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alt title(s): Over Tookthe Manga Many anime are based on a manga — the Japanese equivalent to American comic books. While simply making the anime into a completely Alternate Continuity is common, more often the anime at least tries to follow the major plot points of the original manga.
If a series is especially popular, though, its anime version will begin before the manga even ends. Because of medium conventions, it takes longer for events to unfold in manga than it does in anime; this often means that an anime will simply run out of source material. While some manga series are published weekly (e.g., Shonen Magazine/Sunday/Jump, etc), others are published on a monthly schedule (e.g., Nakayoshi, Shonen Ace). However, most anime are aired weekly, which just makes it worse, especially for manga that have just started. The producers of the anime are then in a fix. They can't just wait for the mangaka to produce more material, because they have a broadcast schedule to meet. Japanese shows are broadcast solely as first run episodes with no reruns. No new episodes is akin to being canceled.
Unless they work in very close tandem with the writer of the original manga, the people in charge of the anime will thus have to start making things up on their own, and create a unique plotline from the point they ran out of manga to base things on.
Unfortunately, unpopular or unwelcome FillerArcs or Filler episodes may often be Mis Blamed as being the fault of the author(s), when in reality, they may often not have a whole lot to do with the filler plot. Some fillers that were better received by fans are often cited as being opportunities to develop lesser-characters. (This often helps with animes that have a cast size near the size of the production staff.)
Most writers just choose to do a Gecko Ending instead.
See also Wacky Wayside Tribe.
Examples:
- The first Fullmetal Alchemist anime went into an Alternate Continuity from its very early episodes, although the changes were fairly subtle in the beginning. This is because the creators knew in advance that it would overtake the manga, as did the manga's creator, who explicitly asked them to take this route. It is yet unknown whether or not this will happen to Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, the most recent anime adaptation, because the manga, which is only published once a month, may not end in time for the end of the anime's run.
- Sailor Moon invented mini-arcs in case new seasons weren't picked up or when they had to Snap Back after Overtaking The Manga, such as the mindwipe in the first season. This is particularly noticeable in SuperS, which shares almost nothing in common with its manga counterpart and is noted for having had a significant ratings drop in Japan and for being most of the fandom's least favorite series. In the final season, they broke their rule of one Big Bad per season for a mini-arc that brought back the rest of the cast and properly ended the previous series by recycling the Big Bad of SuperS. After that arc, the proper Big Bad, Galaxia, showed up and the series started to adapt the manga plot.
- For what it's worth, Sailor Moon the anime and Sailor Moon the manga were planned to start at the same time. Therefore every series is only a loose adaptation of the manga at best by design. Few of the plots are identical, sharing only villains and main characters at most. Chalk this one up to Adaptation Decay.
- The whole Doom Tree arc at the beginning of Sailor Moon R was created so that the mangaka could restart the Manga (the original story was supposed to end with the defeat of Beryl) and get ahead of the animation.
- The Rurouni Kenshin anime's last three arcs (the Christian/Shimabara, Black Knights, and Feng Shui arcs) were anime-only, created while waiting for the author to finish the manga. Sadly, the lower quality of the filler arcs led to the anime's cancellation, and the final manga arc was never fully animated.
- Over half of the first-season episodes (almost everything after the end of the Oniwa-Banshu arc) were filler, largely consisting of stand-alone episodes or two or three episode storylines that were basically watered-down versions of other plots from the manga (the series and the movie have three or four low-rent versions of the series' ultimate Big Bad Shishio—masterminds with a vision of the "good old days" who gather together a bunch of unemployed swordsmen to embark on national conquest).
- And a lot of the canon episodes are half filler as well (the Raijuta arc, for example).
- Hellsing's writer was upset when its anime went a completely different direction with characterization in its "Incognito arc". For a time, later adaptations of the anime were postponed. An OVA is underway with the sixth episode in production.
- Eh, the story has always been radically different with (back then) comic relief Seras Victoria promoted to audience surrogate and different characterization. Plus Hirano wasn't upset at all, he lists the Anime as "cool" in his tanko 10 and in an interview, he says he likes the anime because "it has its own identity." There was no plan to continue the TV series, absolutely false rumors. All the official Gonzo interviews and material (including a guidebook) say it was concluded. The ending was mean to be ambiguous like the Manga was. So Yeah.
- Mahou Sensei Negima created a radically different ending for its anime than the manga, which is ongoing. Despite being originally planned for being 52 episodes, this combined with animation difficulties resulted in the series ending after one season. A remake was later produced which was more obviously Inspired By rather than a direct adaptation.
- .hack//Legend of the Twilight also diverged from its manga once it reached the "Haunted House." This included, oh, removing half to all of the plot. To this day, the Twilight anime is the only installment, besides the gag OAV .hack//GIFT, which does not count officially in the series canon.
- Ranma 1/2 overtook its manga source several times, and made a large number of episodes from scratch each time it happened.
- Several episodes also were condensed arcs from the manga as well, but that may often be expected.
- Naruto has a great deal of sub-par filler episodes due to this, including two entire seasons composed solely of filler and nothing else. This led to a severe drop in ratings, which led to the time-jumped arc being essentially a relaunch with the new title of Naruto Shippuuden.
- Although in its defense, some of the filler arcs were quicker-paced and more action-filled than the show itself.
- Also, some of the filler arcs are moderately popular for providing screen time to fan favorite secondary characters.
- The post-Time Skip filler arcs are somewhat liked for giving some attention to some otherwise under featured characters, expanding on the source material instead of just adding irrelevant side-stories that go nowhere, and being full Story Arcs instead of largely pointless 1-3 part episodes.
- Kashimashi Girl Meets Girl ignores a new plotline added in the manga and goes for a Gecko Ending—probably for the better, although opinions differ.
- It could be argued or subverted, that the anime Trigun overtook the manga by a fair margin or how it did so. In 1997, Yasuhiro Nightow had to deal with the abrupt end of the manga with the cancellation of the shonen magazine he was publishing on. In 1998, when he continued on the seinen magazine Young King Ours with TriMax, it was in the same time Madhouse began the anime, so it quickly overtook and finished long before the manga did, which ended in Japan only last year. From Volumes 2-3 of Tri Max, including the equivalents of episodes 20-21, the manga takes new directions with plot and characters, maybe to keep it interesting, while retaining parallels revealed in the anime that Nightow had probably intended from the beginning.
- Nightow even references in anime with volume 12, which includes a four-page montage of practically every key character from each chapter, including characters that had only been seen in the anime.
- The Simoun manga debuted in the January, 2006 issue of Yuri Hime magazine, at which time the anime version had already started production. The two tell different stories, albeit with the same background.
- The extremely long One Piece anime is buffered, since the series actually takes periodic breaks through the year which, among other things, helps the author catch up. Despite this, the anime has many story arcs that the manga doesn't have, some of which are considered remarkably asinine, including things like millennium dragons, a mind-controlling, memory-stealing seahorse, and mismanaged Time Travel.
- That's not to say it's all bad: the G8 arc that comes at the end of Sky Island is good enough to be considered canon if one isn't familar with the manga, and at least two early filler episodes actually are canon stories that the anime used because the author wanted the 100th chapter to be special, and so handed the pieces to the anime to finish.
- The latest stretch of filler was a two-episode mini-arc, and a stand-alone filler episode about Brook. Rather than have filler arcs, most of the recent episodes add significant amounts of anime-only scenes so that they begin and end in the course of a single chapter; while it doesn't allow Oda to get any farther ahead, it prevents the anime from getting closer to the manga. This leads to strange scenes such as Eustace Kidd and Trafalgar Law struggling against a Pacifista in a fight that went unseen in the manga. The former's magnetic powers and the latter's spacial distortion powers would have extreme effectiveness against the android, in what should have been a quick match.
- The author seems to be Genre Savvy, as he includes short backstory serials that could be converted into "filler" that actually helps the plot.
- Why they aren't already made is another question entirely, as the anime has already passed by most of these shorts, having only animated two; it seems, though, Oda'll be forcing their hand, as the most recent shorts deal with the Straw Hat crew and how they deal from their respective situations. The anime will have to animate these shorts at some point, as they're far too important to simply leave alone.
- They have
- Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch also had filler while waiting for the manga that eventually crowded out key plot points from said manga. Meaning? Anything involving Coco.
- Yu-Gi-Oh loves to do this; the Virtual World (which occured right in the middle of another, in-manga arc), Doma, The KC Grand Prix, and the Capsule Monsters story arcs were a result of this, and nearly the entire premise of the manga version of GX was different due to this as a result of Executive Meddling.
- Actually, the Capsule Monsters arc was commissioned by 4kids in an attempt to milk the franchise for even more money.
- Also, the manga was made after the anime was in its 3rd season, and intentionally changed by the writer (who did NOT work on the anime).
- Not exactly the same, but the Sonic The Hedgehog Archie comics are a rare Western inversion; based on the Sat AM cartoon, it had tons of side-stories and original content during the show's run, and continued long after the show was cancelled. The only ties it currently has to its original progenitor is the occasional comic adaptations of whichever Sonic video game, at the time (from which both comic and manga derived from).
- The Sonic X comic has done the same thing, with the Sonic characters being shown still living on earth in the comic long after the anime had sent them home. The big disappointment here is that they undo Chris’s Rescued From The Scrappy Heap status by doing so...
- Bleach created the Bount Arc. Interestingly, once the manga had built up enough story to be converted, the anime kept referring to the filler even after it had caught up. For instance, the Mod Souls helping out in the second fight against the Espada.
- Mainly because the Bount arc was in the anime continuity, and there wasn't any real reason to throw away any sign of already-established characters.
- The Bount arc was also received as a good opportunity to develop lesser characters. (Mayuri Kurotsuchi, Uryuu Ishida, and Soifon for example were given quite a bit of screentime during the Bount Arc; and Uryuu was given a very important role.)
- During the Hueco Mundo arc they had to insert more Filler, the only problem, was that there was no room to insert filler, so the entire arc takes place post-Winter War. Which would ruin the suspense, if it were possible for named characters in Bleach to ever die, anyway.
- Actually, the filler doesn't take place within continuity whatsoever.
- Because of Kubo's incredibly slow pacing in the more recent arcs, the anime has actually stopped for another filler arc. That is the second filler arc in this story arc, not counting the stand alone filler episodes. The characters themselves actually lampshaded this, asking the viewer to bear with them. Luckily, it seems to actually be fairly popular.
- With Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, apparently CLAMP is so upset that production company Bee Train had to resort to making stuff up because CLAMP took too long and too slow to tell their story (a common occurence) that they've given the rights to make an OVA of their series to a different company.
- The Dragonball series is downright infamous for the effect this had on the anime.
- Partially being dealt with, as "Dragon Ball Kai" has started recently and looks to be a recut of Z, It's been put forward as taking out the filler and cutting it down to about 100 eps, which is supposed to make it cover about the same amount of stuff as the original Z manga.
- Bardock, Goku's father, actually first appeared in the anime. Akira Toriyama liked this character enough to include him at least twice in a flashback.
- To anyone who thinks it's too slow: read the manga and prepare to have your mind blown wide.
- Averted in Guyver, which has had three animated adaptations and none of them have gone past the first appearance of Guyver Gigantic. This happened in the early 90s... and the manga is still ongoing. Even the most recent anime, produced in 2005, just barely got Guyver Gigantic in. Many Guyver fans would love an anime that runs long enough to overtake the massive manga lead...
- Gantz is an odd example, where the manga and anime were created at about the same time. The anime-makers, knowing they would eventually get ahead of the manga, decided from the beginning that it would only follow the manga through a few arcs. The anime ended with an arc that was nowhere in the manga. This is odd because, to have "filler" in the anime, there were added scenes/dialogue about/from characters that weren't in the manga, that actually fleshed them out more than in the manga, and not in a bad way. The anime is arguably the better of the two versions because of that, right up until the last arc.
- "Arguable", yes. It's also arguable whether the filler scenes resulted in "fleshing out of characters" or entire episodes of maddening "Oh my God, just DO something" moments.
- When the Inuyasha anime series Overtook The Manga, Sunrise opted to simply end it, resulting in a finale that only get about 7/10 the way through the story, and thusfails to resolve any of the major plot threads of the series.
- However, the upcoming Inuyasha the Final Act appears to be a continuation of the previous anime, and will apparently cover the remaining volumes of the manga, since the series ended in 2008.
- Fruits Basket, which resulted in a very awkward situation where the androgynous main villain was revealed to be female in the manga and male in the anime.
- The Bokurano anime was completed before the manga was, resulting in the last half of the anime having absolutely no connection or resemblance to the equivalent in the manga, with the exception of one plot twist that the manga author might have decided to use after the anime came up with it.
- The different direction the anime took wasn't just due to the fact that it Overtook The Manga, given this
- Also, Kitoh included hints to said plot twist in the manga before the anime introduced them, so it's safe to say he informed Morita of the twist instead.
- Possibly the only Western example of this in existence: He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. The series was put into production before the comic it was based on (and, by extent, the mini-comics that came with the action figures) could establish a concrete plot. This resulted in the story being retconned to fit in with the show.
- Saiyuki has had a number of these. The second arc of Gensoumaden was an anime-only arc, although Homura (the arc's Big Bad) was designed by author Kazuya Minekura and took existing elements from the prequel series Gaiden, also on-going. Then, the current plot of the sequel Reload, which is on-going, was halted while the author was sick. In order to keep production going, the anime took the existing plot and characters and went in a completely different direction with them. A very, very different direction. Thus, important continuing plot elements from the manga were completely left out and the anime finished without them- with no word on whether the manga's version of the arc will be animated at all. This also led to a huge shuffle-around of manga to anime plots, with the second manga plot taking place in the first half of Reload anime, and the second half of Reload taking place in another sequel anime, Reload Gunlock.
- Because the anime version of Keroro Gunsou frequently runs ahead of the manga (particularly in the more recent years) a number of episodes and plots are present in the former that are not in the latter, such Karara's repeated appearances to marry one of the members of the platoon and the timer counting down to the invasion in season 3.
- The anime version of Great Teacher Onizuka followed the manga for the most part right up the trip to Okinawa.
- Another anime that follows this suit is Ai Yori Aoshi. While Ai Yori Aoshi and Ai Yori Aoshi Enishi follow the manga for the most part pretty faithfully, its ending accomplishes nothing story wise.
- While most of the Pokemon seasons are based directly off of one of the handheld video games, having Ash and co. visit the region of the currently-released instalment and halfheartedly promise to catch all of the new Pokémon it introduced, the second season, named "The Orange Islands", took place on a completely original set of islands. This was due to Pokémon Gold & Silver not yet being released at the time; while they could've had the characters potter about the Kanto region for another 35 episodes, moving the story to a more original setting allowed the producers to start introducing more of the new Johto pokémon ahead of Gold/Silver's release.
- Violinist of Hameln found themselves so far ahead of the manga that they needed to come up with their own explanations for many of the Chekovs Gun found in the series, as well as creating a Gecko Ending for it all.
- The anime for Berserk ended extremely early compared to the manga (which is still going) - in fact, it ended much earlier than halfway through the manga. This was likely because having an anime run concurrently when it goes through seven years of source material (although not all of it) in six months is utterly impossible.
- The anime Peacemaker Kurogane actually ends at the prequel for the actual manga "Peacemaker Kurogane", and only follows the events of the manga "Shinsengumi Imon Peacemaker."
- The anime version of Konjiki No Gash Bell ran at the same time as the manga version it was based on. Unfortunately, Makoto Raiku, the author of the manga, broke his hand, forcing the manga version to go on hiatus while the author's hand healed enough to allow him to draw again. The anime Overtook The Manga as a result, so the anime diverged from the manga for its final episodes.
- Some aspects of the anime made it into the manga once Raiku resumed drawing, the most notable being Zeon's ultimate spell and the location of the final battle between Sherry and Gash.
- Soul Eater is almost exactly the same as the manga with only a few minor alterations (and more Excalibur for some reason) up until episode 37 at which point the new ending switches around which characters live and die, changes the significance of several characters, and involves a giant robot fight in a series which had never had anything remotely like that happen before. In the final episode Maka is able to fight off Asura, one of the most powerful beings in existence, by somehow becoming a weapon for a few minutes (which, oddly enough, doesn't have any real effect on the fight) and finally by punching him really hard in the face, which causes him to crack apart as if he were made of glass and explode because she "filled her fist with courage". It's worth noting that she doesn't even use Soul, her partner, to achieve this, which is strange since teamwork seemed to be a pretty major theme in the show up until the final episode. Some of these changes, though, can actually be considered to be quite awesome, so it's really up to the viewer to decide.
- With Soul Eater it was inevitable as the series belongs to a monthly manga, and since anime are made for weekly showings. It was going to catch up pretty quickly regardless.
- Venus Versus Virus's anime went in a completely different direction from the manga,from the first episode. It also had a Gecko Ending.
- Excel Saga outright went for an entirely different storyline to avoid such scenario.
- The Eyeshield 21 anime has a lot more wacky hijinks between games because of this.
- Saint Seiya created the whole Asgard arc after the Sanctuary Chapter which surprisingly enough became one of the fans favorite arcs. On the other hand, they created several filler episodes in the Sanctuary Chapter which led to some confusions notably with the introduction of the Crystal Saint as Hyoga's mentor when it was later revealed in the manga that Hyoga's mentor was in fact the Aquarius Saint. It was handwaved by making The Aquarius Saint the mentor of the Crystal Saint who was still the mentor of Hyoga the Cygnus Saint, thus establishing some kind of "coherent" hierarchy.
- The popularity of Kuroshitsuji caused it to be adapted way too soon, causing the anime to spiral into a totally different direction than the manga. Only 9 of the 24 episodes are adapted directly from the manga, but they still contain filler.
- In Saki, the manga ended the regional tournament just a few days before it ended in the anime. Whether or not everything after the last match is just meaningless filler is cause for the debate because if it is based on the author's plot, it means that Yuki will be playing against Final Boss Teru during the team tournaments and Saki will have to play against her later during the individual tournament. This would contradict Saki's original goal of winning the team tournament specifically so she could play mahjong with her sister one more time.
- Speculation says that both Yuuki and Teru are the first players on the teams they play for, whereas Saki is the last for Kiyosumi. Most likely they'll meet in the individuals.
- Video Game pseudeo-example: The Tim Burton Batman movie was adapted to an NES game by Sunsoft, who took great liberties with the plot of the movie but still managed to churn out a pretty good sidescroller. However, Sunsoft couldn't wait for the next movie to come out before making a sequel to the NES game, and created Batman: Return of the Joker by themselves.
- A similar example occurs with the SNES adaptation of Jurassic Park. Ocean couldn't wait for the sequel (or even the novel it would be loosely based on) and created their own, Jurassic Park 2: The Chaos Continues. It had a vaguely similar plot to the eventual sequel; a rival genetics company tries to take control of the island by force, and Alan Grant is sent to stop them. Nobody stopped to question why Grant was suddenly a gun-toting Contra-esque mercenary... or why he'd care about any of this. Good music, though.
- Street Fighter was another interesting example in that Tiertex, the company responsible for porting the original Street Fighter to home computers (who also did a terrible job at at it) decided they couldn't wait for Street Fighter 2 to revolutionize the fighting game genre, so they took their port of Street Fighter and made their own original sequel to it, titled Human Killing Machine (which was also quite crap).
- The Yu Gi Oh anime got through three whole arcs that weren't in the manga before they both finally rounded everything up in Millennium World.
- Shugo Chara seems to have just barely avoided this (at least for the moment).
- Animated Adaptations of CLAMP's X/1999 have obviously counted into this because the manga was actually canceled (Or rather, it has been listed as "on Hiatus" for a long while) due to Monthly Asuka growing concerned about the manga's rather violent storyline and imagery present in the storyline, and the authors actually didn't want to be censored so they opted for hiatus. (Of course, the manga was actually pulled a couple times already for similar reasons.
- Another rare movie example, Secret Of NIMH actually overtook the source material. While the Bluth film was rather jumping in an out of In Name Only, the ending (And primary events) of Bluth's 1982 Animated Adaptation pretty much ruined any potential chance of covering the two books written by Jane Leslie Conly with Jenner and Nicodemus kicking the bucket. (Whereas they both survived in the books; however it was implied that Jenner possibly died off-screen sometime in the first book with the mention of his party being electrocuted by a car battery) But Bluth honestly deserves this... his film was copyright 1982; Conly's books are dated 1986 and 1990, Chances are nobody even knew that Conly would take over or that the official book sequel would be released four years later. (Whether or not the supposed remake will follow the books more faithfully is unknown)
- Bluth has also stated that if he were to make a sequel to Secret of NIMH, he'd actually cast Martin as the hero while Timothy was the villain. Interestingly, the sequel made 17 years later actually did the opposite.
- Ouran High School Host Club pretty much averted this. The anime came out in 2006 and ran for only one season, while the manga, updated monthly, is still currently ongoing with over 70 chapters. Despite this, the anime followed the manga nicely with the exception of a few minor alterations that more or less didn't really affect anything. Only the very last two episodes or so drift from the manga. The anime ending was enough to give some closure, but still very open with the female protagonist not paired with any one of the six boys, leaving all pairings possible for fangirls to squee over.
- With a televised HBO series based on A Song Of Ice And Fire now almost certain, and the glacial pace at which George R. R. Martin publishes new books in the series, a rare case of live-action Overtook The Manga seems not unimaginable. The first book was published in 1996, the second in 1999, and the third in 2000; not a prodigious rate, but reasonably steady. However, the fourth book did not appear until 2005 (and was widely criticized for high levels of Filler and Trapped By Mountain Lions), and the fifth book is still in limbo as of February 2010. Since the TV show is to start in 2011 and proceed at a pace of one season per book...
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