The normal process for creating an anime series or film is to wait and see how well a manga sells then translate that into moving pictures once the series already has a decent audience. While sometimes an anime series will be created without any pre-existing story to pull from, at other times, it will pull from other sources, such as video games, instead.
Considering how big the JRPG genre is, not only in Japan but in the world at large, it should be no surprise that a large portion of these anime series modeled after video games come from various JPRGs. Not all of these anime, or games, are worth the time investment to watch or play, though a few have gone on to become some of the more popular representatives of their medium.
10 Ni No Kuni
First released in 2010 on the Nintendo DS before being re-released on more powerful consoles to near-unanimous critical acclaim, Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch is a JRPG that takes several cues from monster taming games in its first outing before abandoning this aspect in favor of an action RPG for its sequel, Revenant Kingdom. In 2019, an animated film was released that, while not carrying over any of the same characters as either Wrath of the White Witch or Revenant Kingdom, was set in the same fantastical universe and featured the same world traversal aspects that were found in both games with Oliver and Roland.
9 Tales Series
The Tales series of RPGs is absolutely enormous, spanning nearly two dozen games released over the last 25 years, and is considered the third-largest RPG series behind Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. Considering both of these series also have their own cinematic adaptations, it should be no surprise that the Tales series was also translated into anime form with adaptations of several of the series’ main titles, such as Tales of Vesperia and Tales of Phantasia.
8 Yo-Kai Watch
Although it has largely fallen by the wayside, in no small part due to the insistence to not localize the series outside of Japan, Yo-Kai Watch was once a serious competitor to Pokemon, both in its video games and anime form and is largely the reason why the Alola season of Pokemon was so vastly different from everything that came before it.
Unlike Pokemon, which follows its own story while having a vague association with the video game series, Yo-Kai Watch‘s anime and video games follow largely the same storylines, though the video games translate the slice-of-life aspect of the show into a more dramatic engagement with additional conflict and villains.
7 Persona
The Persona series has seen something of a resurgence in the west in recent years, with Persona 5 and its various expansions being some of the most well-received RPGs on the PS4. As the characters and story are what draw most gamers into the Persona series, this is the aspect that the anime adaptations focus on the most, being something of an animated retelling of the events of the video games. So far, there is an animated sequel to Persona 3 in Persona: Trinity Soul as well as an anime retelling of Persona 4 and Persona 5.
6 Pokemon
It’s impossible to mention anime born from video games without mentioning Pokemon. Although many fans find the timeline of when each iteration of the Pokemon world was released, the video games were the first to be released, followed shortly by the anime and various manga series. In general, the Pokemon anime doesn’t follow the same stories as found in the video game series, though several story elements, such as the various evil Team’s criminal activities, as well as some in-game events like the sleeping Snorlax in X & Y, do carry over into the anime.
5 Night Wizard
Although the Night Wizard series began life as a fantasy tabletop RPG, it would later go on to expand into two fairly unknown video games that didn’t release outside of Japan, as well as subsequent anime and manga series. Night Wizard isn’t the best-reviewed anime adaptation, generally garnering fairly middling reviews that amount to “not bad, but not great,” but it does successfully bring both the tabletop RPG and the video games to life in anime form fairly faithfully.
4 Ys
Like the Tales series of video games, Ys was a fairly unknown JRPG series when compared to the likes of Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest until fairly recently with the release of Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana, which managed to be a great competitor to Xenoblade Chronicles 2 at the time it was released.
However, the animated spin on this world was released very early in the game series’ life, releasing one OVA in 1989 and a second in 1993 that follow the first and second games in the series respectfully.
3 Dragon Quest
Although the Dragon Quest series’ anime spin-offs have had about as much success as most other video game adaptations, it has at least, for the most part, stayed faithful to the original art style of Akira Toriyama. So far, Dragon Quest has been adapted into two anime series, The Adventure of Dai and Legend of the Hero Abel, though more recently it has also been turned into a CG anime film, Your Story, that follows the events of Dragon Quest V, which was criticized for not using Toriyama’s original designs and its choice of voice actors.
2 Blue Dragon
Blue Dragon is something of an underground hit when it comes to JRPGs, being released on the Xbox 360 to varying degrees of success, with critics both loving and hating its adherence to traditional RPG designs. Blue Dragon was also the first Xbox 360 game to span over multiple discs, something that happened far more frequently during the PlayStation era than the PlayStation 3. Once again, the character designs for Blue Dragon were done by Akira Toriyama, though this time, the anime series kept his iconic art style intact in the transition to the anime medium.
1 Brotherhood: Final Fantasy XV
Although the Final Fantasy series has had adaptations in the past, such as the Final Fantasy VII film Advent Children or the in-name-only Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within film that released in 2001. However, while there have been several anime adaptations of the Final Fantasy universe, few have been as successful as Brotherhood: Final Fantasy XV, which takes place during the event of Final Fantasy XV and gives a backstory to the main characters, particularly Noctis.
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