Overtook the Manga: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

{{quote|'''Mokuba:''' We appear to be locked on course with a giant ocean fortress directly beneath us!

 

Many [[Anime]] are based on a [[Manga]]—the Japanese equivalent to [[Comic Book Tropes|comic books]]. While simply making the anime into a completely [[Alternate Continuity]] is common, especially if the manga has [[No Ending]], more often the anime at least tries to follow the major plot points of the original manga.

 

{{examples}}

* This happened to [[Blue Exorcist]]. It followed the manga pretty well up until the very first filler episode, after which they both went in two entirely different directions. Some fans are not pleased.

* ''[[Bleach]]'' created the Bount Arc.

* The anime ''[[Peacemaker Kurogane]]'' actually ends at the prequel for the actual manga "Peacemaker Kurogane", and only follows the events of the manga "Shinsengumi Imon Peacemaker". Sound confusing? It is.

* While most of the ''[[Pokémon (anime)|Pokémon]]'' seasons are based directly off of one of the handheld video games, having Ash and co. visit the region of the currently-released installment and compete in the regional League, the second season, named "The Orange Islands", took place on a completely original set of islands. This was due to ''[[Pokémon Gold and Silver]]'' not yet being released at the time; while they could've had the characters potter about the Kanto region for another 35 episodes, moving the story to a more original setting allowed the producers to start introducing more of the new Johto Pokémon ahead of Gold and Silver's release.

** This actually allowed Finnish MTV channel to [[No Export for You|remove Orange saga from their TV]].

* ''[[Ranma ½]]'' overtook its manga source several times, and made a large number of episodes from scratch each time it happened.

** Several episodes also were condensed arcs from the manga as well, but that may often be expected.

* This ironically ''[[Averted Trope|did not happen]]'' to ''[[Rosario + Vampire]]''; the first season of the anime stopped about halfway through the first serialization of the manga, which itself was just getting into its second, but not only did they rush to release the second season anime within a few months of the first, but rather than picking up where they left off, they skipped the rest of the first serialization altogether and went directly into the second, which had barely been around for a year by then. The result is [[They Changed It, Now It Sucks|not well-liked]].

** Despite that, they used a lot of stories from the first serialization on the second season.

* The ''[[Rurouni Kenshin]]'' anime's last three arcs—the Christian/Shimabara Arc, the Black Knights Arc, and the Feng Shui Arc—were anime-only, created while waiting for the author to finish the manga. The first arc was alright, albeit much less combat heavy than previosu ones, but this coupled with the lower quality of the other two led to the anime's cancellation and the final manga arc (the Enishi/Jinchuu Arc) was never fully animated.

** Nearly half of the first-season episodes (almost everything after the end of the Oniwaban arc) were filler, largely consisting of stand-alone episodes or two or three episode storylines that were basically watered-down versions of other plots from the manga (the series and the movie have three or four low-rent versions of the series' ultimate [[Big Bad]] Shishio—masterminds with a vision of the "good old days" who gather together a bunch of unemployed swordsmen to embark on national conquest).

** The whole Doom Tree arc at the beginning of ''[[Sailor Moon]] R'' was created so that the mangaka could restart the manga (the original story was supposed to end with the defeat of Beryl) and get ahead of the animation.

* ''[[Saint Seiya]]'' created the whole Asgard arc after the Sanctuary Chapter which surprisingly enough became one of the fans favorite arcs. On the other hand, they created several episodes in the Sanctuary Chapter which led to some confusions notably with the introduction of the Crystal Saint as Hyoga's mentor when it was later revealed in the manga that Hyoga's mentor was in fact the Aquarius Saint. It was handwaved by making The Aquarius Saint the mentor of the Crystal Saint who was still the mentor of Hyoga the Cygnus Saint, thus establishing some kind of "coherent" hierarchy.

* ''[[Saiyuki]]'' has had a number of these. The second arc of Gensoumaden was an anime-only arc, although Homura (the arc's [[Big Bad]]) ''was'' designed by author Kazuya Minekura and took existing elements from the [[Prequel]] series Gaiden, also on-going. Then, the current plot of the sequel Reload, which is on-going, was halted while the author was sick. In order to keep production going, the anime took the existing plot and characters and went in a completely different direction with them. A very, very different direction. Thus, important continuing plot elements from the manga were completely left out and the anime finished without them- with no word on whether the manga's version of the arc will be animated at all. This also led to a huge shuffle-around of manga to anime plots, with the second manga plot taking place in the first half of Reload anime, and the second half of Reload taking place in another sequel anime, Reload Gunlock.

* In ''[[Saki (manga)|Saki]]'', the manga ended the regional tournament just a few days before it ended in the anime.

* The ''[[Simoun]]'' manga debuted in the January, 2006 issue of ''[[Schoolgirl Lesbians|Yuri]] Hime'' magazine, at which time the anime version had already started production. The two tell different stories, albeit with the same background.

* Not exactly the same, but the ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog]]'' Archie comics are a rare Western inversion; based on the [[Sonic Sat AM|Sonic the Hedgehog]] cartoon, it had tons of side-stories and original content during the show's run, and continued long after the TV show was canceled. The only ties it currently has to its original progenitor is the occasional comic adaptations of whichever Sonic video game is coming out at the time (from which both comic and manga derived from).

* ''[[Soul Eater]]'' is almost exactly the same as the manga with only a few minor alterations (and more Excalibur for some reason) up until episode 37 {{spoiler|at which point the new ending switches around which characters live and die, changes the significance of several characters, and involves a giant robot fight in a series which had never had anything remotely like that happen before. In the final episode Maka is able to fight off Asura, one of the most powerful beings in existence, by somehow becoming a weapon for a few minutes (which, oddly enough, doesn't have any real effect on the fight) and finally by punching him really hard in the face, which causes him to crack apart as if he were made of glass and explode because she "filled her fist with courage". It's worth noting that she doesn't even use Soul, her partner, to achieve this, which is strange since teamwork seemed to be a pretty major theme in the show up until the final episode.}} Some of these changes, though, can actually be considered to be quite awesome, so it's really up to the viewer to decide.

** With ''[[Soul Eater]]'' it was inevitable as the series belongs to a monthly manga, and since anime are made for weekly showings. It was going to catch up pretty quickly regardless.

** Nightow even references the anime with volume 12, which includes a four-page montage of practically every key character from each chapter, including characters that had only been seen in the anime.

** Nightow is on record as loving the anime, and has also admitted that the anime influenced his own story, making ''[[Trigun]]'' something of a [[Recursive Adaptation]].

* ''[[All Creatures Great and Small]]'': the show eventually ran out of [[James Herriot]] novels to adapt and started creating the scripts out of whole cloth.

* The Showtime series ''[[Dexter]]'' had its first season based on the first ''Dexter'' book, ''Darkly Dreaming Dexter''. The second season showed an original storyline as the second book, ''Dearly Devoted Dexter'', was considered inappropriately dark for the show. There were no more books by the time the third season was greenlit, and since then the novels and TV series have gone their separate ways.

 

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