This article contains discussion of sensitive topics.

Summary

• Some great manga will likely never get an anime due to financial failure or sensitive subject matter.
• Psyren, All You Need Is Kill, and Boy's Abyss are examples of manga that are unlikely to receive anime adaptations.
• The manga Goodnight Punpun, Rosen Garten Saga, and Yotsuba&! face obstacles such as explicit content or difficulty in translating the story to animation.

Ideally, every great manga should get an anime at some point, but there are some great manga out there that will likely never get an anime, and for good reasons. While it’s often the case that a critically and financially successful manga will receive an anime at some point, sometimes this never happens, because the series was only critically successful and not financially, or because the subject matter of the series, or even simply its aesthetic, wouldn’t work as anime unless a studio was willing to put in an extreme amount of effort.

15 Yotsuba&! (2003)

Written & illustrated by Kiyohiko Azuma

Yotsuba&! is undoubtedly one of the most unique manga ever created. Yotsuba&! is a lighthearted slice-of-life manga with most chapters just being about the cast’s mundane lives, and according to an anime news network interview with series creator Kiyohiko Azuma, that style of writing is too hard to translate into animation.

Azuma said that in 2008, however, and since then, there have been many slice-of-life anime where very little happens, so Yotsuba&! could still get an anime. Still, nothing has been said about a Yotsuba&! anime since then, so it’s safe to assume that it’s still being treated as another manga that will never receive an anime. It's a shame too, as Yotsuba&! has some of the funniest s in manga history.

Fans of Yotsuba&! should also check out Kiyohiko Azuma's other notable slice-of-life series, Azumanga Daioh.

14 Psyren Earned More Popularity Abroad Than in Japan

Written & illustrated by Toshiaki Iwashiro

Psyren was fairly popular among readers during the late 2000s and early 2010s for stellar art and engaging sci-fi story, but a lot of its popularity came from Western readers.

Toshiaki Iwashiro's students include authors of many popular manga series such as Naoya Matsumoto, the creator of Kaiju No. 8, and Yuki Tabata, the creator of Black Clover.

In Japan, while Psyren started out as a moderate success, it quickly plummeted in sales and Weekly Shonen Jump rankings until it was unceremoniously canceled in 2011. As such, executives might well see Psyren as nothing more than a financial failure, so it’s unlikely for any anime studio to see any merit in giving it an anime.

13 A Bride's Story

Created by Kaoru Mori

Having run for twelve years before ending in 2020, A Bride's Story is a beautiful seinen manga series written and illustrated by Kaoru Mori taking place in a town situated by the Caspian Sea during Russia's conquest of Central Asia. The main plot of the series follows Amir, a young woman who's been arranged to marry Karluk, a man eight years younger than her. The story explores their budding relationship, as well as the other couples surrounding them as they travel the Silk Road.

While on paper, A Bride's Story wouldn't be overly difficult to adapt; there are many moving parts to this series that would make it difficult to give the story and setting the kind of development it needs to properly show just how much Kaoru Mori studied the time period when writing the series. Still though, if it ever were adapted, A Bride's Story could rank among the greatest romance anime ever.

12 All You Need Is Kill Might Be Doomed By Its Hollywood Adaptation

Based on the light novel by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, written by Ryosuke Takeuchi & illustrated by Takeshi Obata

Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s All You Need Is Kill has a very notable franchise: in addition to a graphic novel by Nick Mamatas and a manga adaptation by Death Note artist Takeshi Obata, it even received a live-action adaptation in Edge of Tomorrow.

Unfortunately, Edge of Tomorrow was met with mixed critical reception and an underwhelming $370.5 million box office according to Box Office Mojo, and that’s caused a proposed sequel to essentially become dead in the water. Edge of Tomorrow’s lack of success suggests that there isn’t enough interest in All You Need Is Kill to keep its franchise going, and as such, it will likely never get an anime.

11 Boy’s Abyss (2020)

Written & illustrated by Ryo Minenami

Another manga that’s unlikely to receive an anime is Ryo Minenami’s Boy’s Abyss, an engaging drama with great art and character work, but revolving around highly sensitive topics like depression and suicide, and often featuring very graphic and explicit sex scenes.

Boy's Abyss was adapted into an 8-episode Japanese drama in 2022, which is available from Viki.

While there’s nothing wrong with a story having those sorts of elements, it makes Boys Abyss' subject matter too dark for what’s usually shown in anime, and with how much censorship it would have to be met with, it’s unlikely that any anime studio would want to try their hand at it.

10 Dinosaur Sanctuary

Created by Itaru Kinoshita

An adorably underrated manga showing a more wholesome outcome to something like Jurassic Park, Dinosaur Sanctuary is a laid back slice-of-life manga showing the day-to-day activities of dinosaur caregivers. The series is great, and was recently nominated in the first ever American Manga Awards.

Dinosaur Sanctuary sneaks in cool educational bits about dinosaur biology and paleontology without missing a beat in its pages.

As amazing as it would be to see Dinosaur Sanctuary get an anime adaptation, there are a few roadblocks that would prevent the series from getting an adequate adaptation: namely, the dinosaurs. Considering the focus the manga puts on the prehistoric beasts, budget costs to make an anime that truly lives up the manga's charm would be difficult for even the best studio to accomplish.

9 Animal Land (2009)

Written & illustrated by Makoto Raiku

Animal Land was the second major series by Zatch Bell!’s Makoto Raiku, and it’s another manga that’s unlikely to get an anime. Animal Land took Raiku’s penchant for dark imagery and heavy themes to greater heights than anything he did in Zatch Bell!, and it was a critical success that even managed to win the 37th Kodansha Manga Award for Best Children’s Manga.

Unfortunately, Animal Land struggled to find financial success for most of its run, so despite being one of the flagship manga of Bessatsu Shonen Magazine, it hasn’t received an anime in the near decade since it ended, and it’s unlikely to receive one any time soon.

8 Dai Dark

Created by Q Hayashida

Q Hayashida is well known for her hit seinen dark fantasy manga series Dorohedoro, which has received an anime adaptation from MAPPA, but one of her other series, Dai Dark is equally as eccentric and grungy – a perfect series to pick up for anyone that enjoys her other work, or those who enjoy dark fantasy with hard sci-fi elements.

What would make Dai Dark difficult to adapt into an anime is just how grand some of its set pieces and adventures can be. Similarly to Dorohedoro, Q Hayashida's artwork demands complex production and a lot of time from background artists to appropriately capture the series' set pieces. Additionally, some of the series' character designs are equally complex, which would be difficult work for character designers and animators to make work for a televised series.

7 Pokémon Adventures (1997)

Written by Hidenori Kusaka & illustrated by Mato and Satoshi Yamamoto

Pokémon Adventures has received praise for decades for being more serious and mature than other Pokémon media, but it’s still unlikely to ever receive an anime. Every arc is based on whatever the most recent game is, so there’s notable inconsistency with its lore and the mechanics of the larger Pokémon franchise.

That’s not an issue for the episodic games and original anime, but for a story-driven manga like Pokémon Adventures, an anime would have to give early arcs major rewrites to be consistent with later arcs and the overall franchise. With that much work required, combined with how successful the main Pokémon anime is, the chances of Pokémon Adventures receiving an anime are very slim.

6 Rosen Garten Saga (2020)

Written by Sakimori Fuji & illustrated by Tonooka Bakotsu

While Rosen Garten Saga is a fairly new manga, right off the bat it presents itself in a way that makes it impossible to ever see it being animated. Rosen Garten Saga has a rich and engaging story with unique interpretations of historical and mythical figures, and its art and fight choreography rank among the best of any action manga published in the past few years.

Unfortunately, nearly every chapter of Rosen Garten is filled with excessive amounts of nudity, gross perversions, and even black comedy, and it’s often even incorporated into the fighting. Rosen Garten Saga would be a censorship nightmare, so there’s little chance of it ever receiving an anime.