Attack on Titan is a phenomenal manga in its own right but suffers from pacing problems (especially early on) that drag the story down when it should be building up its mystery elements. Luckily, Isayama has worked closely with the WIT Studio staff to fix these issues in the anime adaptation and introduce foreshadowing for future manga events while he’s at it. Shifting Ymir’s childhood flashback in Marley to season 2, before anything about the outside world had been revealed, was just the kind of intrigue anime fans needed to whet their appetite for what comes next. If you’re looking for the definitive Attack on Titan experience, the anime is absolutely it.

Trigun’s manga and anime have a unique relationship—the anime debuted during the manga’s initial run, but came to its own conclusion after 26 episodes while the manga was on a year-long hiatus. Yasuhiro Nightow loved the anime’s ending for its expert distillation of the story’s core themes, so he took heavy inspiration from it when he wrote the manga’s ending later on. He was such a fan of the anime that he even drew filler characters into his backgrounds at every opportunity!

Almost nothing about the story itself changes between manga and anime for this series, but Studio Orange’s jaw-droppingly gorgeous 3D animation makes their adaptation a must-watch. The soft lighting highlights every facet of the gem people’s unique anatomy, while the smooth movement emphasizes their graceful posture and allows for stunning long takes during action sequences. Even the voice acting and sound design are pitch-perfect! The manga is fine for storytelling purposes, but Land of the Lustrous is best experienced in anime form.

Go Nagai’s 1972 manga Devilman was outstanding for its time, creating memorable characters and delivering poignant commentary on the xenophobia and warmongering of the era. But when it came time to modernize Devilman for a new audience, director Masaaki Yuasa actually improved the story by weaving in social media and the anonymity of the internet with the story’s hate-fueled demon panic. Not to mention the surreal animation and that slapper of a soundtrack!

Osamu Tezuka is well-known as the father of modern manga, but his attempt at a serious samurai epic with Dororo was bogged down by the irreverent comedic style of the late ‘60s. Then along comes Dororo 2019, which takes the basic characters and plot structure of the manga and tells a proper dramatic samurai story without the distracting slapstick and fourth wall breaks of Tezuka’s version. This anime is what Dororo has always longed to be, and we’re so glad that it finally exists.