10 Anime That Had Completely Different Endings In The Manga | CBR - CBR

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Adapting a manga into an anime isn’t easy. The differences in storytelling can make it necessary to change the way that the story is told. Some anime find it easier to do that than others, especially with stories that are more easily serialized in episodes that follow similar pacing as the manga.

But others run into problems with the length of the manga versus the number of episodes the anime has to tell a story, or the manga itself not actually being complete as the anime goes into production. This can lead to some major differences between the story the manga tells and the story the anime adaptation ends up telling, sometimes up to, and including, a completely different ending.

10 Fullmetal Alchemist

ed pulled into the portal fullmetal alchemist

Fullmetal Alchemist might be the most famous example of an anime that just completely changed the story from the plot of the manga. While much of the early story remains the same, the later episodes diverge completely from the plot of the manga. The changes created an interesting, if sometimes baffling, story that felt like it was guessing the direction of the manga. A few years later, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood rebooted the series and more closely followed the plot of the manga.

9 Neon Genesis Evangelion

Neon Genesis Evangelion is an interesting example of this phenomenon and one of the few examples that actually goes in reverse: it was an anime before it was a manga. The manga was written and drawn by the character designer for the series, and it is held in high regard by fans of the anime. But the ending definitely diverges from the bizarre, and very divisive, ending of the anime, which left many fans feeling outraged.

8 Elfen Lied

Elfen Lied is one of several anime that only adapt part of a manga series. This doesn’t always leave a story unsatisfying or unfinished, and several anime know they’ll be getting a limited number of episodes and successfully work within them to adapt a plot. But Elfen Lied actually only adapted half of the story of the manga. What’s more, the series doesn’t actually have a real ending. It ends on an unsatisfying, unresolved cliffhanger.

7 Death Note

The end of Death Note is foreshadowed pretty much the moment that Light Yagami picks up the Death Note and makes a contract with the Shinigami: eventually, Ryuk is going to write Light’s name in the book and kill him. And that does happen both in the manga and in the anime. However, the way it happens is completely different in each medium. In the manga, the Shinigami has a more direct role in Light’s death while in the anime, he is shot before having his name written.

6 Tokyo Ghoul

Like Fullmetal Alchemist, the extremely popular Tokyo Ghoul anime diverges from its manga source material as the series goes on. And as can be expected when that kind of thing happens, that necessitated a different ending from that in the manga.

In fact, the entire second season of the series goes in a completely different direction than the manga, leaving many fans to actually consider the storytelling there out of canon with the rest of the series.

5 Hellsing

The original Hellsing did its best to faithfully adapt the manga. The problem, which has been the case for several anime over the years, is that the vampire manga was fairly new at the time that the anime was being made. This meant that much of the series ended up being filler. The series also got cancelled early, leaving it to wrap up its filler arcs, with no time to actually know what the ending of the manga was in order to adapt it.

4 Claymore

Claymore doesn’t adapt the entire manga either. But unlike Elfen Lied, Claymore does actually complete a story arc. However, fans of the manga have found the ending of the anime one of the most unsatisfying of any anime adaptation.

The ending features the main character in battle with her enemy, as many anime of its kind end, but instead of a real struggle, it’s an easy win, with an unexplained power-up that left viewers baffled and upset.

3 Soul Eater

While not all changes to an anime ending from a manga ending are necessarily bad, Soul Eater is widely considered by fans to be an extreme disappointment. This anime made a lot of changes to the story as a whole that necessarily changed the ending of the anime, with characters taking different sides in the fight or losing battles that they might have won in the manga. It led to a branching off point from the manga that left many fans of the story dissatisfied.

2 Fruits Basket

The original Fruits Basket anime is an example of another kind of snag that anime productions can sometimes run into when adapting a long-running manga. The manga had way more plot than the anime had the episodes to include. This meant that the story as a whole was incredibly scaled down, and the ending comes long before the actual ending of the manga story, which features more characters and other plot points in addition to the central love story.

1 Shaman King

Shaman King has an ending that fans are very divided on. In both the anime and the manga, Hao successfully becomes the Shaman King and decides to use that power to destroy humanity, which he believes doesn’t deserve to continue existing. In the manga, the heroes manage to convince him to give the world one more chance to prove it deserves to exist. In the anime, however, they deem Hao too much of a threat and kill him instead.

NEXT: Shaman King: 10 Facts You Never Knew About The Popular Anime

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Liz Adler (398 Articles Published)

Liz Adler is a writer and editor based in San Diego, CA. She holds an MFA from San Diego State University and a Bachelor's of Arts from Illinois State University. Her work has been featured at Loser City, HelloGiggles, and Women Write About Comics among others. In her free time, you can find her eating hummus, riding the Haunted Mansion, or being suffocated by her cats, Moo and Mai Tai.