How important is it to you that anime mirrors its manga

[Emotion Flux]

So, I was wondering where you all stood on this. How important is it to you anime follows its manga exactly? Do you appreciate the anime for what it is, or does it put you off from watching it or liking it?

Like, personally I don't even read manga so it doesn't matter to me as much as it does to others, as in I just appreciate the anime for what it is, not really bothering to point out whether it's cannon or not. But how about all of you? Where are you in this? Is it overly important to you that anime mirrors its manga counterpart, or can you appreciate the anime adaptation regardless of comparative inaccuracies?

[Lone Lancer]

Just as long as the source material isn't contradicted. I don't see the harm in allowing both versions to include exclusive extras.

[KaiyaSaysHaiya]

I don't read much manga either , but as long as it follows the main storyline and doesn't have an entirely different ending to it, I'm fine.

[Animedragon]

I don't read much manga but do watch a lot of anime and in every case I've seen the anime before I've read the manga, usually because I liked the anime so much that I wanted to read the manga.

And that is where the problems start. With most of the manga the creators of the anime have followed it fairly closely sometimes putting events in a slightly different order usually to make the anime story flow better, this is fine by me. What I find really annoying is where the manga and anime are very different, although in some cases this is an advantage, to my mind the most striking example is Magic Knight Rayearth where the second series anime is SO much better than the second half of the manga.

I've got just under a dozen cases where I've got both the anime and the manga and overall I find that the anime creators are much better at following and keeping to the storyline of their source material than the average Hollywood "film  of the book" creators, where quite often I wonder if they read any more of the book than the back cover synopsis!

 

[mehzxu]

I love seeing stuff that is added in the anime adaptation. I also like the fact that sometimes you can read the manga and find extra things left out of the anime. Vice-versa.

 

It's all exciting.

 

Anime is awesome in any given format to me.

 

Manga is great digitally.  But I still love those paperbacks. The new manga smell or even used. It makes me feel awesome

[Emotion Flux]

Interesting. It seems to depend on the person. I thought it was more general than that.

[Clayton]

It depends on 3 factors

 

1. If they change something and it is good or bad

2. If the manga is done yet

3. If I've heard of or read the manga and liked it. 

[efaardvark]

It's all about the story.  If it winds up making the story better then it's all good.

Of course "better" is in the eyes of the viewer.  If the changes are just done to be politically correct or to please some corporate exec who thinks it'll pull in a few more $$ then that's not "better", even if it accomplishes the intended goal.