Now, don’t let the clickbait-y title fool you, we here are huge anime fans. For most of us, anime was what got us into this whole otaku culture. Watching dragon ball or bleach in our adolescence propelled us into a plethora of series under our belt and booking flights to Japan. But there’s a point within your journey through anime where you delve into the realm of manga. It may be because you really liked the anime and you wanted to continue the story but oh no, there’s not going to be a second season. (The bane of anime watchers...) Or maybe, you’ve seen a recommendation for a manga that just fits your bill so you say, “hey, I’ll just check this out,” before binging the entire series in one night. Yes, we’ve all been there, yes, we’ve all regretted it. But for those who have not thought of taking the leap into reading manga, here are 5 reasons why manga is better than anime.
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The Complete Story (Most of the Time)
The greatest advantage manga has over anime is that you get to complete a story. We’ve all been there, we found a niche anime that hit us so hard it feels like life is nothing without it and we’re already googling when the next season is going to be, for it to either be not announced or not renewed. You know, where another season of an anime doesn’t come out until 13 years later. (I’m looking at you Full Metal Panic.)
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Generally, with an anime, we’re playing the lottery unless it’s a really popular series. Manga on the other hand, we can expect regular intervals of volumes to come out and for it to have an ending, if the series is well liked and the author doesn’t go on multi-year long hiatuses. (You know who I’m implying here) And that’s because, for the most part, anime is made to drive up manga sales in Japan. They know that, when you get hooked on a series, you’d probably want to go out and buy the next few volumes (or all of them) so you can continue the story.
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Many More Manga
There are way more manga than there are anime. You might already know that, but let me tell you again, there are WAYYY more manga out there. And it is not as if these titles are not good enough for an anime adaptation or are poorly written. There are many amazing titles that never see the green light of anime adaptation. Also, manga is a great place where you can find titles that fit your niche. Want to read about ice skating? Medalist, Yuri on Ice, and like 50 more! Want to read a story about a young bride living in rural life during the 19th century Russian Invasion of Central Asia? Here’s A Bride's Story. What about a story about two high schoolers who die and then they come back to life only to meet other people who have died and now they're in a game but the game is to kill crazy alien creatures where they will die again and their given crazy weapons and cool slick black jumpsuits? Wait, that's just Gantz. But we got that too!
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Poorly Adapted
Another problem with anime, it can be poorly adapted. There’s a lot of corner cutting, splicing, changing, or entirely leaving out characters or portions of an arc, for the sake of adapting a manga. That’s why it’s called an adaptation. Sometimes, it is done flawlessly and both watchers and readers of the series can appreciate the great work the studio has done. However, adaptations leave room for error, and can botch a great story if done wrong. If you’ve been watching anime for sometime, you’ve probably watched an anime or two where you just thought, how did this series get adapted? It could very well be that the original story is actually good, it just had a bad adaptation.
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The Page Turner
Do you remember as a kid? When you were reading a very suspenseful book and you get to a cliffhanger of a page, only to turn it and have your mind blown? Now imagine that, but in picture. Yes, the elusive page turner, is one of the best feelings when reading manga. In a love story, something crazy happens between the two protagonists and you’re not sure how they’ll react, until bam, you turn the page and you’re like “Ohhhh!” Or “Awwww!”. Or in a thriller manga, where you turn the page and unveil a huge twist! The page turner can happen in almost any genre of manga as it is just the creation of suspense to keep the readers captivated. Once you’ve dabbled in the page turner, you’ll be chasing the feeling in every title you read.
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Beautiful Artwork
It should be no surprise that manga can be beautiful. Anime is beautiful too, no doubt, but it is somewhat of a rarity. Because the beauty in fluid animation and spectacles require a dedicated team and a huge budget to be able to draw out everything in succession and animate it.
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On the other hand, there are a lot of anime that look almost cookie cutter. Sometimes you can even tell what studio did the adaptation just by seeing how the backgrounds and characters are animated. Manga, however, is a different ballpark. Because there isn’t a need to draw the same thing multiple times to animate the characters and background, manga artists can take more time on their panels. Adding in depth and detail that anime studios wouldn’t have the time to do. And each manga artist has their own art style, making each manga unique. If you haven’t seen it yet, just look for manga that people call beautifully drawn. Then once you’ve reached a full page panel, you’ll see what I’m talking about.
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Magnus of the Library is seriously underrated. It is so beautiful.
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And that’s that. There are probably other reasons people can find why manga is better than anime. And there are many reasons why anime is better than manga (a future blog post?). But we found these five reasons to be the most convincing to get you into reading some manga!
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Want to discover new manga series to read? Every month? Check out our Monthly Manga Box! Get 3 newly released manga each month.
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