I actually liked the first Full Metal Alchemist anime regardless of how different it was from the manga. Like I think it's equally as good, if not better (imo).
Shinsekai Yori is a good example of one that I love the anime of, but hate the manga of (haven't read the novel).
The manga was really just like hentai featuring kids even, but the anime was very beautiful, down-to-earth, and didn't even feel fanservicey (despite having both gay and lesbian love scenes in addition to heterosexual, it didn't feel fetishized and only shows it when they're adults). A great psycho-thriller/sci-fantasy anime if you avoid the manga.
I also greatly prefer to watch any comedy-centric anime such as Osomatsu, Watamote, and Axis Powers Hetalia than to read the manga/webcomics for it, because I feel like comedy is just WAY funnier when it's animated, timed, and voiced.
There's some examples with video games as well...
Some of the Dot Hack anime I prefer more than the actual games they're based on.
.Hack//Roots is probably the exception, since that anime was clearly an advertisement-trap for the game .Hack//GU (anime cuts off where the game begins).
However, I really loved the .Hack//Liminality, .Hack//Sign, and .Hack//Quantum anime series, which were different from any of the game series' story and character-wise but use the same universe. For one, they have female main protagonists, and the story isn't dependant on the game, but standalone story from them (though very similar). In the case of .Hack//Sign, they also went deeper than the games could, by including deep psychological themes and a non-fetishized lesbian relationship. Liminality is nice because it's actually taking place outside of the game world, and feels kind of like a mystery/detective anime.
I also liked the Touken Ranbu Katsugeki anime more than I liked the actual gameplay of the game (which got tedious after awhile).
I mean, the anime gives them an actual story to follow, with really nice action scenes and emotional scenes, while the game doesn't particularly have any story/scenes aside from what's implied by RL history by the fans, so just about everything before the anime was just fan-based theories, including their personalities. The anime goes in an amount of depth that the original game just cannot compete with. |