Anime Bad VN Adaptations!

[monina]

We all like anime, hopefully. Sometimes a studio finds a visual novel and decides to compress it into 12-24 episodes.
What could possibly go wrong?
My favorite example of this is Chaos;Head, they remove Rimi's entire backstory, multiple very major plotpoints that lead to the ending.
Since the game has multiple endings, instead of picking the true ending or inital ending, they just.... smash them all together. It comes off like a fan fiction rather than an actual faithful adaptation of the game.

(Art by mixyu_tea)

 

[Yousef Yousef]

Tsukihime may as well be the godfather of poor VN-to-anime adaptations.
We also have Deen’s fate.
The first Kanon anime is consisted poor by some but I personally quite like its mellow tone.

 

[Zerohour2k12]

I wouldn't say it's that bad but out of the 3, they kinda fumbled this one. The 1st and the 3rd and both solid though.

 

[CG4R12I4N]

Tsukihime may as well be the godfather of poor VN-to-anime adaptations.
We also have Deen’s fate.
The first Kanon anime is consisted poor by some but I personally quite like its mellow tone.

The fuck lmao, DEEN's F/sn is actually pretty good storytelling despite the weird mishmash of the VN routes.
Demonbane anime is more suited for this, it literally nerfed all the great things from the VN including the consistently perverted & dark humors, and the mecha battles are literally pain to the eyes compared to the VN. It's more akin to the usual horrible Saturday Morning Cartoon instead of interesting trainwreck Adult Swim.
But then again, almost all mecha VN adaptations are pretty much like this. Remember Muv-Luv Extra & Alternative? One of the greatest impact VN of all time globally yet the anime itself is absolute catastrophe people still refused to talk about it to this day.

 

[Yousef Yousef]

The fuck lmao, DEEN's F/sn is actually pretty good storytelling despite the weird mishmash of the VN routes.
Demonbane anime is more suited for this, it literally nerfed all the great things from the VN including the consistently perverted & dark humors, and the mecha battles are literally pain to the eyes compared to the VN. It's more akin to the usual horrible Saturday Morning Cartoon instead of interesting trainwreck Adult Swim.
But then again, almost all mecha VN adaptations are pretty much like this. Remember Muv-Luv Extra & Alternative? One of the greatest impact VN of all time globally yet the anime itself is absolute catastrophe people still refused to talk about it to this day.

Ahhhh yess of course how could I forget the great storytelling behind the silky smooth MS paint level animation

 

[CG4R12I4N]

Ahhhh yess of course how could I forget the great storytelling behind the silky smooth MS paint level animation

Keep being mad then, it's still better than 90% of most VN adaptation anime made to this day. Heck, technically it's still on par with ufotable UBW anime despite almost better everything on the latter.

 

[Yousef Yousef]

Keep being mad then, it's still better than 90% of most VN adaptation anime made to this day. Heck, technically it's still on par with ufotable UBW anime despite almost better everything on the latter.

That’s rich, I’ve never saw such a diehard fan of DEEN’s fate, but there’s fans of DEEN’s Higu.
And i wasn’t mocking you, so don’t worry there and hope it didn’t come off that way, I was genuinely amazed it has fans. I think that’s incredible.

 

[Viviana Santos]

What the fuck even happened here man......

 

[monina]

View attachment 179683What the fuck even happened here man......

Honorable mention to the higurashi deen anime as well, its not nearly as bad but it is very trying to turn higurashi from a psychological horror to a slasher, defeating the point entirely.

 

[Yousef Yousef]

View attachment 179683What the fuck even happened here man......

A speedrun, but in anime form. Truly revolutionary.

 

[Viviana Santos]

Honorable mention to the higurashi deen anime as well, its not nearly as bad but it is very trying to turn higurashi from a psychological horror to a slasher, defeating the point entirely.

I like Deen's Higurashi since it was my introduction to both Higurashi and Ryukishi07, but I agree that it’s far inferior to the original visual novel (though the new Higurashi anime adaptation with the Monogatari character designer isn’t very good either)

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But the Umineko anime adaptation is just a complete disaster. You know it’s bad when the spin-off fighting game respects the source material more than the anime adaptation does.

 

[Fietto!]

A speedrun, but in anime form. Truly revolutionary.

A speedrun? Here's a contender.

Post automatically merged: Apr 30, 2026

I like Deen's Higurashi since it was my introduction to both Higurashi and Ryukishi07, but I agree that it’s far inferior to the original visual novel (though the new Higurashi anime adaptation with the Monogatari character designer isn’t very good either)

---

But the Umineko anime adaptation is just a complete disaster. You know it’s bad when the spin-off fighting game respects the source material more than the anime adaptation does.

Holy shit, Golden Fantasia. You've hit the mark, & the damn spin-off even tributes to Touhou for some of that extra cross-fan service.

 

[Viviana Santos]

A speedrun? Here's a contender.
View attachment 179688

I honestly enjoyed the Ace Attorney anime adaptations. I do prefer the games more, but I don't think they're that bad, to be honest.

 

[Yousef Yousef]

I honestly enjoyed the Ace Attorney anime adaptations. I do prefer the games more, but I don't think they're that bad, to be honest.

The real ace attorney anime

 

[Viviana Santos]

The real ace attorney anime

It's funny to me how even the VAs noticed the homoerotic tension between Edgeworth and Phoenix

 

[Yousef Yousef]

It's funny to me how even the VAs noticed the homoerotic tension beetween Edgeworth and Phoenix

It’s like trying to ignore the snow in the Antarctica

 

[Xdqwerty Xdqwerty]

Danganronpa

 

[Fietto!]

Danganronpa

True.

 

[downloadingshit]

Umineko's already been mentioned, so I'll go with Dies Irae and Grisaia. The former I ended up not even bothering with the last ONA only episodes. Who the fuck thought the third route in the game was the best to adapt with no other context, who animates a fucking prequel side story you don't read until after the 2nd route as the first episode????

Grisaia's is just too compressed, though I will say I enjoyed episode 13 at the very least over how they handled it in the VN