Visual novels are a form of video game that originated in Japan and feature an interactive story that's largely told through text form. The player makes choices while reading the story, but mostly has the story told to them more than anything else, with their choices sometimes giving them different endings for each character.
The anime world has been adapting these storylines for decades. Sometimes it results in some of the most memorable anime series in decades, while other times, not so much. Not every adaptation is going to be a golden idea, of course.
10 Worst: Rail Romanesque
This series is based off the Maitetsu visual novel, which released sometime in 2016. The story follows an alternate history for Japan where rail travel is still the most important form of transportation.
Because of their importance, each train has a humanoid AI known as a Railord. Rail Romanesque is about the town of Ohitoyoshi having its first festival to gather both Railords and their human masters to celebrate them. An interesting enough idea, but the show felt rushed and underdeveloped.
9 Best: Clannad
The original Clannad helped ignite a new audience of slice of life fans. It starts out with the high school student Tomoya Okazaki who meets a young girl named Nagisa. What starts out as an accident turns into the two of them getting to know one another and falling in love.
Tomoya goes from detached to helping Nagisa bring back his school’s drama club, where he spends more time with her, getting to know her. What makes this series work are the interpersonal relationships, as even though they can be a bit tropey it’s still engaging to see them interact, leaving readers hooked until the very end.
8 Worst: Wagamama High Spec
Set in the student council of Ousui Academy, Wagamama High Spec’s biggest problem is it mostly exists to push the visual novel. It’s all about cute girls doing a bunch of cute things, because the biggest problem is the protagonist of the normal series isn’t actually in this anime.
Instead, it’s all the girls that have fallen in love with the protagonist, and what they’re all about when the main character isn’t around. That’s a unique premise, but the series doesn’t do anything fun with it.
7 Best: Fate/Stay Night — Unlimited Blade Works
The remake of the original Fate/Stay Night series. It took nearly a decade, but the popularity of the Fate franchise would not be denied. To the anime’s credit, they nailed it this time around.
The story is about Shirou Emiya and his partner Saber, who are involved in the Fourth Holy Grail War, a massive battle royale between magicians and their servants. Will the soft-hearted Shirou be able to win it all?
6 Worst: Ozmafia!!
This visual novel is about a young heroine that finds herself in another world, trying to avoid being killed when she gets pulled into a mafia family. Soon she’s dealing with the war between multiple mafia groups, trying to survive and see peace.
Now it would be great if the anime was about this and it could have been an entertaining otome visual novel anime, but it’s not. Ozmafia’s anime is a series of shorts that has nothing to do with a plot that already works, but is instead a comedy anime.
5 Best: Steins;Gate
A popular visual novel, Steins;Gate would go on to become one of the best known anime among long-time anime fans. It starts out with Rintarou Okabe trying to create his own lab where he could invent high tech gadgets.
He recruits a number of people to join him, and mostly they create nothing— until they invent a special phone microwave which can send messages into the past, altering time. From there things get wilder and wilder, with viewers pulled along through great animation and storytelling.
4 Worst: Dies Irae
Combine magic, super powered soldiers, Nazis, and you get Dies Irae. It’s a well-liked visual novel that was turned into an awful television series.
No one knows what’s happening for most of it because the plot is explained poorly. And while the animation can look good in spots, mostly it relies heavily on CGI that isn’t done very well. It just doesn’t achieve anything that can’t be found in other, better series or in the visual novel as well.
3 Best: When They Cry — Kai
One of the more popular visual novel series, When They Cry: Kai is the summer 2007 sequel to the original When They Cry. Animated by Studio DEEN, When They Cry: Kai is a thriller series following the story of a young girl named Rika Furude.
Rika is struggling to survive in a summer that keeps repeating itself, trying to find the answer to save not only herself, but her friends from a villain committing murders all over the village.
2 Worst: Lime-iro Ryuukitan X
This show feels like a rip-off of a much better series, Sakura Wars. Here, things are focused on the Russo-Japanese War, and the focus is on a bunch of high school girls with the ability to summon armored help known as Raimu.
The group accomplishes some awesome feats with their Raimu, but the focus is on their new leader, who joins the group in the hopes that he can defend Japan as well.
1 Best: Clannad After Story
One of the most well-liked anime series of all time, based on one of the best visual novels of the 2010s. Clannad: After Story begins right after Clannad, and deals with Tomoya and Nagisa and their developing relationship.
The two of them start to deal with what it’s like to grow up outside of high school, and give a glimpse into a relationship that’s more than most typical slice of life anime series. Even more of a tear-jerker than the original series, this represents some of the best storytelling the romantic and slice of life genre has to offer.