In 2020, a new Crunchyroll Original entitled EX-ARM was released worldwide. Although it should have been mostly forgettable like most Crunchyroll Originals, something else happened—people realized it was absolutely terrible and had horrible animation. When fans looked into it, they would learn that most of the main staff had never worked on anime before.
EX-ARM, unfortunately, is not the first time fans have been saddled with a series where everything went wrong, though. Unfortunately, there's no shortage of anime that had their share of problems. Whether it was bad animation, poor pacing, or just a bad adaptation, there's a ton of series where potential audiences would be better off just reading the manga.
10 EX-ARM Relied On A Team Of Entirely Inexperienced Animators
EX-ARM was a cyberpunk manga that ran from 2015 to 2019. The series was finished by the time an anime was coming out for it, so realistically there shouldn’t have been any reason for them to get it wrong. It should have been possible to tell the story of Alma and her AI partner Akira Natsume without any issue.
Instead, the anime is an absolute mess, with some scenes looking as if they were barely animated at all. The studio Visual Flight employed people who weren’t used to doing animation at all, and the series became known for how horrible it looked.
9 Berserk Relied On Terrible Looking, Barely Animated CGI Early On
Before there was EX-ARM, there was Berserk. Studios Millepensee and GEMBA worked together to bring a new adaptation of the Berserk storyline. People have long wanted a proper adaptation for Guts' story—but this version of Berserk isn’t it.
The animation is awful, and much like most series, it didn’t bother to finish adapting the manga. In this scenario, however, that’s probably a good thing.
8 The Promised Neverland Skips Dozens Of Chapters For Season Two
CloverWorks is a great studio, but they did fans of this franchise so dirty. While the first season had manga fans frustrated because of some changes here and there, overall, it was considered a good adaptation. But that all changed from the very beginning of season two.
While the first season scored an 8.31 on MyAnimeList, the second dropped down to a 5.8. What’s the issue? Well, they rushed through stories and skipped eighty chapters of the manga. By the end of the series, the anime community had all but stopped bringing it up at all.
7 Mahou Sensei Negima Never Got To Switch Genres In Either Anime Series
Any viewer exhausted with how many harem series there are will find themselves frustrated by Negima’s existence. To many people, it’s just a mediocre harem series from the 2000s that doesn’t stand out much from any of the rest—but t manga fans will tell a different story.
Fans of the manga will point out the series’ deep lore and incredible fight scenes starring a largely female cast. This series had a ton of potential, but both of its animes left that by the wayside to continue talking about the harem stuff.
6 Flame Of Recca Catches Up To The Manga And Concludes In A Rushed Manner
Recca Hanabishi is a young boy trying to become a ninja...and when he pledges his life to a young girl with special healing abilities, he finds himself learning more about himself AND being placed in scenarios where he has actually to prove he wants to be a ninja.
But while the Flame of Recca anime series is entertaining for the pure shonen goodness, it ultimately cuts off before the last two arcs and robs the viewers of much of the story's better parts. Fans of 90’s anime are better off looking elsewhere.
5 Rosario + Vampire Focused On The Harem Elements Instead Of The Story And Action Of The Manga
Rosario + Vampire shows just how much the anime world—though perhaps not the fans themselves—likes harem series. Studio Gonzo provided fans with yet another harem in the 2008 series by introducing fans to Tsukune Aono, a human that started going to an academy for monsters.
The manga is very similar, but it has to go because the anime doesn’t is an incredible art style from mangaka Ikeda Akihisa. The difference between how the anime is received and the manga was immense. MyAnimeList gave the anime a 6.83, while the first half of the manga was a 7.69, and the second half was an 8.18.
4 Tenjou Tenge Stops Just After Developing Some Of The Background Cast, Leaving The Main Characters Without A Story
As Oh! Great’s first big manga, Tenjou Tenge, was a series about a pair of young punks who thought they would go to a school and take over. Instead, wind up getting easily beat down by someone who isn’t even the strongest person there.
Tenjou Tenge gets wild, and the series only adapts a few short arcs that don’t even approach the craziest stuff. And then, of course, it isn’t easy to properly adapt Oh Great’s incredible artwork, to begin with. Just watch it for that one scene and then switch to the manga.
3 History's Greatest Disciple Kenichi Spends Much Of It's Series Doing Flashbacks Rather Than Getting Ahead Of The Manga
A 2000’s shonen anime that might seem good to fans who don’t want to read the manga ever, but the Kenichi anime can really test one’s patience. About an arc into the series, the recaps get more detailed and longer.
By the time the series reaches the middle of the series, each new episode wastes half of its run-time recapping the last episode. And the show still isn’t a full adaptation and cuts the series off long before the manga reaches the end of its storyline.
2 Air Gear Stops Long Before It Can Reach Its Best Moments
Air Gear was mangaka Oh! Great’s second big manga after Tenjou Tenge and published in Weekly Shonen Magazine. The series ran for six years and over 300 chapters, but of course, the anime only ran for twenty-six episodes.
The animation for it is decent but doesn’t close to portraying the glorious artwork of Oh! Great or the sense of speed for all the races that happen in the series. Lacking both accuracies to the manga or the art style of the series, fans are better off reading the manga to enjoy the full story.
1 Black Cat Condensed A Much Larger Story To Only Twenty-Six Episodes
The story had finished its serialization in Weekly Shonen Jump when they created the Black Cat anime. The manga had run for a respectable twenty volumes from 2000 to 2004 and came to a stop, and the anime’s first episode was in 2005. They could easily have completely adapted the storyline. Instead, they threw out several bits and pieces and slapped something largely new together for a 23 episode adaptation that cuts out so much of what made the manga interesting to begin with.
During the 2000s, the point usually was to boost the popularity of a manga that was still in publication, so with no manga, they likely didn’t want to resort to too many weeks of production to a series that had limited sales potential.