Adaptations stand on their own or they are worthless.
the point of adaptations is to bring the story and characters to a larger audience who might not be interested in the format the original material is in.
I've seen people make this assertion from time to time, but I can't fully agree.
It's easy to come up with examples of fan-targeted adaptations to other media that are clearly not intended to stand alone (OVAs/ODAs, drama CDs) and you're probably not saying those shouldn't exist, so that means you're selectively targeting either the transmission medium of TV, or maybe shows with episode counts higher than a certain number, and saying they're "supposed" to be completely self-contained, which is just a hope on your part for the sake of your own enjoyment as someone who wants stand-alone animated products, not really a rule that has to be followed if the goal is different.
One goal of these modern late-night novel-based anime like SAO is to get people to buy the novels (much easier than getting them to buy videos), so while it's not good to drive away viewers with a show that's just plain unenjoyable on its own, if one can manage to get them curious to read the novels for what's missing, that's a success. (That perspective is going to be different for foreign anime fans for whom "reading the novel" isn't something that's a common part of their culture.)
As someone who's probably pretty similar to you in mostly watching anime without having read the source material, I agree that fully stand-alone shows are more enjoyable. But I can't really agree with the idea that there's a cosmic law saying all animation on television is required to be like that.
You don't want to wind up sounding like the writer for ANN's
The Stream column who said that
Oda Nobuna no Yabou "fails as a piece of entertainment" because it requires you to know Japanese history.
Earlier this year, a Japanese teenager posted to the AnimeSuki forums,
http://forums.animesuki.com/showthread.php?t=111097
and amongst other things mentioned what she watches anime for:
Tatsuyama Asuka said:
私がアニメを見る目的は2つあります。
There are two purposes that I look at anime.
1つは、漫画の単行本が出版されている場合、それを買うかどうかを見極めるためです。
The 1st is for discerning whether he buys it, when the book of comics is published.
すなわち、アニメを見て面白かったら原作も読もうと考えます。
That is, anime is seen, and if interesting, I will think that an original will also be read.
2つめは、原作の漫画を既に読んで内容を知っている場合、アニメとなって動き、話す様子を楽しむ ためです。
The 2nd is for enjoying signs that become anime, and it moves and talks, when original comics are already read and the contents are known.
私以外の日本人の中にも、同じ考えを持つ人はいるでしょう。
Probably, there are those who have the same idea also in the other Japanese.
For her, anime is for either (a) deciding whether to buy the original work, or (b) for enjoying seeing the characters brought to life if you already like the original work.
Obviously this one person doesn't represent all human beings in Japan, but I think it's noteworthy she didn't even even mention the idea of enjoying anime independently of its source material. (Or the idea of buying videos, heh.)
