10 Worst Anime Adaptations

8. Deadman Wonderland

Tokyo Ghoul
Alchemy

It's hard to think of horror anime setups more interesting than Deadman Wonderland. While on a field trip to the eponymous and horrifying Deadman Wonderland super prison, main character Ganta's entire class meets a brutal demise, with him being pinned as the culprit. Sentenced to death, Ganta must fight for his freedom in the Deadman Wonderland's many deathmatches with other hardened criminals.

Sounds like a classic horror anime in the making, right? Well, it would have been if it had stuck to the source material. Whereas the manga proceeded to ratchet up the horror element to the story - as it should have done - the anime proceeded to devolve itself into meaningless action sequence after meaningless action sequence and basically zero character growth.

While the manga at least tried to make Ganta less of a whiny piss baby as the series went on and he adapted to his surroundings, the anime didn't. And, like a lot of shows on this list, the ending is an uninteresting thud that leaves you wondering what the point of any of this was.

Expect to see a lot less quality from here on out.

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John Tibbetts is a novelist in theory, a Whatculture contributor in practice, and a nerd all around who loves talking about movies, TV, anime, and video games more than he loves breathing. Which might be a problem in the long term, but eh, who can think that far ahead?