It’s rather cliche at this point to watch an anime after reading the manga and come out disappointed with the former. Last year it was Trinity Seven which I was slightly hyped up for and the adaptation was so bad that I sort of gave up on the manga too. This year’s play on that theme is Jitsu wa Watashi wa… a manga about a bunch of supernatural idiots that are in a romantic harem comedy.
I’d argue that Jitsu wa isn’t actually that bad of a series. It has its good moments (everyone cooking bad food for Akane as she is directing an asteroid towards Earth) and its bad (the character designs are far too generic) to work. Overall it’s a 7 out of 10 for me. Not something that I would recommend, though unlike Trinity Seven I am continuing to read the excellent, if crude looking, manga.
I say that because there is another manga adaptation I’m looking forward to early next year in Dagashi Kashi. At least it appears that Feel, the studio making the adaptation, have paid respect to the character designs of the source. It will still be hard to not get nervous about these adaptations since it feels like I’ve been burned a few times. I don’t really want the solution to simply be to be completely ignorant of source material.
It’s been a rough year for manga adaptations that I had read before the anime aired. Only the lowly Komori-san wa Kotowarenai which I felt was mediocre was an improvement over the manga. I hope it does get better in the new year.
