I'm not a big anime guy (guess I'm turning into one though), anyway I decided to watch this because I saw the gif attached. To my surprise I ended up absolutely loving the first couple episodes of Hana no Uta the 2013 version. I feel like I missed a lot of lore and backstory though. People say not to watch the 2008 version but without watching it I feel kinda lost.

Am I missing something? Should I read the manga first or just cave and watch the ugly 2008 anime? How do does one go about getting into this. How much of the manga series is covered in the tv show (Hana no Uta, Hoshi no Umi, and Tsuki ni Naku)? I'm mainly going off that image that everyone links to that explains the order in which to watch the episodes.

Sorry if this doesn't make any sense, like I said, I'm not big into anime so I don't really know this shit.