Brilliant Manga And Their Bad Anime Adaptation
When I started to make this list I would have never thought that this many popular mangas would be on this list, who despite their bad anime adaptation was so popular.
You can notice how most of the bad anime in this list were done using CGI and to be clear it’s not like I totally hate all CGI(Computer Generated Graphics) Anime, I just hate bad CGI anime.
The biggest flaw of all this anime Adaptation was that either they had bad animation or that the anime had omitted many things that made the manga shine to cut its story short.
So here is the list of anime that you should skip or at least you should give its manga counterpart a try before deciding that it’s bad.
Tokyo Ghoul
Created by Sui Ishida
- Genres: Action, Mystery, Horror, Psychological, Supernatural, Drama, Seinen
- Volumes: 14+16 (30)
- Original Run: 2011 -2018
- Anime Episodes: 36
Tokyo Ghoul’s anime adaptation that started in 2015 had many problems from the get-go, as just in a few episodes the anime had started Limiting the manga storyline and soon it deviated from the manga altogether toward an anime-only ending.
Which confused the anime-only viewers as the second season aired where this ending was totally ignored and the anime started following the manga storyline once again, all these problems were just of the first part of Tokyo Ghoul.
The second part of the anime was the reason that manga fans hate this anime adaption the most, Tokyo Ghoul: re anime which compressed many chapters to fit into very few episodes.
This manga is all about Ghouls, beings that need to feed on human flesh to survive and are considered as humans’ true enemy, and as the name suggests it is set in Tokyo.
Ghouls look just like normal humans, which helps them hide among humans as they suppress their lust for human flesh due to the fear of CCG (an organization built just to exterminate them).
The story follows a college student Ken Kaneki who had an accident when he was on a date with a girl named Rize Kamishiro, who turns out to be a ghoul.
He survives the accident only because of the surgery that transferred the dead ghoul organs to replace his, which ends up turning him into a Half Ghoul, who now must consume human flesh to survive.
Berserk
Created by Kentaro Miurabe
- Genres: Action, Adventure, Drama, Fantasy, Horror, Seinen
- Volumes: 40
- Original Run: Oct 1989 – Present
- Anime Episodes: 49
Before Tokyo Ghoul took the top spot of bad anime adaptation Berserk was the one manga that everybody mentioned on this topic.
But Its anime should not be ignored completely if you are someone who prefers to watch anime over manga, as its 90s adaptations are good enough starting point to begin this series and then you should just jump into the manga if you liked the plot.
It’s newer adaptation should be avoided as it has very bad animation and it rarely follows the manga.
The story follows Guts, a warrior who was adopted by a mercenary wife after they found a newborn child below his dead hanging mother.
After the death of his adopted mother, Gambino, his adopted father forces him to fight as a mercenary, till one day he decides to sell guts to a rapist for just three coins.
Guts kill Gambino in self-defense and flea, Eventually, he grows up to become a fearsome mercenary due to his fighting skill.
Gantz
Created by Hiroya Oku
- Genres: Action, Sci-Fi, Horror, Psychological, Supernatural, Drama
- Volumes: 37
- Original Run: 2000 – 2013
- Anime Episodes: 26
Gantz is one of my favorite manga that I have read multiple times and its anime was something I dropped just after a few episodes due to how different it felt and how bad it was adapted.
People who have seen both Fullmetal Alchemist and Brotherhood can understand what is different between half baked adaption and a full-fledged anime adaptation that does justice to an anime.
So if you have ever heard how good this series is and have been disappointed due to its anime then you are not alone and you should read this manga to understand why it’s so popular.
This manga which was completed in 2013 is one of the few mangas that ended giving you answers to every question that they had ever put on in the series, unlike many mangas that were canceled and had to rush through an ending.
Kei Kurono and Masaru Kato are high schoolers who, while trying to save a homeless person from being hit by a subway train, die after getting hit by the train.
After their death they find themself in an unfurnished apartment in Tokyo, surrounded by many clueless people like them with no way out and the only thing in this apartment is a black sphere named “Gantz”.
Soon the sphere opens that provide them with black suits and futuristic weapons and ask them to kill an alien to get points and if you secure 100 Points you can live again.
Kingdom
Created by Yasuhisa Hara
- Genres: Action, Historical, Military, Seinen
- Volumes: 60
- Original Run: Jan 2006 – Present
- Anime Episodes: 81
Kingdom series is something that should have gotten as popular as all those mainstream anime like naruto, one piece, and hunter x hunter if only it had gotten a great anime adaptation.
Due to its 3d like anime adaptation and heavy censorship, its brilliant shounen story is rarely talked about anywhere.
The manga is about 221 BC china known as the Warring State Period where Ying Zheng king of Quin tried to unify china by conquering its every state filled with many characters filled with historical figures.
Xin and Piao were war orphans who as servants in a poor village dreamed and trained to become the “ Great General under the heaven” in the Qin Kingdom.
One day suddenly Piao is taken by a minister to the palace due to some unknown reason leaving Xin behind.
Piao returns after a few months on the verge of death and asks Xin to go to another village in his last breath, where Xin finds a boy who looked identical to Piao, he was Ying Zheng the current king of Qin.
Xin who at first is enraged at Ying as he was the reason Piao was dead, soon decides to save him from the people who were after him as his friend’s last action was also to protect him.
Thus begins Xin’s journey toward his dream of becoming a “ Greatest General Under the Heaven ” and Ying Zheng toward his dream to unify china once in for all and to end all wars.
Black Clover
Created by Yuki Tabata
- Genres: Action, Comedy, Magic, Fantasy, Shounen
- Volumes: 27
- Original Run: Feb 2015 – Present
- Anime Episodes: 159
This mainstream shounen anime that many counts as a replacement for some great last generation shounen anime like naruto and bleach has left many fans disappointed as this series goes on.
Due to its overloading of filler and slow pace of adapting a single chapter as one episode by stretching it as long as possible make it a drag to watch compared to reading it as manga.
Compared to other such shounen like My Hero Academia, the animation and voice acting quality is well below average.
The series mainly follows Asta and Yuno, Two young orphan boys who were abandoned on the doorstep of Hage Village orphanage just after their birth.
In a world where everybody uses magic by using mana, Asta is one of few who doesn’t have that power at all, while Yuno is a prodigy who has great magical power and even greater control of it.
They both have only one dream and that is to become the next wizard king of the clover kingdom.
Deadman Wonderland
Created by Jinsei Kataoka and Kazuma Kondou
- Genres: Action, Horror, Sci-Fi, Supernatural, Shounen
- Volumes: 13
- Original Run: May 2007 – Aug 2013
- Anime Episodes: 12 + Ova
Deadman wonderland anime’s first problem was that it was very short, a 12 episode anime to showcase a manga that had more than 9 volumes released at that time.
They rushed the storyline like anything leaving many details that were thoroughly explained in the manga and to shorten the manga they also skipped some important arcs.
In the Manag, you will find a large amount of back story and character development of many characters that tie into the story who were shown as irrelevant in the anime and were given little importance.
Ganta Igarashi is an ordinary student who lives in Japan, A japan which had lost nearly 70 percent of its landmass 10 year ago due to an earthquake.
Ganta was one of few people who had escaped this tragedy unharmed, but with no memory of it, he lived a seemingly ordinary life as a middle school student.
One day his life changed for the worse when a strange person covered in blood, Grinningly floated through his classroom window and killed his whole class just leaving him alive.
Ganta ends up getting the blame for the massacre and is sentenced to death at Deadman Wonderland, a prison that is also a theme park.
Ajin Demi-Human
Created by Gamon Sakurai
- Genres: Action, Mystery, Horror, Supernatural, Seinen
- Volumes: 16
- Original Run: Jul 2012 – Present
- Anime Episodes: 26
One of the biggest problems with the Ajin anime adaption was that it was made with bad CGI and I am not a big fan of it, especially when you turn some amazing manga into this.
Another Problem with its anime adaptation was that after a few episodes it just goes in a direction that doesn’t follow the manga just like what happened in Tokyo ghoul’s first season.
Nagai Kei is a student who lives in a world where some people have immortality and insane regenerative abilities that allow them to recover from any life-threatening injury in a few seconds, they are called Ajin.
Ajin’s are Considered dangerous by the public and government, due to that as soon as an Ajin is detected they are captured by authorities in the name of protection.
But in reality, they are subjected to torcher and extreme experiments, where their body and body parts are used as resources that would never run out.
One day Nagai is fatally wounded in an accident that should have killed him, but instead, his body recovers like nothing in a matter of seconds, showing him and everyone else around him that he is Ajin.
Erased
Created by Kei Sanbe
- Genres: Mystery, Psychological, Supernatural, Seinen
- Volumes: 9
- Original Run: 2012 – 2016
- Anime Episodes: 12
Erased anime is a 12 episode compressed version of a 9 volume manga, that leaves out many things that made this manga good.
The biggest palace where this adaptation diverged from the manga is toward the end at its climax where the studio adapted nearly 2 Volumes of the final manga into just a Single Episode.
Due to which many anime watchers were disappointed by its ending, as compared to the first 10 episodes that were adapted so well.
Satoru Fujinuma is a young man who has the power to jump back in time just before a life-threatening thing is going to happen so he could do something to avert it, that he cannot control.
One day on returning home he finds his mother’s dead body and somehow he is implicated for his mother’s death.
While running away from his house he is forced back to his childhood body where he is an elementary school child, the biggest time jump he ever had.
He soon realizes that he has to stop three kidnappings that had occurred during his childhood that in some way is connected to his mother’s death in the future.
Claymore
Created by Norihiro Yagi
- Genres: Action, Adventure, Supernatural, Fantasy, Shounen
- Volumes: 27
- Original Run: May 2001 – Dec 2014
- Anime Episodes: 26
Claymore’s anime adaptation did end abruptly, where the main character suddenly powered up and killed the main antagonist as a shift from its manga counterpart story.
Unlike anime, it continues from there on with a time-lapse and ends in a far better way than you would think by answering many questions and revealing secrets about their world.
This series is set on an island where humans are living in the fear of Yoma, a shape-shifting creature that can take human form and who feeds on humans.
On this island, there is an organization that creates Human-Yoma Hybrids who are powerful enough to kill Yoma.
As only females survive this experiment, only female warriors exist and due to their claymore sword or silver eyes, they are known as “Claymore” by normal humans.
Some other anime that had a similar fate
- Naruto – anime had so many filler episodes.
- Blue Exorcist – 1 season ends with an original ending and then the second started as it never happened.
- Bakuman – The anime last season ended in a snap as they jumped many arcs and rushed it toward its end.
- Black Butler – Manga has more character and character development and also a very in-depth story compared to its anime counterpart.
