it would go like this for me I suppose
manga > game > movie > anime > light novel
I don't enjoy watching anime most of the time. And I've never read a single light novel (just a few chapters), I get disinterested soon on light novels.

Needs the option of the original media, as in Drrr!! I prefer the novel, in most that I love I prefer the manga, and in original animes that then make other media adaptation I prefer the anime.

Also for someones it may be the one they see first maybe.

I think the original is best.
The original is superior to any and all adaptions.
There are exceptions to this, of course. Strictly speaking the answer should be "it depends", as it is different on a case-by-case basis.
Still, the general rule is that the original is best.

...but as there is no "the original" option (which I'd have thought would be a very obvious option, that no one would forget to include)...
I can't vote.

It really depends.. Usually it's the manga, but at the same time I liked Hana Yori Dango's drama adaptation more, No.6 was best as a novel, Code:Breaker was ok as an anime and completely unreadable as a manga..
I wouldn't even vote "the original" as the best option .. it usually is, but from the ones I mentioned above two of the "better" ones were adaptations.
So no idea here

manga, unless it is originally something else first.

________________
WEBTOONS ヽ( ★ω★)ノ

I prefer the original, no matter what medium it is. By original I mean medium on which it appeared first. But overall I enjoy Novels the most, they are the most detailed, and I like details.

________________
I am envoy from nowhere in nowhere. Nobody and nothing have sent me. And though it is impossible I exist. © Trimutius

I voted manga but light novel would come in as a relativly close second.
All are enjoyable but manga and light novels can have some truly addictive moments.
Animes and movies you have to follow at its pace. You can't just skip ahead because doing that once, even just a few seconds, totaly ruins the feeling.

But if you're at a really exciting part of a manga.. that speed-reading through the pages. Good music on the background if you're into that. You keep telling your eyes to pay more attention to each page but you just can't stop them from looking ahead the second you've understood what you just saw. Ahh I just love that part ^^
And I have that with novels too.

I have to agree with a lot of you here. I usually prefer the series in its original incarnation because I feel like that's the closest to what the author intended. Of course, that's not a hard and fast rule. If the original author had a good idea but was a lousy writer and a subsequent adaptation handled the content better, then I'd most definitely prefer the adaptation. For example, I enjoyed the anime adaptation of Death Note far more than the manga and the live action movies even more than the anime. The original manga author catered to producing cheap thrills through a cast of plastic characters and an overly convoluted plot, whereas the director of the live action films focused on creating a much more human story that actually made me care about the characters and their conflicts.

So yeah, if there were an option for "whatever's the best," then I'd vote that.

________________


"Now, everything is... just..."

writer | librarian | critic

Tie between manga and an anime done right.

I couldn't agree more

________________

I wish there was option for "original", because that's what usually enjoy the most. I have to agree though, there are some exceptions. An adaption can be way better than the original. Very rare though.

But as this is basically about which medium I prefer if the story isn't the deciding factor, well... manga or light novel I guess. Hard to decide as I read different things for different reasons as them.

________________
Far-off places with sweet sounding names.

Game > Manga > Anime > Light Novel > Poking dead animals with a stick > Live action

I find light novels annoying to read because the translators rarely reformat them into normal readable english paragraphs and instead just have translated lines of text so I'd rather watch an anime adaptation. I don't think visual novels ever get made after some other original form is out, but if the anime is original then I'll watch that over reading a bad manga adaptation.

The word medium is used correctly here. It means the method of which a story is told. So you have books and television which are different kinds of mediums that tell a story, and the "people able to contact spirits" are mediums as well, since the spirits are speaking through them as their medium.