I say this as someone who is in general biased for more serialized modes of storytelling and in fact that bias has played a role in why I like Anime so much to begin with.
But the Anime that embody the strengths of serialized story telling are usually Original TV Anime (and some OVAs and ONAs), and Manga adaptations. And a lot of Visual Novel or Video Game adaptations work being adapted into a more serialized format because their structure is often like something serialized so that the player can be given convenient places to take a break.
LNs however are kind of the Japanese equivalent to YA novels or airport novels except shorter in length, their original narrative structure is usually much more similar to Movies then to a TV Series.
My problem with the broadcast order of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is that it butchered the structure of the original LN which actually is a good stand alone work of art on it's own even if it had never gotten sequels. The chronological first 6 episodes of Haruhi are the adaptation of that LN and I kind of wish someone would just fan edit them into a movie (both a Subbed versions and a Dubbed version).
Sword Art Online was actually adapted similarly to Haruhi in this regard except in that case the inserted short stories written later to flesh out the original arc made the Anime more chronological then the source material rather then less.
The fact that some LNs are short story collections is perhaps the counter point to this thesis. I suppose the short stories could be adapted as OVAs or ONAs. But some movies are made as collections of shorter stories rather then one feature length story.
We've already seen success in adapting LNs as movies rather then TV shows. The Live Action Boogiepop and Others movie, the Kara no Kyoukai films, the SAO Progressive movies of which only one I've gotten to see currently. Aura: Koga Maryuin's Last War which I think is a pretty underrated entry in the Chunibyo genre. And most successful of all The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya.
But I also think about the niche examples where the serialized format combined with wanting to make a lot of progress in one season has hurt a story structurally. I'm The Villainess, So I'm Taming The Final Boss rushing to the end of the first novel in only the 4th episode killed my initial enthusiasm for that series.
There are exceptions, Fate/Zero and Fate/Apocrypha are LN adaptations and I don't see how they'd work as a string of movies. Some LNs do seem to be written from the start with the idea of being adapted into a TV Anime. However more often then not in Japan the Anime is glorified marketing for the source material not the other way around. But sometimes whether it gets adapted or not a first novel can seem more like set up for future stories then a satisfying story on it's own. Maybe it's mostly older LNs this is true for.
The point I'm making is perhaps most proven by the Raildex franchise and the popular discourse around it.
A Certain Magical Index's first LN was also written to originally stand alone if no sequel was greenlit, that is the plot of the first 6 episodes and they too feel like they could've been a movie. I enjoy the Index Anime just fine but I'm a notoriously easy person to please, and I can definitely see how every arc that is given only 3 episodes or less (Deep Blood, Tree Remnant, Crystal Fleet, all of season III) could have used more screen time to flesh everything out.
A Certain Scientific Railgun was serialized from it's inception and so the Anime is able to improve upon the Manga in the same way many past Anime based on Manga have from Sailor Moon to DBZ to the original FMA Anime by adding much needed episodic filler episodes and the occasional filler arc that is just as peak fiction as the Manga yet purists hate on them anyway.
Railgun works as a series because the source is also a serial, Index would have been better as movies.
It is true that sometimes even the LNs will split an arc across more then one LN. SAO started doing this as early as Fairy Dance, and Boogiepop did it back in the 90s with Vs Imaginator, and Index has indeed done it a few times.
So those being adapted as a movie per LN can at first glance be mistaken for those misguided times Hollywood has split the last novel of a YA saga into two movies. However Across The Spiderverse was pretty universally praised in-spite of ending on a Cliffhanger. And in the world of Anime we have prior precedent for this with the Nanoha Reflection and Detonation movies being one story split across two films, and then the latest Prisma Illya movie also ended on a cliffhanger.
Maybe 20 years ago the idea of devoting a 20+ novel saga to movies rather then TV would have seemed unthinkable. But now we live in a post MCU world where Cinema itself can be serialized.
Update November 2024: In the slightly over a year since I wrote this I've now finally seen Durarara! and Baccano!
Durarara! works surprisingly well as a TV series, I wouldn't change anything about it or recommending doing anything different if more season of the Anime are made. It can be another lead counter example to my thesis.
Baccano! also works very well as a miniseries, but I do think what Baccano! pulled off is likely to only work as a one season gimmick, I'm skeptically a second season to do the same thing with another 4 LNs. It helped that the Flying Pussyfoot was story was a two parter and that they could use Isaac and Miria as the main glue connecting the different stories.
If Baccano! gets more Anime, and I very much want it to, I would suggest just making movies out of as many of them as possible.
Perhaps some of you think too many individual Light Novels are not "Epic" or "Cinematic" enough to warrant a movie. But I like plenty of small scale low stakes movies, from random Lifetime Original movies I've watched to old movies set in very isolated settings. Not everything needs to be about the potential end of the world or destruction of an entire city to be film worthy.
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