Dude , regarding the anime and source material , people are RETARDED . Can ' t complain since most are 12 yo with attitude . But before getting into this , let me answer your question . It makes sense to justify something in an anime with the source material . I don ' t like reading , even if it ' s manga or LN or we . So i can ' t know the source material and i couldn ' t care less about the source material . Ok i do appreciate the source material since in most cases the Anime couldn ' t exist without it . But that doesn ' t make the source material always superior also not for me since i prefer video not paper . So if i start watching an anime , and there ' s something i don ' t understand and the anime doesn ' t explain it . If someone explains what happened , using the source material , even though the thing is never explained in the anime , the scene is still awesome since somebody did after all explain it to me . If nobody ever explains the scene to me , then yeah , i ' m just pissed . It is a little minus that the anime didn ' t do it , so someone else had to do it . But in the end you got what you wanted from someone so who cares anymore ? Same happens with video games . Some studios release broken games , but hey never fix them , but modders create tools and stuff to fix your game . Why would you care as long as it ' s free if the game is fixed by a modder or by the company if IT IS fixed and you can play without issues ? So justifying the anime with the source material is fine going by this logic . But then I also agree that anime also needs to be seen as a standalone . Since the anime is not the manga . Sometimes the anime can differ from the manga or source material . And people just get instantly triggered . OMG , NO , It ' s not a copy paste of the manga . Even if the anime version of the story might also be good , or even better . They will always cry for the anime to stick to the source . Which is utter bullshit . The ones creating the anime episodes and scenes are also amazing people , sometimes their imagination can be bad for the viewers since they do screw some shows to the point of no return sometimes . But they are also capable of creating a beautiful story . If A is better than B , that doesn ' t mean that B is bad , it just means that A is better . A good example is Full Metal Alchemist and Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood . So i ' d say that the situation is what matters most to accurately answer your question .