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A thread on 5channel’s “Anything-Goes Live” board asked, “Are there any manga you liked better for their original direction?” Alongside nostalgic shoutouts to HUNTER×HUNTER’s hunting-exam roots and the tension of Ajin, posters quickly brought up series like Kinnikuman and BADBOYS that exploded in popularity after changing course. The thread also saw the observation that “a lot of manga actually get better after a course change,” turning a simple taste comparison into a broader discussion of why these shifts in direction happen in the first place.
What people said
and "that tension of not knowing who might die next was great."
Don't need some vengeance-broker-org vs. vengeance-broker-org thing.
Yeah, nobody's really asking for rival-professional battles.
Apparently the original creator of Ajin only worked out the initial setup and then basically went dark.
So the artist ended up plotting the whole rest of the story.
But thanks to that, we got a final boss whose motive was literally "I got bored of it," which was wild but honestly refreshing.
So Sato going off the rails was all the artist's creation?
I wish they hadn't ditched the fishing rod.
BADBOYS
Gotta be Kinnikuman.
Stuff like Duel Masters or Korokke! — the whole CoroCoro Comic lineup.
Well, if the change flops, the series just ends, so…
Same.
It really felt like the story never circled back to the main character before it ended.
That's Berserk.
They probably only killed people off for the cliffhanger shock value — the author isn't necessarily into writing that heavy a story all the time.
That whole series was built around Askeladd anyway.
Fair.
The back half just isn't that fun.
Right, Askeladd's rampage was the peak of that series.
Apparently a lot of fans felt unsatisfied with the farm arc, where Thorfinn basically turned into a Rurouni Kenshin type (a reformed killer who's sworn off violence).
The one with the student-council-president-type girl as the lead.
Wasn't that a battle manga from the start?
Medaka Box started out more like "fixing the school's problems" stuff.
It wasn't a gag manga at first.
Nah, it's been like that since chapter 1.
If Oolong-as-villain had lasted even 5 or 6 volumes, that'd be impressive.
Yeah, that would've been tough to sustain.
At least I wish Gold Horn and Silver Horn had shown up.
Did that manga really change direction that much though?
The hero getting put on a wanted list just made it darker — that's not really a course change.
Once she just normally started making friends, it got boring.
Honestly the "hot streak" was only during that short stretch from the school trip to the second-year closing ceremony.
That's like just 10-20% of the total volumes.
Haven't read it so I can't speak to that one specifically,
but there's definitely a phenomenon where an unlucky protagonist becoming normally fortunate just isn't as interesting.
Attack on Titan handled that transition well, come to think of it.
Yeah, you can't keep that going forever.
And when it did lose steam, it felt more like "the best part just ended" rather than an actual course change.
Background and Key Points of the Discussion
In shonen manga, it’s not unusual for a series’ direction to shift as serialization drags on — the original premise alone often can’t sustain the story, and reader-popularity polls or editorial policy end up steering things. The thread’s mention of Ajin was framed as one such case, where the original creator reportedly let go of the story concept early on, leaving the artist to drive the plot from there. Opinions split mainly over whether to view a course change as “a compromise that dilutes the original appeal” or “a necessary evolution for keeping a long-running series alive” — and it’s notable that both camps kept circling back to the same titles, like Ajin, Hunter x Hunter, and Vinland Saga. These shifts are often driven not just by the author’s own intentions but by the magazine’s commercial calculations too, though the thread never got into those specifics.
※This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Anything-Goes Live) thread “Are there any manga where you liked the original direction better?“
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