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This entry is trivia, which is cool and all, but not a trope. On a work, it goes on the Trivia tab.

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Anime First

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The vast majority of anime is usually based on a preexisting material, be it Manga, Light Novels, Visual Novels or even video games and toys. These are the exceptions.

Anime is risky for a lot of reasons, but mainly because it's very costly. Literature and manga will usually only have a small handful of people that are directly involved in its creation; yeah, you'll need a small team in order for it to actually get it onto shelves, but the work itself technically only needs a writer, some artists, and an editor. For anime, you need a team of dozens for the animation alone (to say nothing of composers, voice actors, and other vital roles) just to create a single episode or film. Animation also has the additional problem of demographics; while publishing has to deal with this as well, the lower costs means that it's much less of a financial risk to release a work that appeals to a niche audience. With animation, if you're spending millions on even the cheapest 12-Episode Anime, it better appeal to the widest demographic possible in other to recoup costs.note 

So naturally, anyone funding an anime is far more likely to cough up some cash if what's being created has already found success elsewhere; after all, you'll have a built-in fanbase and that preexisting material can serve as additional advertisement for the show and vice-versa, increasing revenue all around. The basic idea is certainly not unique to anime, as countless shows and films around the world —both animated and live-action— are based on preexisting properties for all these same reasons. But this tends to be far more common with anime than anything else, with a good 90% of programs released every year originating in another medium.

Occasionally manga comes out after such an anime, but only as a limited run. Some manga run concurrently with a show, so divergences are common and accepted. You don't want them to be exactly alike or the audience will wonder why you're messing with the story. You also sometimes get a sort of Double Subversion where the manga comes out first, but the original project was conceived as an anime; the manga was primarily intended as advertisement. (The well-known example is Neon Genesis Evangelion.)

Not to be confused with the common gripe that all of the anime examples on a trope page come first. (Seriously, guys, it's alphabetical. Either add in some examples from advertising, or let it go.) Compare All Musicals Are Adaptations, a trope that exists for much the same reasons as this one.

Examples:

Alternative Title(s): Original Anime

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