The Art: You honestly can't complain. Clean shaders, amazing animation, style and effects.
Sound: Amazing. Still memorable after all these years. Intro is iconic.
Characters: very enjoyable to watch and need more of. Only the side-side characters suck. But that's in almost all anime.
The difference with the manga and the anime is that as usual the anime sometimes does not give enough screentime to other characters in this show, like giving an indepth episode to each Deadman, etc.
The story:
Some complain about this and that overall forgetting that the manga continues passed these 12 episodes. This first season only had time for 1 arc and that was divided between the main character finding his power, the prison break, and establishing the main character's inner strength. So I won't judge too harshly on Deadman Wonderland for these reasons. I think they honestly delievered in showcasing the manga into anime, but the only problem is we need MORE. More prison games, prison fights, prison character backstories, more Warden, more lore, more world building.
However, just because Season 1 does not meet all these lengths, DOES NOT mean Deadman Wonderland doesn't have the capacity to fill its own gaps. There is enough content, but only 1 season.
Season 1 ends with the main character finally learning to want to fight back. A question he didn't even know why during the 1st encounter with Shiro. So even in just 1 season, this main character goes from being a Neon wimp like Shinji to an actual developed character with his own answer to show for.
Deadman Wonderland gets an automatic 8 for its enjoyment, and a 9 because it just touches the line between being a good show and a GREAT show with the amount of content it has to be built on. If this show was truly horrible, then there wouldn't be the desire for so many people to see more of Shiro, the main character, or any of the cool looking Deadman.
9/10 Shiro did nothing wrong.
