond that. Then there are some that read manga to their own musical playlist. Everyone is different. When something is adapted into an anime, all of those decisions are taken away from you by a staff that does have real world limitations while your imagination does not. In the best case scenario, they will exceed what you came up with, like IMHO Demon Slayer has. In other instances, they will be far worse than what you came up with. For me that happened a lot during Naruto Shippuden, but not during OG Naruto. Difficult to say why but I think they made a lot better decisions during the original Naruto anime. With all that said, when it's a manga I've read I usually prefer it when they make changes. I already read the manga, I don't need to see the same exact thing all over again most of the time. On the flip side when they make changes to the manga and it's even worse than the manga, that's not good either. I don't think a lot of works are perfect and you have the gift of hindsight, you can improve things here and there. So when those decisions are made and they make things worse it makes me scratch my head sometimes. But sometimes it's just my opinion not matching the staff's. |
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Akamaru_Inu
 Subscriber Posts: 118 Location: Florida |
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I actually still have never read the original manga or watched Brotherhood (besides the first few episodes) because the original FMA was *the* big serious gateway anime I experienced as a kid. It's hard for me to go try and check out the others, because even though they're the "real" versions, the 2003 series is so near and dear to my heart.
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ShadowBane
Posts: 8 |
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The big one for me is probably the original Trigun anime; personally I prefer it to the manga. I wonder if reading the manga first would have changed that; I don't think so, but who knows! I also wonder if I'd have gotten into (for instance) Hidamari Sketch if the anime were more of a by-numbers dry adaption... As the article talks about; creative people were allowed to put their own flourishes on it. I like seeing wildly different adaptions too; they may end up with their own (maybe somewhat different) fanbase, and I think that's a cool thing personally.
The only adaptions I find unfortunate are ones where the production fell apart or just couldn't hit an appropriate quality bar for whatever reason - usually budget-related obviously. Those are the only tragedies in my view. |
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