This question straddles all three of anime, manga, and light novels, so I figured I’d just drop it in the anime community first. Though if it doesn’t belong here, feel free to delete it and I’ll go somewhere else.
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I’ve only been watching anime for a few years. This year, I’ve started reading manga and LN of some anime I’ve seen. There are a few titles where I feel like the anime adaptation was just as good and there are some where I feel like it was better. Fortunately, I haven’t encountered any cases where I think the anime completely dropped the ball, but I know there probably are some like that.
What are some titles that have huge disparities in quality between its anime adaptation and the source?
-Haruhi Suzumiya - LN - Anime somehow remains nearly 100% faithful to the LNs yet takes what was otherwise kind of a silly and meaningless story and elevates it to masterpiece level. Maybe a hot take: KyoAni already adapted all the best parts of the LNs, it’s almost like I can feel Tanigawa’s creative exhaustion seeping through his words
On the other hand for me: Nagato Yuki-chan manga > anime: let’s just say I yearn for a complete animated adaptation. The story itself, I love it very much. The anime stopped at an awkward point.
I haven’t gotten around to reading the Nagato Yuki-chan manga yet, though it is on my list of stuff to check out.
I watched it immediately after watching the entire Haruhi series for the first time, which is probably a mistake - they are two completely different types of shows that just happen to take place in the same universe. Maybe for the first 8-9 episodes (whenever the black and white episode happens) I wasn’t in the right mindset to properly enjoy the laid back slice of life type that was Nagato Yuki-chan. Also, I couldn’t stop comparing the art style and animation to the KyoAni series, which is naturally going to be an unfair comparison lol.
