I've noticed this.
Anime can do stuff the media being adapted cannot. And it's the exception rather than the rule, when a studio uses animation to push beyond the source material.
I've started being surprised when an anime is original, instead of an adaptation. And there is absolutely a difference when a story is made for animation.
Edit: thinking about it further, I think I'd call the difference a difference of "energy".
Animation can show movement. Manga can only imply it. Even when manga does so very well, the budget required means adaptions often still end up being just a bunch of stillframes (cough one punch man).
Manga, hence, contains a lot of pages of people just talking. Because that's how you tell a story. And even when story is told using amazing art panels, anime tends to just turn those into panned stills.
It's kind of why I've gone back to manga, because then you get art you can take a momemt to actually take in at your own pace. The ability of recent anime to properly immerse seems to be suffering, at least for me.