By worst, I mean most technically incompetent, stupidest, badly done anime, not the most violent, sexually explicit, morally damaged anime.
My candidate would be a little number called “Pure Love.” It’s an adult anime that was apparently based on a video game, and the creators attempted to save time and money by incorporating game graphics into the anime, while getting the cheapest, and apparently crappiest animation they could find. So you have these eye-blurring graphics of crudely drawn 2D characters walking along streets with bad 3d graphic walls, in colors that don’t even come close to matching each other.
The plotting was also done on the cheap, apparently. The protagonist is trying to discover the answer to a local mystery about a cave with the help of a number of willing wenches. Characters appear and disappear for no reason, do things that don’t appear to have any relation to the plot, which never really makes any sense anyway. You spend much of the anime going “Bwuh?”
The only thing it really has going for it is that it’s one of those good-natured anime, so it doesn’t have that sense of moral stupidity that many adult anime have. Still, the thing makes no sense and is literally hard to look at. Geesh. Why did they bother?
Anything that shows character “running” by simply alternating between two stills immediately drops to the bottom of the list in the two seconds it takes me to change the channel in disgust.
I thought Akira was an overhyped suckfest, Ghost In the Shell literally put me to sleep, and anything Dragon Ball-related makes you stupider simply by looking at it.
Legend of Crystania. I don’t know what kind of crack the animators were on when they produced the horrible animation, or what the script writer (or translator and script writer, if the bad writing came from the English production side and not the original Japanese) was trying to articulate. I’ve watched this anime several times, and all I can get out of it is something about animal gods and Pirotess taking a different name and running around with tribal people trying to save Ashram who is in some sort of cosmic limbo.
And this isn’t so much the fault of anybody, but as the American rights were bought by ADV and the original Lodoss (which Crystania is a story in) rights by CPM, different voice actors were used in the dub, who were horrible and make the Lodoss fans cry.
A good amount of yaoi manga has hideous art in it - deformed faces that weren’t meant to be so, and awkward poses. Okay, and the plotlines aren’t much better than the average hentai.
Don’t get me wrong, the animation was very pretty (Akira too), but I found it to be metaphysical psychobabble and cyberpunk-wannabe bullshit that literally made me nod off in my chair in a room full of awed, carousing nerds.
It was pretty, but after the first twenty minutes seeming like a bad action flick (chick running around buildings blah blah blah) I went to watch something that Steven Seagal couldn’t have starred in.
A.D. Police. I think I saw about two and a half episodes. Yech. Like every cliche and bad element from action movies and cop shows, held together with a thick, oily, coat of dumb.
Actually, The Humanoid was probably worse, but at least it had the excuse of not being a really stupid execution of a good spinoff concept from a good series. (And it did have Cathy Weseluck, completely wasted in the main role. 'course, Clint Howard would have been wasted, too.)
There’s a difference between genuinely bad and just not your cup of tea. I’m a huge GitS fan, but I can understand why people wouldn’t like it. I also prefer the series to the movies, especially the first movie. I also liked Akira, and enjoyed DBZ the first time watching it (I could never watch it again though).
As for stuff I thought sucked–Macross 7. Lackluster story, and a love triangle that, as far as I can tell, was never truly resolved. The ending was anti-climatic too. It ramps up to this big thing, and then the enemy is like, “Oh, sorry.”
The characters were cool (though Basura grated my nerves, and was part of the reason I don’t like it), I like the animation, the music was good. The main story-line was just crap.
I won’t be the second. GitS isn’t just my favorite anime, it’s one of my favorite movies. Then again, I have a taste for slow dreamy sceneries. I loved Lost in Translation, which seems to be roundly hated around these parts.
You guys are lightweights. I can certainly understand why someone wouldn’t care for Akira, Ghost in the Shell, and I can’t stand DBZ, but those pale in comparison to the worst anime I’ve ever seen. M.D. Geist makes all other anime programs seem like high art by comparison. The animation is horrible and the plot makes very little sense.
Almost any hentai produced by a company called MMG.
Gravion Zwei is so over the top I can’t help wondering if it isn’t some weird Japanese parody.
Definetly Dragonball Z.
City Hunter, and then they made a live-action version with Jackie Chan and it all makes me want to cry because I couldn’t tell you which was worse. Oh god. But at least the live action version had Chan dressed up as Chun-Li from the streetfighter video game.
Yokohama Shopping Diary. As far as I could tell, it was about a girl robot riding a bike. That’s all. No discernable plot.
I hate Serial Experiments: Lain because the persistent low-level buzzing noise in the background of all the episodes makes me want to kill people, but I don’t think it’s actually bad.
You think GitS is bad? Try GitS 2. prettier, but even stranger, plus the same annoying soundtrack.
Lain makes me want to gouge my eyes out with a spoon out of boredom, and Princess Mononoke alternated between dull and preachy in equal parts. But on technical merits, they’re both fine.
Dragonball Z I actually enjoy, I find it very funny.
I suppose the worst animation I’ve seen in anime is Speed Racer.