Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-80.132.99.68-20150329114408/@comment-918376-20160129032040

WWB would just about never be adapted for an anime series designed to be for kids ages 5 and up. It's basically just a retelling of the main story, and when it's not, it's littered with ecchi fan service (Kurinon's basically a molester, Nazuna struts around half-naked and drunk, and they're quite explicit about what happens to female players).

(Spoilers for WWB I guess?) I mean, for all that the anime took from other spin-offs (even WWB itself), they never adopted WWB's "claim" that Souji was the first to die. When Mamare was asked about it, he said it was some details during production. That brings up two possibilities: one, that Mamare out-and-out stated that the circumstances that brought about Souji's death was caused by uncanonical reasons (Royal Guards work differently between the LN and WWB); two, that the writers didn't want to pose the question of why exactly Souji died.