Ooooh, can you expand on this a bit? I read up through half of part 2 of the manga and wasn't so interested in the anime b/c I felt like nothing could really match how the manga fights would be animated in my head. If there's something new/different for me to take in here I will gladly watch it.
Oh, no, there is no way to rightfully replicate the fights from manga. I think that anime did a pretty good job, but it's nearly impossible to make it perfect as it is. Tatsuki Fujimoto is an absolute goat when it comes to delivering emotions through the pages, with his art style almost twisting itself to intensify the action to an almost phantasmagorical scale.
While anime can't really compete with the source material on this, I think they still did a pretty good job maintaining the same-ish level of intensity. The main composer for the first season was
fuckin' Kensuke Ushio!!! (Devilman Crybaby, Ping Pong, Dandadan and some of the Space Dandy ost) which is like a guarantee that shit is gonna be good.
But for me, the main reason why I really enjoyed it was the general tone and visual decisions they took. When I first read the manga many years ago, aside from feeling intense and funny at times, the general tone of the world was so nauseatingly dull and depressing. Trying to imagine the CSM world in any color was a pretty hard task for me, because monochrome suits this hellscape much better. Because of that, I really appreciated the colour palette they used in this show. It's faint and muted 90% of time, but when it comes to moments of fights, rage and emotional freedom - shit can get pretty damn colourful, which is a very cool design choice.
Lastly, while reading manga, I especially enjoyed these calm moments between the fights, which helped the characters on the screen build more substance and feel more meaningful. CSM is a great work, because it can appeal to absolutely polar kinds of audiences, and still deliver, while being batshit crazy most of the time. There are enough
aura moments and epic battle stuff, and at the same time, this work touches pretty intricate and relatable themes, which can be someone's main reason to watch this show at all. Mappa hasn't skipped or smoothed too many corners here, and in some ways, even capitalized.
If you already read the manga, though, the main reason and appeal for you might be to see how they tried to adapt so unadaptable (in some ways) work, and still managed to make it gain mainstream popularity for a while. Manga is the greatest, but with animation, there is cinematography, art design, sound design, voice acting, and other stuff that is a complete novelty for you, as an og manga reader.
(firepunch movie when)
