Adaptation Displacement / Anime & Manga

Examples of Adaptation Displacement after an existing work has been adapted into anime or manga. This also includes examples of anime adapted into manga, and vice versa.

A No Recent Examples rule applies to this trope. Examples shouldn't be added until six months after the adaptation is released, to avoid any knee-jerk reactions.

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In General

• The anime boom in America took place well before the manga boom. As a result, more people were familiar with anime adaptations than the manga they were based on. For a while, the only place to talk about a manga series was the forum of the people translating the manga.
  • Somewhat inverted in Latin America, where the anime boom not only started before it did in the USA, but also happened as a consequence of the already growing anime fandom — as many Latino fans assumes that every anime is based on a manga when in fact anime based on novels, light novels, video games or being completely original ideas is just as common. As a result is not rare to find people who have read a manga thinking they were reading the original story in which the animated series is based upon when in fact it is the other way round.
  • This is the reason why North Americans usually refer Live-Action Adaptation of manga series as "anime adaptation" or "live-action anime".
• Generally, any anime that is based on a Visual Novel has the tendency to be this, stateside or outside of Japan. Good examples would be To Heart, Fate/stay night, the three Key Ani adaptations (Air, Kanon, and CLANNAD), Rumbling Hearts and the three 5pb adaptations (Chaos;Head, Steins;Gate, and Robotics;Notes); few know these came from visual novels. Furthermore, the visual novel medium (a kind of non-linear, interactive, digital graphic novel, like a cross between a Video Game and a novel), is itself largely unknown in the Western world, though it's garnered cult status thanks to games like My Girlfriend Is the President and the American-made, Japanese-emulating VN Katawa Shoujo, as well as the success of anime based on VNs.
• A lot of anime that was based on written novels or stories, especially Japanese light novels, is often mistakenly thought of by the Western world as being original stories or based on a manga. This is mainly because said adaptations are often the first, and sometimes only, versions of the work to be officially translated and exported to the West, as manga and anime are easier to translate—since you're mostly just dealing with dialog, there's far less text to work through—though light-novel translations have gradually become more common as the subculture's population grows. Even on This Very Wiki, examples from light/web novels will often be placed in the Anime and Manga section when they are supposed to be in Literature. There's also the factor of the Animation Age Ghetto applying to illustrated novels, but not Comic Books.
  Some notable examples:
  • Legend of the Galactic Heroes by Yoshiki Tanaka. 10 volumes of main story, 4 volumes of side story.
  • Not many (especially outside of Japan) are aware that Hayao Miyazaki's Kiki's Delivery Service is actually based on a illustrated novel published four years prior by Eiko Kadano. It didn't help that it would take several decades for the novel to start getting translated and released in countries outside of Japan, years after the film had been released. Even in Japan, the film far eclipses the original novel in popularity.
  • The Record of Lodoss War novels are based on the pen-and-paper Tabletop RPG by the same name — which was inspired by Dungeons & Dragons.
  • Haruhi Suzumiya is mainly known for its anime adaptation, particularly since the first manga adaptation was mediocre, and the light novels weren't available in the US until after the anime was popular.
  • Perfect Blue is a comparatively mild example; it's fairly frequently mentioned that it's based on a novel, including on the DVD case for the anime... But you'll be hard-pressed to find a Westerner who has heard of the novel outside that, or knows anything about it.
  • Maria Watches Over Us is primarily known for its anime adaptation (especially for the sheer amount of Homoerotic Subtext), yet far less people have read the original (Japanese only) light novels and even less know of the spinoff set in the nearby all-boys school.
  • Even Hamtaro was based on an obscure light novel◊, which the anime completely eclipsed in popularity.
  • From the New World is unusual in that it's based on a non-light novel (this wiki categorizes it as literature, rather than a light novel or anime). This makes it even more difficult to translate, since it contains more obscure Japanese characters than a light novel, so no official one exists.

• Fans of Studio Ghibli, if they knew that any of the studio's animated films are adaptations, might know one or two of the books that inspired some of their movies without having read them. However, a good chunk of the Ghibli canon is adapted material, as this article points out:
  • Several movies are based on short manga. These include Whisper of the Heart, From Up on Poppy Hill, and Only Yesterday. There's also My Neighbors the Yamadas, based on a serialized four-panel manga strip called Nono-chan. Three films (Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Porco Rosso, and The Wind Rises) are actually Hayao Miyazaki adapting his own manga for the silver screen.
  • A few are based off of Japanese literature. These run the gamut in terms of genre: Kiki's Delivery Service was originally a children's chapter book by Eiko Kadono that had only been out for four years when the movie was released. Ocean Waves was a serially published romance novel by prolific author Saeko Himuro that finished one year before it was adapted into a Made-for-TV Movie. Grave of the Fireflies was a semi-autobiographical short story by Akiyuki Nosaka originally published in 1967. The Tale of the Princess Kaguya is based off of The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, one of Japan's oldest recorded stories written over a thousand years ago by an unknown author. The last is maybe the most tenuous in terms of displacement, as while the film received widespread acclaim, it's one of the lesser known of Ghibli's works. Animation fans in the West might know it better than the original tale, but in Japan most all know the folk tale first.
  • Then there are the ones based off of English-language, mostly British novels, typically for children and young adults. These include When Marnie Was There based on the novel by Joan G. Robinson, Tales from Earthsea based on Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea series, Arrietty based on Mary Norton's The Borrowers, and Howl's Moving Castle and Earwig and the Witch both based on novels by Diana Wynne Jones. These examples are most well-known to English-speaking fans in how the creators seemed to pick out books that have flown well under the radar of the West's pop culture consciousness for Japan's most prestigious animation studio to make films of. Howl in particular takes significant creative liberties from the novel, veering off into its own plotline and themes rather quickly, resulting in those who take the time to read the book being shocked by the difference. However, Jones was apparently expecting this, and told them to do whatever they wanted with her script.

• On This Very Wiki, on pages for manga, light novels, visual novels, etc. that have an anime adaption, most of the tropes will refer to the anime because the anime is often more readily available in the English-speaking world than the source material. References to the source material are usually written as if the source continued where the anime left off. For light novels and visual novels, this also has a side effect of source-only tropes getting documented in the "Anime and Manga" sections of pages.

Individual Examples

• AKIRA, being close to the first anime that shocked viewers out of the Animation Age Ghetto, became a popular movie and is certainly better-known than its expansive manga. Especially the case outside of Japan due to a multitude of reasons discussed on that work's page.

• During its heyday in the mid-2000s, the anime adaptation of Azumanga Daioh was much more well-known outside of Japan than the manga it was based on, despite both being translated at the same time. The localizers at ADV Films seemed to anticipate this: not only did they promote the anime much more heavily, their translation of the manga was retitled Azumanga Daioh: The Manga. Over time, the two have become more-or-less equally popular, both due to the manga boom and legal issues. When ADV went bankrupt in 2009, Yen Press grabbed the manga rights to both Yotsuba&! and Azumanga Daioh, putting out a new translation that year. The anime went until 2016 without a re-release (when Sentai Filmworks picked up the rights), making the manga the more accessible way to view the series for several years.

• The anime Basilisk is based off a series of manga named Basilisk: The Kouga Ninja Scrolls, which were manga adaptations of The Kouga Ninja Scrolls, a 1958 novel. So, double displacement.

• The 1960s Batman manga did this to many of the stories it adapted, but especially Batman #180, which introduced the villain Death Man. It's considered a very average 60s Batman story and was largely forgotten for decades, but it was adapted into the first three chapters of the manga, which heavily expanded on the story and made the villain far more threatening. When the manga saw an English release in the 2000s (which also renamed him "Lord Death Man", as a translation of the name Shinigami Man), it completely eclipsed the original story in popularity. Tellingly, his next appearance in Batman Inc. was primarily based on his manga incarnation, down to being called Lord Death Man. It was completely solidified when the story was adapted in Batman: The Brave and the Bold, and was based incredibly closely on the manga version.

• Battle Royale is originally a novel, but not everybody knows this. In fact, when Battle Royale was mentioned in the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga, the Swedish translation included a footnote telling the readers that Battle Royale is a movie and a manga.
• It's easy to assume that BB Senshi Sangokuden is a SD Gundam take on Romance of the Three Kingdoms, even though the story itself is set within the existing BB Senshi continuity - region names that aren't the same anymore are still referenced i.e. the Nanban region to the south corresponds to Albion. Even character names are sometimes inherited: Moukaku Gundam carries the title of Ashurao from an actual Gundam Ashurao from earlier in the toyline.

• Bunny Drop's anime is by far more popular than the manga. Any discussion of the manga will inevitably devolve into complaints about the infamous timeskip where Rin is a teenager and ends up with her adopted father Daikichi.

• The Bush Baby: While the original novel by William Stevenson was also adapted into a 1965 film, both failed to receive the level of success the anime did. Most people don't even know this based on a book, and both that and the movie remain in obscurity.

• The Case Closed manga still have "based on the hit anime" on them, when really, the manga (47 volumes and still translating) beats the anime (5 seasons and 6 movies). That's for the English version though - the Japanese anime is pretty much around the same area as the manga.

• Deltora Quest started out as a series of Australian children's fantasy books. If one sees any mention of it now, they're probably talking about the 2007 anime (especially in the US, where it premiered nearly 3 years later).
• Digimon was originally conceived and designed as the Spear Counterpart of Tamagotchi. Taichi had also been the main character of an earlier manga wherein he and his (different) Digimon partner traveled the Digital World alone, although behind the scenes he had in fact been developed with his anime counterpart simultaneously.
  • The character of Ryo from Digimon Tamers was actually based off of a character from the Digimon Adventure continuity. Specifically, he was the protagonist of Wonderswan games - which never left Japan, and his detailed backstory was explained via these games. Unfortunately, a lot of people outside did not know this so he had a rather negative reception.

• Dragon Ball: For a long time, it was not widely known in English-speaking countries that Dragon Ball Z was a mid-story rebrand of Dragon Ball, or that it was based on a Japanese manga (without the Z in the title). Even when the Dragon Ball anime finally stuck for good in North America in 2001 (after two previous attempts in the '80s and '90s before Z), many believed it was merely a prequel to DBZ, a Babyfication of DBZ's characters (which later became Hilarious in Hindsight upon the announcement of Dragon Ball DAIMA), a spinoff of DBZ for a younger audience, or something other than a pre-existing adaptation of the first part of the story whose later arcs were adapted into DBZ. This despite the fact that DBZ occasionally flashes back to DB. While the manga was met with some success in North America, there are those who think it's an adaptation of the anime, and those who doesn't know it exists at all. There are also a few people who don't even know Dragon Ball Z is Japanese.
  • In the English translation of the manga, the volumes that were adapted by Dragon Ball Z had the Z added to the original "Dragon Ball" name for marketing reasons.

• Many American fans seem unaware that Durarara!! was originally a light novel series due to No Export for You. Eventually, they were licensed by Yen Press and translated into English. However, the subsequent sequel and spin-off light novels have not been made available in English.

• While most Elfen Lied fans do know that the anime is based on a manga, it's not that easy to find someone who has actually read the manga, because the anime has simply been marketed more in the West. And due to the relatively common opinion that "the original is always better than the adaptation", it's even harder to find people who have both the read the manga and watched the anime.

• El-Hazard: The Wanderers is a rare example of an Anime First show which was displaced by a remake with a different story... at least in Brazil, where The Wanderers actually launched the franchise in the country and since no other anime from this series ever aired there, the show was simply launched as El-Hazard. A manga adaptation of it has been released in the country, though.

• The Fist of the North Star Movie and the memes the franchise spawned are better-known Stateside than either the anime or manga and is usually what the average anime fan would think of when he hears the name.

• In the West, it used to be that if you mentioned Fullmetal Alchemist, people would think of the iconic 2003 anime version, which diverged significantly from the original's story. Nowadays though, a lot more people are aware of the original manga, thanks to it getting a Truer to the Text adaptation in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.

• Fans of Future Robot Daltanious will often be surprised to find out that the mecha anime is based on Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers, of all things.

• Downplayed with F-Zero: GP Legend, as while F-Zero is still mostly considered a series of video games first and an anime second, GP Legend has overshadowed the games when it comes to the franchise's Signature Scene, Captain Falcon Falcon Punching Black Shadow in the face, which most general members of the Internet public don't know never happened in the actual games and was created for the anime's Grand Finale.

• Getter Robo has the Armageddon OVA series, which is by far the most popular section of the franchise, particularly internationally. Chances are, if Getter is in a Super Robot Wars game post-2003, it'll be based on Armageddon. This is evident in the fact that Armageddon broadly isn't a close adaptation of any story from the manga (being something of a mashup of all manner of characters and concepts from across the franchise and even Ken Ishikawa's other works), and has some divergent takes that have ended up becoming iconic. For instance, if you look up Ryoma Nagare, you'll almost invariably find pictures and artwork of his Armageddon design, with the tan overcoat, red scarf, and bandaged hands, before finding him in the sea-green pilot suit, karate gi, or casual clothes that he wears in every other part of the franchise. This is particularly noteworthy, because prior to Armageddon, he'd never worn such an outfit; it originally hails from the manga Majuu Sensen, another Ishikawa work, making Armageddon Ryoma something of a Composite Character.

• Even though Ghost in the Shell is a fairly well known series among anime fans, more people will be familiar with Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex than they will be with the Mamoru Oshii films or the original manga. Since all three media formats (and Ghost in the Shell: Arise) are each their own Alternate Continuity, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. In fact, the general familiarity of the works for most people is Anime > Movies > Manga.

• It's hard to guess that Gungrave, a 2003 crime drama with some sci-fi mixed in for good measure, originated as an adaptation of a lukewarmly received PS2 shooter. It's even harder to believe it after you find out about it, just because of how the action sequences in the show took a definite backseat to characterization and drama, and its overall heavy, depressing feel.

• Jewelpet originated as a toyline rather than anime.

• Katri, Girl of the Meadows: Unless you're from Finland, you've probably never heard of the 1937 Finnish novel Paimen, piika ja emäntä by Auni Nuolivaraa. However, it's anime adaptation was broadcasted in many European countries during the 1980s, and most kids who watched it had no idea it was based on a book.

• Love Hina is one of those cases (in the United States) where people very often know that a book/manga series exists, yet haven't really read it, and far more often have seen the anime.

• Lucy-May of the Southern Rainbow is so much more popular than the book it's based on, that merely googling it's title, Southern Rainbow will bring you results of the anime.

• Unless you're French (where they made sure to avert it through Dub Name Change), you probably know the name "Lupin" as Lupin III better than the Arsène Lupin stories that inspired it.
  • Worldwide, more people are far more familiar with the Lighter and Softer anime adaptation known as Lupin III: Part II (Or New Lupin III) than the original Darker and Edgier manga.
  • The American Lupin III fanbase grew with the [adult swim] airing of Lupin III: Part II, but most of the more casual viewers aren't aware of the earlier series, Lupin III: Part 1, or the manga volumes that preceded both: Lupin III. These early episodes had Gag Dub humour, upsetting the established fans who had enjoyed the earlier localizations of The Mystery of Mamo and The Castle of Cagliostro because their Lupin was getting displaced in public perception with this goofy Butt-Monkey.
  • Because of the adaptation displacement of the manga, Lupin III: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine (which was closer in tone to the manga) was controversial largely because many people (who were used to Red Jacket or Cagliostro) weren't expecting that level of violence or sexual content in a Lupin cartoon.

• The anime of Made in Abyss is far more popular than the manga, partly because of its widely-praised directing and music, but also because the manga is rather infamous (particularly among Americans) for sexual humor and artwork involving underage characters. In the anime, most of the controversial material got glossed over, or left out entirely.

• A variation of this is the case of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, a Spin-Off that greatly outpaced the original in terms of popularity. Reading through this wiki, you may get the impression that the Triangle Heart series only consists of the third game, which spawned Nanoha. This is also a straight example since Nanoha was originally a mini-scenario of the Triangle Heart 3 game. People still mistake clips from the original as a video game adaptation of the anime instead of the other way around.

• Medabots: Most westerners will only know about the franchise's anime adaptation, since the original Game Boy games never left Japan. While three of the series's games did eventually make it to the west, this was only after the anime had become popular.
• Monster Rancher is a non-Visual Novel example of a video game displaced by the anime adaptation. The anime is very different from the games, at that.

• Negima! Magister Negi Magi (whose mangaka, Ken Akamatsu, also wrote Love Hina) has several anime adaptations, and most fans know about the first one the most (and it's a rather mediocre adaptation). The manga was being translated by Del Rey's manga division (now by Kodansha USA due to the latter going under) since 2005.

• Neon Genesis Evangelion has a case of a character being displaced, which is Tohji. He had never been too popular whether as a standalone character or the Fourth Child of the original series, but after the introduction of Mari in Rebuild of Evangelion as the new Fourth Child, she completely overshadowed him in fanart and promotional arts.

• Night Wizard was based on a tabletop role-playing game by Far Eastern Amusement Research, which in turn was based on an eroge by Alice Soft. The eroge and tabletop game have spawned other spinoffs of their own, but the anime is easily the best known of them.

• For One-Punch Man, most people would be more familiar with the anime than the manga, and there are certainly less people familiar with the webcomic than the former. Doesn't help that the visuals from the webcomic is crudely drawn, turning off people from reading the original one.

• Persia, the Magic Fairy: The original manga, Persia Ga Suki by Takako Aonuma, is so obscure it doesn't even have a Japanese Wikipedia page. Add in the large amounts of Adaptation Deviation the anime adds, and the manga has practically been forgotten by time.

• Phantasy Star Online 2 is a highly popular MMO that was originally slated for release in the west in 2013, but the western release had descended into Development Hell for several years and would not re-emerge until 2020. Meanwhile, Sentai Filmworks released the anime adaptation of the game in the west in 2016.

• Pokémon: Some mainstream articles on Pokémon refer to the Pokémon and human characters as anime characters (or simply cartoon characters), often completely ignorant of the franchise's video game origins; a few articles have even implied that the trading card game came first. This is largely because, depending on the region, the the anime series was released weeks or even months before the video games outside Japan. Matters were further confused by Pokémon Red and Blue having the name of the anime's protagonist (Ash) as one of the predefined suggestions for the player character's name in all the Gen I games.^note To be fair, this was the case in Japanese as well, with Satoshi even being the character's official name until it was retconned to Red, one of the other predefined suggestions, in Gen II. Then came the Recursive Adaptations; the next mainline game, Pokémon Yellow, was an Updated Re-release that incorporated elements from the anime into Red and Blue's plot (like having Pikachu as a starter), while Pokémon Puzzle League was a spin-off game that was outright based on the show and used artwork of those characters. This is all made most evident by asking anyone "What is Pokémon's Theme Tune?" Even long-time fans of the games who haven't watched the anime since they were children are most likely to respond with the theme of anime's first season (or whichever era of the show they grew up with), rather than the actual leitmotif of the games.

• While Pop Team Epic as a manga isn't any less memorable to its fans, many remember it for the Art Shifting, genre spoofing, mile-a-minute gag powerhouse its anime was.

• The 1985 series Robotech is a frankenslation of Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber MOSPEADA. Despite modern anime fans bashing the redundant narration and clumsy translation, Robotech continues to surpass the popularity of even Macross in the USA, which was the only popular anime of the three in Japan; Southern Cross was a total flop, and Mospeada is largely forgotten. Even ADV's attempt to market the original SDF Macross series on DVD (including a non-Robotech dub) failed due to lack of interest, probably because unlike Robotech, it was never shown on American TV, and the animation is too old for younger audiences. However, the original Macross continuity is still going strong with its various prequels and sequels; Macross Plus has become a classic in its own right, and Macross Frontier was one of the most successful anime series of the late 2000s.

• Saber Marionette J is a Cult Classic especially in Latin America, Saber Marionette R is somewhat remembered ^note  both are on Hulu , and fans at least saw the OVA and second season, but few people know of anything else, especially the Light Novels.

• When Naoko Takeuchi's Sailor Moon manga received its Animated Adaptation within months of its publishing, the eventual 200+ episode anime (including specials and three Non Serial Movies) thoroughly eclipsed its source via Adaptation Expansion for the better part of a decade, being the version that most of The Merch and all but one Licensed Game was based on. Internationally, this was aided by a lack of or latecoming manga licensing in comparison to multilanguage dubs as anime grew in popularity during The '90s. (In North America, it took three years after the DiC dub's premiere for the manga to be acquired and translated by Mixx.) A 2003 Updated Re-release of the manga (to tie in to an ironically lesser known tokusatsu version) revitalized the property and regularly topped bestseller lists when eventually released stateside in 2011. The newfound exposure eventually resulted in Toei allowing international relicensing of the out-of-print anime during The New '10s, and beginning development on Sailor Moon Crystal, a new adaptation that is explicitly Truer to the Text of the once-displaced manga.

• There are two manga prequels of the original Saint Seiya manga: Saint Seiya: Next Dimension, illustrated by the original author Masami Kurumada, and Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas, illustrated by another author, Shiori Teshirogi. However, it would be hard to find people who knows of Next Dimension, due to its severe continuity problems and the not-very-appealing plot, leading to it being unpopular. In contrast, Lost Canvas is pretty much accepted by most fans as the official prequel due to being much more well-written. The fact that Kurumada himself approves of Lost Canvas only helps.

• Sakura Wars was originally a JRPG series which, despite being a Genuine Cash-Cow Franchise in Japan, was initially never released elsewhere. In the West, it ended up being generally displaced by the anime (both OVA and TV) adaptations that were released before 2000, though awareness of the original games has grown, thanks in part to several of their characters being featured in Project × Zone.
  • Later, the two first games received an official release in Russia and China, of all places.
  • Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love finally got a North American release in 2010, and the ADV Films cases did all say "based on the hit game"... although ADV's translated TV series credits say "original manga by Ohji Hiroi" despite the fact that the manga version of Sakura Wars hadn't even started in Japan until 2003 (the first game was released back in 1996).

• Serial Experiments Lain was probably planned before its anime counterpart, but nowadays people mostly know the anime rather than the game. The fact that it got released later than the anime didn't help either.

• Slayers was originally a series of light novels which began in 1989; the anime came out in 1995, five years after the first couple of novels were published. Like most light novel-originated series, most foreign fans find the anime as the truest source of canon. It is rather unusual in this case because the first season of the anime was released in the states one year after it completed its run in Japan, and, as a dub released by Central Park Media, was one of the few '90s dubs that didn't suffer from any form of bowdlerisation, Dub Name Change, or any other edits. Both the novels themselves and most of its manga adaptations weren't translated until the mid 2000s.
  • This also happens with the characters as well; in the novels, Lina and Gourry are the only protagonists; the chimera Zelgadis and the princess Amelia were their allies for the first eight novels, and they were replaced by treasure hunters Luke and Millina for the remaining seven. However, both Zelgadis and Amelia became extremely popular, and when newer anime seasons and manga were made, they were in them, quintessentially making the "Slayers" a four-man band instead of a duo. Very few fans outside of Japan know who Luke and Millina are, especially given that the Alternate Continuity manga The Hourglass of Falces has all six heroes together.

• Sound! Euphonium: The books are pretty much only mentioned due to Ship-to-Ship Combat against Kumiko/Reina, as in the novel Kumiko ultimately has a Childhood Friend Romance with Shuuichi. In turn, many Western fans are not aware that Liz and the Blue Bird is actually a Spin-Off of Sound! Euphonium. In fact, many sites do not categorize it under that franchise, but as its own movie. The original main characters barely appear in this one, so the connection is easy to miss. This was at least partially intentional by the filmmakers, who noted that the story is designed to work without requiring prior knowledge of the franchise.

• Possibly as an attempt to avoid this, the first Spice and Wolf novel was released in English around the same time as the first season of the anime.

• Many don't realize that Spider Riders was actually based on a trilogy of English-language novels. But the anime being somewhat obscure itself, the books reach an even deeper level of obscurity.

• Downplayed with The Tower of Druaga. While it has become more popular than the game that it was based on, the original game remains well-known in gaming communities (it had been released internationally on Namco Museum Volume 3 over a decade before the anime was created), and in Japan the game remains popular.

• Variable Geo is a loose OVA adaptation of the Advanced V.G. fighting game series. Not that most outside its fandom are aware of that, since the games it was based on were never released outside of Japan.

• The Wandering Son anime manages to displace the manga despite the manga being released in English while the anime has not in physical format. It probably doesn't help the manga is an expensive hardcover release while the anime is available for free on Crunchyroll.

• When Marnie Was There was a children's book by Joan G. Robinson before it became a film. Discussions of it are near exclusively about the film.

• Thanks to the popularity of World Masterpiece Theater's book adaptations, many Japanese people better know anime like Heidi, Girl of the Alps or Rascal the Raccoon over their sources Heidi or Rascal: A Memoir of a Better Era. This is especially prominent with A Dog of Flanders, whose parodies often take elements from the anime over the book.
  • This also applies to World Masterpiece Theater anime abroad — Overseas fans decried the 2018 release of the French live-action film Rémi Sans Famille, dismissing it as a bad foreign live-action adaptation of the beloved anime Ie Naki Ko Remi even during previews. The film was in reality a straight adaptation of Sans Famille, a classic French novel by Hector Malot that was published in 1878 that served as Ie Naki Ko Remi's source, and had nothing to do with the anime whatsoever.
  • 3000 Leagues in Search of Mother was quite a cult hit in some countries; few are aware that not only is it adapted from the novel Heart (Cuore) by Italian author Edmondo De Amicis, it was only based on one chapter in that book. The book is a collection of short stories with a framing device of a schoolkid being told stories about various children; the source material for the anime is just one of these stories.

• Yu-Gi-Oh! wasn't even about a card game at first. Once the second anime got to the U.S., it took a few months for the card game to show up as well. It doesn't help that 4Kids Entertainment deliberately picked up the franchise because of the card game plot after how much money they'd made on Pokémon and its various components. The makers of the second anime did this too, so it's also not a surprise they sold it overseas based on this. Even elements of the storyline they adapted that had little card game elements in the manga had the Duel Monsters segments played up for the anime to sell the cards.

• Yume no Crayon Oukoku was based off a series of Japanese children's novels which still are being written to this day, beginning back in the mid-80's. Most people who live in other countries remember it as only a show and not a book, especially since the books weren't translated outside of Japan.