Should've seen the anime first

[animeboy12]

I finished watching Death Note recently and I learn a very valuable lesson, "sometimes ignorance is bliss". What do I mean? The anime version of death note is without a doubt one of the best suspense thrillers that I've had read/watch but as far as my experience watching it goes, that's a different story. Despite the anime version being a top-notch and IMO vastly superior to the manga, I had to force myself to watch through it, and I mean FORCE (2006-2009).

It wasn't anything the anime did but what I did. I had read the manga 1st, which pretty much killed the tension and thriller aspect of the anime for me and making the anime danm near impossible to watch unfortunately.

So, for good or bad, my experience with death note has pretty much scared me from a good portion of my manga reading for fear of an anime adaption but to the topic

Which anime series do you feel would've ultimately been a better watch had you not seen the original work?

[Triple_R]

This is a big part of the reason why I read very, very little manga.


Overall, and to put it as simply as possible, I prefer colored animation to black and white comics. By that, I mean, just looking at the most basic level pros and cons of the two mediums, I prefer anime to manga.

Also, I personally find that it can be hard to watch something when you're 99.9% sure of what's going to happen next, and by the end of the show (that's always that possibility that the anime might diverge from the canon, but on the major plot points, at least, anime strikes me as pretty faithful to its source material, really).


So, taking these two factors together... it often simply makes more sense for me to not get into the source material, and stick strictly to the anime.

[Oppius]

That's why I only read mangas that may or will never have anime adaptation like Chisa x Pon* and Imouto wa Shishunki* as examples. I never knew that K-On! was adapted from 4-koma manga before.

One advantage seeing the anime first before reading the manga is you can continue where the anime left off, just like Groove Adventure Rave.

*I have no idea that these shows may already have short OVA adaptations but that was just my dumb guess.

[Sheba]

Originally Posted by animeboy12

I finished watching Death Note recently and I learn a very valuable lesson, "sometimes ignorance is bliss". What do I mean? The anime version of death note is without a doubt one of the best suspense thrillers that I've had read/watch but as far as my experience watching it goes, that's a different story. Despite the anime version being a top-notch and IMO vastly superior to the manga, I had to force myself to watch through it, and I mean FORCE (2006-2009).

It wasn't anything the anime did but what I did. I had read the manga 1st, which pretty much killed the tension and thriller aspect of the anime for me and making the anime danm near impossible to watch unfortunately.

So, for good or bad, my experience with death note has pretty much scared me from a good portion of my manga reading for fear of an anime adaption but to the topic

Which anime series do you feel would've ultimately been a better watch had you not seen the original work?

As far as Death Note is concerned, I think that Death Note anime made a good job at distillating the Walls of Text sequences of the manga, making them easier to digest. Honestly, at some point of the manga, I had to force myself to pause and reread the walls of text to get what's going on before carrying on with the plot.

[Kyuu]

I don't even bother reading mangas anymore...

[-KarumA-]

If a manga is bad then I'd sure skip it
However the Death Note manga was not THAT bad, it is luck that the anime is complete because most series continue where the anime stops and sometiems have a completely different plot
However there are also those that have the anime first and manga made later

But I tend to skip the manga of series based on the drawing and style, I mean that with for example Mai HiME and Mai Otome the manga was completely different from the series. It is a nice twist but not one everyone would like

Other examples, Escaflowne I read the first volume and didn't like it, the character design is a lot different for the main girl etc. let alone mecha always looks better onscreen

And an example of anime first would be Code Geass: Lelouch of the rebellion, compared to the anime the manga sucks hard. It doesn't have the same aspects as the anime but then again it is stiff drawn as if they are made from wood at some points, if a manga has the wood aspect then I don't even bother reading it

[roriconfan]

Very few anime follow the manga page by page. Most water down violence and insert fillers, while diverting from the story later on. Death Note was one of the few cases where the anime follows the manga 99%. So, yes, it does kill the thrill of reading it first.

Although I must admit that I was wishing for it to be animated after reading most of Death Note before I even learned it would get an adaptation.

[Slice of Life]

I don'r read much manga but most I did read were close enough to make watching the anime essentially a re-watch. (In my case it's typically the other way around because I normally see the anime first.) xxxHolic anime and manga for example were pretty much the same except for the crossover elements. Pandora Hearts the manga was also close enough to the anime for me to give up after a few chapters.

I will never quite understand why people who appear so much more spoiler-sensitive than me on average bother to start watching an anime at all if they already know the manga. Shouldn't the anime be a thousand times ruined right from the start for them?

[GuidoHunter_Toki]

In most cases I watch an anime before reading the shows manga counterpart. That way I don't have a sense of knowing what is going to happen. Even if the anime may diverge from the original material I always have "how tha manga did it" in the back of my head and it is really distracting. I'm very glad I didn't read the manga of Death Note and Mushishi especially, since the mangas are near identical to the anime. It would have really ruined the viewing experience.

[Vexx]

Its almost ALWAYS a better idea to watch a visual adaptation BEFORE reading the source material. Otherwise -- you're much more likely to think poorly of the adaptation.

[Nosauz]

well it depends on how you view the medium. If you consider the author of the source to be canon then you should read the source material first, but if you think an adapation can stand on its own as a seperate entity from the source material then it doesn't matter which order you view them. I always feel like most of the time I prefer the source versus an adaption because I'm not reading a story for just the motions, I'm reading for the little spark that the author injects into his/her stories to make it unique.

[Chiibi]

I always try to see the anime first before reading the manga. That way you don't get disappointed.

[RadiantBeam]

I've never really had that problem, myself. If anything, I have something of the opposite: I always have a habit of discovering manga after watching the anime based off it. Two examples that come immediately to mind are Wolf's Rain and Tokyo Mew Mew; I saw the anime versions before I read their manga counterparts, and I much preferred the anime.

[Starry Dust]

Bleh, the only thing I didn't like about the DeathNote anime was the ending.
I prefer the manga ending slightly more because

Spoiler for ending:

I didn't like how they made Light's death so sympathetic in the anime.
He was a douche and I almost shed a tear for that bastard lol

Rant aside, I don't really favor anime over manga or manga over anime in general. It soley depends on the series itself and which one I cross upon first. I always tend to like the original source more than the adaptations no matter what. There's some exceptions though :]

[roriconfan]

Here is an interesting example: Elfen Lied
To the most part, the manga had terrible graphics. The anime had average from the get go.
The anime followed the manga and diverted in the last episodes.
And then you either read the manga to see what normally happened next or you have already read the manga and just compare which is better.

Very contradicting opinions about the two mediums; others liked how it stopped there in the anime, others disliked for not going further.

But they took different paths in storyline and that meant that you must watch both, in any order you like. Marketing goal achieved.

It is only if the two mediums are identical that this is an issue of importance. And come on, how many decent adaptations are there that surpass the source material? Very few. So, if you are not bored to read/watch all the versions, as a rule of the thump you should start by the most recent version and move the the older one. Usually, that means watching the anime and then reading the manga although there are exceptions where anime came first and then did the manga (ie Neon Genesis).

As a rule of the thumb, newer versions of something are watered down or twisted in ways that feel wrong to the fans of the original. Thus, better go from newer to older in order to minimize your frustration.

[RadiantBeam]

Unfortunately, a lot of the problems with that logic is that these days a lot of anime based off manga tend to surpass the original material, which leads to the last bit of it being rushed without resolving some plotlines, and the ending always feels like it came out of nowhere, whereas in the manga the story is (usually) given more time to develop, loose ends are (sometimes) wrapped up, and the ending makes sense because everything has had a chance to reach its fullest potential within the story.

[TnAdct1]

One thing's for sure: if you even know at least one tiny spoiler concerning the manga version of Mahou Sensei Negima after volume 3, then the experience of watching the Xebec version will probably be ruined for you.

[Ash Falls Town]

Originally Posted by TnAdct1

One thing's for sure: if you even know at least one tiny spoiler concerning the manga version of Mahou Sensei Negima after volume 3, then the experience of watching the Xebec version will probably be ruined for you.

Spoiler for Negima:

What about knowing that Lingshen is a time traveler? Frankly knowing that made that part seem less random to me.

[Xion Valkyrie]

There are very few animes that are actually better than the source material they're based off of, especially if it's a long running manga. A lot of times you end up with crappy animal original endings that really don't make that much sense.

Anyways, this is why I read a lot of manga instead. It takes much longer to watch an episode of anime than it is to read a chapter of manga, this allows me to not have to bother with 99% of the junk out there and only watch animes with high production values/good writing/good direction etc. 90% of anime adapations of mangas are pretty bad anyways, whereas the original manga source material could be decent.

Generally I almost never watch anime adapations of mangas unless the director/studio is excellent (SHAFT) or there's a very high budget attached to it.

[Langknow]

Yea,

This is one of the reasons why I do not read the One Piece Manga, as it spoils it for you when you're watching . I usually have a lag time of 2 years . I would wait 2 years for a lot of One Piece episodes to be subtitle and out, then watch say batch . Then wait another 2 years for another batched.