Anime-Manga Comparison Questions

[Randycat]

I'm just wondering how closely these anime follow the manga, and which would be ideal to see/read first (the anime or the manga):

1.Basara
2.Inu Yasha
3.One Piece
4.St.Seiya
5.xxxHolic
6.Tsubasa
7.Rurouni Kenshin

Thanks!

[DrMM]

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Randycat said:
I'm just wondering how closely these anime follow the manga, and which would be ideal to see/read first (the anime or the manga):

1.Basara

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Read the manga. The anime is only 13 episodes long (and has no official R1 release) and while it follows the first five volumes of the manga fairly accurately, there's 20 volumes of manga material left uncovered. It's a reasonably well done anime but far, far inferior to the manga.

[KomoriKiri]

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Randycat said:
3.One Piece


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Only one I can comment on. Skip the US release of the anime, it's way too heavily edited. As far as differences between the manga and the (original) anime, the anime follows pretty closely for the most part. The exceptions are the big, and generally not good, story arcs that were made up to pad the anime out to let the manga storyline get ahead. Nothing unskippable in those.

Wraith
"Hi, Gobo! Boober said you were here brooding. He said you were pretty good at it, too."
-- Red ("Fraggle Rock")

[Dragon_Shiryu]

1.Basara - as mentioned, what's animated is accurate. But it barely animated anything :p
2.Inu Yasha - haven't read the manga
3.One Piece - while it has big filler arcs and some changes, it doesn't stray much
4.St.Seiya - also has filler (ranges from good to craptacular), some design changes (from some characters to the armors), and some story additions by Toei which messed up some of the canon storyline (like giving Hyoga another master, and a huge mess up regarding the Pope, which always confuses the fans, plus everything after Ikki but before 12 Temples is almost completely different). Once it enters the 12 Temples arc, it stays similar for the most part, with some filler here and there. Then it added a 26 episodes long filler arc (Asgard). Poseidon is similar in the action department, but they skipped a lot of the beginning and ending story, in a way due to the fact that for the beginning they linked it with Asgard, and the ending was rushed because the rest wasn't animated back then. Then, there's the Hades OVA from 2003, which is very similar, albeit with some changes as well (most of these, for the better, or at least very enjoyable), but it actually uses the manga as canon, so Hyoga's master is who should really be.

6.Tsubasa - haven't read or watched.
7.Rurouni Kenshin - From the beginning to the end of Kyoto, it does have a lot of filler, but most of it is enjoyable (though some are really bad). But what's canon, is a lot better in anime form, IMHO. Mainly because of the beautiful soundtrack. After Kyoto, though, everything goes to hell.

[Randycat]

Just a Q about One Piece, does it follow the manga as closely as some of the eps of Ranma 1/2 (like, exact plotlines for certain chapters, and even some of the dialogue is the same), or is it just the same basic storyline?

[Minuit]

Tsubasa more or less follows the manga, although the first season tends to randomly add material to the story arcs to stretch them out, while the second season just uses lots of filler episodes instead. I've heard that the recent Rekoruto arc changed around events more than usual, but I haven't gotten that far yet. That being said, though, the anime is thoroughly sanitized compared to the manga; all of the alcohol jokes are cut (in fact, a lot of the humor in general didn't make it in), and the characters rarely actually bleed when they get hurt. The general consensus is that it's awful, and while I personally enjoy it for what it is, I'll agree that you should definitely go with the manga first.

xxxHOLiC follows the general storyline of the manga, but specific events happen out of order, and stories that were originally holiday-themed usually get changed to remove the reference. Some episodes also take stories that were only a chapter or two long in the manga and add a lot of material to stretch it out to a full episode, while other times characters get inserted into stories where they originally didn't appear (<span style='color:#dddddd;background:#dddddd'>the Zashiki Warashi and the Ame Warashi show up semi-regularly in the anime</span>). Once or twice the stories have had their endings toned down (although oddly, they didn't change a thing in the story with what I thought was the most disturbing imagery of all). Also, all references to Tsubasa have been removed. I think the xxxHOLiC anime is better than Tsubasa's, but I'd still go with the manga, especially since if a theoretical second season arises, the anime is going to have to completely go its own route if they don't want to tie into the Tsubasa storyline.

[Tomcat]

Inuyasha - I have only seen the first part of the anime, and read the first part of the manga, but from what I have seen, it is like all the other Takahashi work, and follows the manga pretty well. Of course, some of the stories are changed a bit to adapt them to animated format, and don't expect everything from the manga to show up in the anime.

Generally, I've not been disappointed in Takahashi stories being animated, except when they leave out a character that appears late in the series, and give their lines to other characters that wouldn't normally say that.

-TC