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Sometimes a manga is so good at what it does, the anime adaptation is considered inferior. Normally, this is reversed: anime adaptations tend to uplift their manga, give voice and music, and more life to a character or moment. Good examples of the way it usually works are Naruto or Dragon Ball Z, and recent affairs like My Hero Academia and Chainsaw Man.
Then there are the anime adaptations that are so bad, so mismanaged and mishandled that fans wonder why they bothered making one in the first place. Some examples immediately springing to mind include botched second seasons like Akane Ga Kill! or The Promised Neverland. This article will discuss 10 manga that never should've bothered with the anime adaptations, and why.
Disclaimer: As this relates to anime and manga that get adapted and why they're bad, spoiler warnings are heavily included for all entries. Any opinions therein belong exclusively to the author.
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10 manga, like Berserk or Soul Hunter, that never should've gotten anime adaptations, explained
1) Soul Hunter
A relatively obscure example is Hoshin Engi, otherwise known in English as Soul Hunter. This manga ran from 1996 to 2000, with over 204 chapters spread over 23 volumes. The story, to simplify it, involves ancient Chinese history and mythology, centering around Taigong Wong's quest to trap an evil fox spirit in a prison realm.
It sounds like the sort of anime adaptation from a manga that would absolutely steal the show, or at least fit in with the likes of Black Clover. However, that didn't happen, because the anime adaptation attempted to cram a 200-chapter manga into a 23-episode series named Hakyu Hoshin Engi in 2018. The result is a mess of skipping important material and bad animation.
2) Berserk (2016)
If there are any anime or manga fans not familiar with Berserk, consider this entry a quick summation. Berserk is the tale of Guts, a mercenary in a world that makes the Chuthulu-invaded Bloodborne look like a happy stroll in a meadow. His goal is to find peace in life in a world guaranteed to take it away horrifyingly quickly.
Berserk hasn't had much success with anime adaptations. The first series in the late 1990s had too little to adapt to make any real impact. The second series in 2016 is notorious for a number of reasons including the clunky CGI animation, the bad camera work, and the generally lackluster production that sent back fans back to reading the manga.
3) Akame ga Kill!
Akame ga Kill! has been seen on lists like this before, and it's doubtful it's ever going to leave for the same reason The Promised Neverland is never leaving. This is a series about the struggle of the underground rebel group of assassins named Night Raid and their fight against the tyrannical Empire.
The anime adaptation is rather infamous for skipping through plenty of arcs and utterly slaughtering a lot of people that never died in the manga. Lubbock and Mine and Tatsumi meet sudden deaths in the anime. The removal of key scenes that humanize the Empire characters and the Emperor's death by execution, plus depowering Esdeath, leave most fans flummoxed.
4) The Promised Neverland
Never before and never again will there be such an unmitigated disaster as The Promised Neverland's second season. The manga itself might have had more than a few problems at the end. However, the first season of the anime adaptation was widely praised and poised to make the series skyrocket into instant classic status.
Then the second season of the anime adaptation dropped and completely sapped any kind of goodwill or love the anime adaptation ever had. It tried to adapt nearly 150 remaining chapters into 11 episodes. It wound up omitting fan-favorite arcs like the Goldy Pond arc and flat-out erasing Yuugo. Most fans say to watch the first season and then read the manga afterward.
5) Deadman Wonderland
There are a lot of reasons why most horror doesn't strike it big with mainstream audiences, from the blood and gore to the uncomfortable subject matters. So, sometimes, a tonal shift is necessary and can work as seen with Alien and Aliens or the original two Terminator movies.
The flip side of tonal shifts is that they need to be balanced well or done so well that they fit. Deadman Wonderland's anime adaptation ends up going the route most sequels after John Carpenter's The Thing do: turn a horrific manga about a death game into an action fest. Sure, it's a shonen but it went full in with shonen cliches instead of staying horrific.
6) Ex-Arm
CGI and rotoscoping in animation are practically commonplace with Studio MAPPA's plethora of anime examples. Ex-Arm tried that with its anime adaptation and failed miserably. The manga is an obscure science fiction story about crime fighting in the future with highly advanced AI and superweapons.
The anime is infamous for the following reasons:
- The staff didn't work on any anime prior to the adaptation.
- The animations are terrible since the motion capture was not captured well.
- The fight scenes have the choreography of the average Michael Bay-directed film, meaning they're hard to decipher who's doing what.
- The characters don't seem to emote, other than opening and shutting their mouths and anything else results in an uncanny valley look.
- The voice acting is subpar, especially for newcomers.
There's more to it than all that can say, but readers should be able to get the picture from there.
7) Tokyo Ghoul √A
The first season of Tokyo Ghoul was generally considered something of an entertaining watch. The anime was more well-known than the manga to the point where it eclipsed the manga for a while. Tokyo Ghoul mostly focuses on Kaneki, a normal kid who gets sucked into the horrific world of Ghouls after his date turns out to be one.
The trouble with Tokyo Ghoul √A can be explained incredibly simply: they deviated far too much and too hard from the original manga. A few unpopular changes included cutting out scenes like Kaneki's fight with Arima and Hides' death. Additionally, one of the main characters, Tsukiyama, had all of his character development removed which makes his battle with Kaneki come off forced.
8) Blue Exorcist
This kind of anime adaptation of adapting a manga wrong is a concerning issue across this list, and Blue Exorcist is no exception. While it's common for an anime adaptation to change some things or add anime-only filler to let the manga breathe, Blue Exorcists' anime does far too much.
In particular, a few points have surfaced that solidify just how divisive Blue Exorcists' anime was. There were far too many filler episodes, the first season diverged from the manga halfway through. Meanwhile, some people really didn't care for the shonen cliches like everyone having special powers, and it ended too fast due to overtaking the manga.
9) Rosario + Vampire
What's more annoying than a manga being adapted only to descend into cliches? When literally everything about the manga is changed into a much different genre. Rosario + Vampire is one of the most majorly changed anime adaptations that turned people off, lamenting that it was more famous than the manga to boot.
Why is Rosario + Vampire's anime more famous than the manga? Put simply, the anime substitutes the ongoing story, the darker tone that it adapts later on, and the interesting reversal of a typical harem protagonist, into a straightforward harem comedy. It has none of the tragic or mystical elements in it, it is just straight fanservice the whole way through the anime.
10) Seven Deadly Sins
How do you mess up an anime from a manga that's already disliked in certain areas of the Shonen community? Seven Deadly Sins is already a controversial series in the first place, regarding a decent fantasy plot being tied too heavily to romance, the power scaling going way too high, and the final arc refusing to end.
What doesn't help the anime adaptation was Studio DEENs handling of season 3. The anime was already in a rough spot for cutting out Olso and a pendant given to Elizabeth and likewise entire events. Studio DEENs handling of the third season was the death knell for many fans.
This is mainly owing to lackluster animation which turned blood from red to white and pink, censored a lot of things very obviously, and made a lot of off-model art that had people with smeared bodies, bad senses of scale, and terrible faces.
This should conclude the list of 10 manga that really shouldn't have had anime adaptations. This isn't to say a viewer cannot find any of these enjoyable, only that the fanbase for these listed would rather the prospective viewer skip the anime and read the manga instead.
Some of these, like Akame ga Kill!, have the problem of cutting out important scenes or entire events. Others like Seven Deadly Sins have an animation problem owing to going through multiple series. If any readers have any problems or feel the need to add any more examples, please add them in the comments.
