When we think of anime these days, we think of shows which have been adapted from manga. Some of us can remember more than a few series, which are anime originals like Cowboy Bebop as well. But there are occasions in which anime pulls from a different source: novels.
Yep, this list talks about anime that were pulled from the pages of those lengthy books people tend to pass up on in favor of the manga section. We won’t be using stories which are necessarily obvious however, like Gankutsuou, which literally has the famous Count of Monte Cristo in it’s name. Instead, we’ll be mentioning anime that come from far lesser-known sources, so get ready to dig out your library card.
10 WELCOME TO THE NHK
A critically acclaimed anime of the 2000s, Welcome to the NHK began as a novel by Tatsuhiko Takimoto. The novel first turned into a manga in Monthly Shonen Ace, and the story centered around a young man named Tatsuhiro Sato, a dropout who becomes an unemployed shut-in.
Sato meets Misaki Nakahara, and her goal is to help Sato to break out of his funk and go back to college. Ultimately, NHK was loved for how it dealt with what was then a newish phenomenon—hikikomori, also known as “shut-ins.”
9 TATAMI GALAXY
Tatami Galaxy got its beginnings as a novel by Tomihiko Morimi, also known for his work on Penguin Highway and The Night is Short, Walk On Girl. The story is about a character who’s attending Kyoto University and is about to graduate.
Somehow, he becomes capable of using parallel universes to take a look at how his life would’ve turned out if he’d joined different school clubs, aiming to see what it would’ve taken to get his perfect “rose-colored campus life.” The book was turned into an anime at the dawn of the date, though it ran for only 11 episodes.
8 MORIBITO: GUARDIAN OF THE SPIRIT
Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit is actually the first in a series of novels in the Moribito series, a bunch of novels written by Nahoko Uehashi. Set in a world that has a bunch of analogous versions of actual Asian nations, the main focus of the story is on a woman named Balsa, a spear user who works as a bodyguard.
Eventually, Balsa is asked to become the guardian of the prince of an Imperial Family named Chagum, who happens to be the guardian of the egg of a water spirit. The first novel was adapted in 2007 and managed to also air in America on Adult Swim.
7 HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE
One of the many films from Studio Ghibli and legendary director Hayao Miyazaki, this film is based on a novel from author Diana Wynne Jones. The story introduces us to a young woman named Sophie, who gets turned into an old woman by the Witch of the Waste.
Looking to break this curse, she winds up meeting Howl, a magician who’s been asked to fight in a war and is doing his best to avoid it. While the film is a rather loose adaptation of the novel, it’s managed to have one of the biggest box offices for a Japanese film ever, making nearly $240 million worldwide.
6 HYOUKA
Hyouka began as a mystery novel from author Honobu Yonezawa, and was the first of an ongoing series of novels known as the Classic Literature Club, which is still ongoing, with the author confirming they were working on the seventh novel on Twitter.
The first novel centers around Hotaro Oreki, who gets asked by his sister to join his high school’s Classic Literature Club to keep it from being dissolved due to a lack of members. While there, he and a few other new members begin solving mysteries. Though the novel was published in 2001, it received a television adaptation in the Spring of 2012.
5 MARDOCK SCRAMBLE
A science-fiction series which began as a novel by writer Tow Ubukata, who’s known for his own work on Le Chevalier D’Eon, Heroic Age, as well as Fafner in the Azure. Mardock Scramble was a novel series published in 2003 and eventually turned into a series of films courtesy of studio GoHands in 2012.
The series is set in the far future in Mardock City, with a young girl named Rune who gets taken in by Shell, who later attempts to kill her. When he fails, she gets turned into a cyborg, and she takes it upon herself to put a stop to Shell’s games.
4 THE ECCENTRIC FAMILY
From the same creator as Tatami Galaxy, Eccentric Family is another novel from creator Tomihiko Morimi. The story this time is considerably more comedic, as it follows a family of shape-shifting beings known as tanuki.
The Shimogamo family enjoys a fairly normal life, attending school and making friends, all while doing their best to avoid being eaten by a group known as the Friday Fellows. The novel got two different volumes published in 2007, then in 2015, with the first volume being adapted in 2013 while the second novel got its own anime in 2017.
3 JOKER GAME
Originally written by Koji Yanagi, the Joker Game is perhaps Yanagi’s longest series, as he’s done four different novels from 2008 to 2015, each filled with different short stories. Set just before the Second World War, Joker Game focuses on Japan’s attempt to create an intelligence group that can keep up with other countries.
They come up with D-Agency, and begin training a series of secret agents who can infiltrate and work with other countries undercover, learning how to use different skills for an entirely new world of combat.
2 TWELVE KINGDOMS
Easily one of the most famous series on this list, Twelve Kingdoms is a series of novels from Fuyumi Ono with art from Akihiro Yamada. Set in a world with twelve kingdoms ruled by twelve people chosen by beings known as Titans, Twelve Kingdoms is more about the world itself than any one protagonist. However, the character we see most is Youko Nakajima, a girl from Japan who gets teleported to this new world and has to learn to survive.
One of the best fantasy anime ever, the unfortunate part of Twelve Kingdoms is the series remains unfinished because the novelist put it on hiatus, with the series finally announced to be getting a new entry as recently as 2018.
1 LEGEND OF THE GALACTIC HEROES
Legend of the Galactic Heroes was originally a series of ten novels from Yoshiki Tanaka that came out in the early ’80s. The story was about two geniuses on two sides of a galactic war—Reinhard von Lohengramm of the Galactic Empire and Yang Wen-Li of the Free Planets Alliance.
The two strategists gradually rise to power due to their achievements, resulting in a shift in a war that has been deadlocked for centuries. While the original anime was done completely through OVAs and ran for roughly a decade, there’s recently been another series made via Production I.G., which first began as a television series before moving to a series of films.