This question straddles all three of anime, manga, and light novels, so I figured I’d just drop it in the anime community first. Though if it doesn’t belong here, feel free to delete it and I’ll go somewhere else.
====
I’ve only been watching anime for a few years. This year, I’ve started reading manga and LN of some anime I’ve seen. There are a few titles where I feel like the anime adaptation was just as good and there are some where I feel like it was better. Fortunately, I haven’t encountered any cases where I think the anime completely dropped the ball, but I know there probably are some like that.
What are some titles that have huge disparities in quality between its anime adaptation and the source?
Source > Adaptation
VNs (Steins;Gate/Steins;Gate 0, Clannad)
The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan
A Silent Voice
Adaptation > Source
4-komas, typically (Bocchi the Rock, K-on)
Music anime (Your Lie in April, Sound Euphonium, also the aforementioned Bocchi and K-on)
Simple art styles, extrapolated (Senpai is an Otokonoko, 4-komas)
Almost anything KyoAni touches (Violet Evergarden, counterexample in A Silent Voice)
Selective adaptations (Insomniacs After School, Usagi Drop)
Say I Love You (except for episode 12, which I think is anime-original)
I think Steins;Gate is very subjective. The original visual novel translates quite well into a linear anime format, especially considering it was not hit with the 12 episodes curse like Chaos;Child. You do miss Okabe’s internal monologue, but IMO it is not a probelm.
Steins;Gate 0 however, was impossible to make into a loyal adaptation. They did make it a good companion for the visual novel though.
