[Clarste]

I just recently read all the translated manga and then decided to watch the anime.

Wow, they changed a lot. If I had watched the anime first I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have bothered finishing it (Edit: Obviously I liked it overall, or else I wouldn't have decided to watch the anime. The beginning of the anime wouldn't have hooked me though). Here are the major differences I noted that changed the atmosphere in a bad way:

A) They didn't introduce the prophecy until episode 26. That's like... the entirety of the plot, and the premise of the series as far as I could tell. The whole thing's about raising them properly, so without the prophecy telling us that it's possible and likely to raise them wrong there's no tension. Even without the specific prophecy, they could've at least shown the angel/devil probabilities earlier.

B) Giving us a tour of BABEL early on made it seem a lot smaller. While I can understand the desire to introduce important characters, the way they did it implied that that's all they've got. The manga left it open that there might be more teams that we just haven't seen yet. Also, because the anime liked to make the other teams more important and stick them into missions as support, it makes BABEL seem a lot less busy. Overall, the organization feels a lot smaller and less powerful, despite the fancier building. More like a club than an army.

C) Censorship. While I understand that we don't need exploding heads or anything, little things like taking away Shiho's gun early on and aging up Kyousuke during WW2 (in the manga, he was about the same age as the Children back then) undermined the implication that these are child soldiers being put on the front lines, which makes Minamoto's desire to protect them from danger sometimes seem like an irrational overreaction, when in the manga it was the other way around. The Kyousuke thing in particular undermines the parallels between him and Kaoru.

D) The whole transformation scene thing. While I understand it's a joke, it was greatly overused, and often creates the wrong mood. The manga does it once in a while (and lampshades it better by making it clear that it's just Aoi playing around with teleportation), but every episode is overkill. When the audience starts rolling their eyes instead of laughing, it's a failure. I applaud their restraint in not using too much stock footage for it though.

That said, I did like some of the changes though:

A) Introducing Kugutsu earlier made his betrayal more meaningful. In the manga, you didn't even know he existed until he betrayed them. They were a bit heavy-handed with it, but it was a nice touch.

B) Showing more school scenes gave more well-rounded character development. In the manga, you could often forget they went to school at all (until middle school, when it starts being more important).

C) Some of the chronological changes worked well. I can't think of any examples off the top of my head, but overall they did pretty well with that, with a few exceptions (mostly the prophecy, as mentioned above).

I also found the translation to be horrendous, but I can't complain because it's better than nothing.