Thread: Anime Or Manga?

Please don't let yourself be irritated from the quotation marks. It's the german version. :P Too lazy to search and change them.

Okay, here's my problem:

Whenever I find an anime I'm interested in to watch, I end up not watching them most of the time. This has one particular reason: Whether the respective anime only is a manga adaption or not. Because if that is the case, I can never decide what I should do. Should I read the manga? Or should I watch the anime?
I'd rather go with the anime. Just because it looks better, and I like japanese. :P
But knowing that an original manga exists previous to the anime, I always get the feeling I'm missing something out if I were to watch the anime instead of the manga. That is, since in most cases, the anime misses lots of things or changes the plot completely. I cannot watch an anime knowing that the plot is different. Unfortunately even, the plot goes in a worse direction and many people say that the manga is to be preferred. (Or maybe the plot is better sometimes?)
This makes me go with the manga then. However, I either already know a lot of the plot and just jumping into the un-animated version of the series seems utterly wrong to me.
Or, and that's the the biggest problem, the style of the original manga is so different from the anime that I cannot adjust to the new one.
Which makes me to stop the manga and anime completely.
I'm really demanding on that point sadly. If the manga looks „bad“, no way I'll read it. This made me almost stop reading Bitter Virgin. If I had done that, I could never forgive me I guess.
If the manga looks good though, I stick with it most of the time, since I know that many animes have fillers or, as I mentioned hundreds of times already, a different story. That's to be applied for series like Naruto or One Piece in my case.

„Great Teacher Onizuka“ emphasized my problem. It's already some time ago that I watched it. I started watching the anime, and really enjoyed it the first time. Then however, I felt that the whole series was getting a little boring. Incidentally, I read somewhere that GTO originally was a manga and that the anime's plot not only turns out to be different from the manga but that it is also worse if you believe the common opinion. Now that made me stop watching the anime. But the manga wasn't after my liking at all. It kinda misses the charm of the anime. >_<
Going back watching the anime isn't anymore, since I've heard that it should be turning out rather badly in comparison to its predecessor.

Now you may say: „I don't get it, just read the manga as a whole and then watch the anime as a whole, dimwit!“
But sorry, I can't do that. I simply can't. After having read the manga, or watched the anime I know the whole plot already. It's just no fun to read something which's outcome you already have seen previously.
Aside from that, I don't have the time to do everything twice. I cannot start reading the anime, seeing that I don't really like it, and then take a look at the anime, no time for that, no sir.

Take Fullmetal Alchemist as a recent example: Should I watch it? Should I read it? I already informed myself on wikipedia and if I'm right, the anime also turns out to be different from its original story. Now should I go with the manga, or still watch the anime? As I said, I'm sure I would stick with the anime from its „appearance“, as I already looked a bit into the manga but if the plot is different …

I hope after reading this outlining my situation, you get an idea of the problem. It is really hard for me to always decide with what I should be going, really.
It might have been a little complicated read, it's hard to gather the thoughts but the basic issue I have is this: Do I watch or read a series I'm interested in?

So what do you do? How do you decide? You just watch the anime and don't care about the manga for a single second? (This being an anime forum mainly, I guess that's the way it is for most of you)
Or vice versa? Or you read and watch both? Or you do a little research to find out which one's better? The problem there is though, that's its really hard to find that out without getting spoilered. That's why I don't actually like to inform myself about the series I plan on watching, to begin with.

And what's your opinion about it? Do you generally prefer the anime version or the manga version of a series you like?