Worst anime you've seen -- and why

Cafe Society
21

Aw, I can’t see why people hated Project A-ko so much. It was definitely an intentionally broad parody of most anime topics - girls in sailor suits, ambiguous ages (A-ko, B-ko, and C-ko were all supposed to be the same age, but they looked more like real teenager, 20s woman, and little kid), fan service, lesbian undertones, big robots, martial arts, aliens, and so on.

(Side note to any City of Heroes players - if you see “Eiko Magami” on the Justice server, that’s me! The “real” names of the characters in the anime are Eiko, Biiko, and Shiiko.)

22

I’d have to say that the worst I’ve ever seen is probably Final Fantasy: Legend of the Crystals – also known as the “glowing butt anime.” Tedious – at least hentai has laugh value.

I agree. It was awful – and I’m speaking as a fan of the manga and TV series.

CLAMP studios has always had trouble bringing its material to the screen. They started with series for two of their cult classics – Tokyo Babylon and Rig Veda, and then just stopped after the second episode.

With X, they failed horribly with the movie, but did surprisingly well with the TV show. The movie was just dizzying, though. They tried to fit the whole plot into an hour or so, and they changed several people’s personalities and subplots (for instance, Kusanagi – the kind-hearted Dragon of Earth who dates Nekoi – the wolf-girl Dragon of Heaven – now just shows up for five minutes near the end, a smiling sociopath who tries to kill the heroes, and then loses his arm).

23

I don’t remember the title, but the story was a futuristic detective story with various aliens, etc.

Towards the end, the heroine is captured by the bad guys and raped repeatedly for a short-but-intense period of time (say, 24 hours or so). Then, soon after (the next day, say) being saved by the hero, she has a passionate, romantic, transcendent sexual experience with him.

There was plenty of other lovely misogynistic moments leading up to this, natch.

Blech.

24

Man, I watched almost the entire run of the show on Adult Swim, and I totally missed the bugs resemblence to giant vaginas. I guess I’m so used to giant penis monsters, I didn’t expect the change-up.

Still, as a whole, not to bad a show, if you can get past the cheapo animation and the obligatory Completely Unlikable Protagonist.

25

When filling out the review cards, after we dealt with the poor animation, unsympathetic characters, etc., one of us said “We should really let them have it for those stupid vagina monsters!”

So, full of feigned feminist indignation, we started writing stuff like “How dare you send such a misogynistic video to a women’s college?” and “The media shouldn’t be teaching young women that their genitals are monstrous!” We had a lot more fun thinking up these complaints than we did watching the show.

I’m really surprised to hear it ever made it to US television, although I suppose it’s possible that it’s more enjoyable if you don’t just see three episodes from the middle of the series.

26

Which, oddly enough, is the sort of thing young men like people to think of their genitals.

Just goes to show.

27

Giant vagina monsters are a great leap forward for feminism. Men have their giant penis monsters, now women have giant vagina monsters. It’s all good.

28

45 minutes I’d love to have back - Art of Fighting
Let’s see, plot that has zippo resemblance to anything that happens in the actual game, and is utterly friggin’ ridiculous to boot, incredibly inaccurate character art, painfully repetitive dialogue, boring, pointless fights, every relevant anime cliche followed to the letter, cornball stunt work…what else? Oh, right, let’s turn Ryuhaku Todo into a raving psychopath for absolutely no reason!

I swear, if this were an original short, I’d wonder what the hell they were smoking.

Horrific butchery, single series - Fist of the North Star
Okay, let’s get one thing straight…the original manga was not a brainless killfest, it didn’t have Ken dispatch a gazillion foes at a time, and it did not give one relatively minor villain a freaking mechanized army. This doesn’t even rise to the level of parody…it’s a perverted mockery from some bizarre alternate universe. (And bear in mind that it originally went into production while Tetsuo Hara and Buronson were still doing the manga.) Additionally, I really, REALLY could’ve done without turning Bat into an irritating little twerp simply because every anime needs an irritating little twerp.

Horrific butchery, various works - Every anime based on any comedy Rumiko Takahashi ever did
Jesus freaking Christ. Does anyone in the anime industry have any concept of irony? Or lightheartedness? Or comedy? Or watchability?? By far the absolute worst are the 4th and 5th Urusei Yatsura movies, the latter of which admitted ON THE BOX that it was utterly pointless (1st and 6th are pretty good; 2d and 3rd are passable), and the Ranma 1/2 OAVs. The Shinnosuke episode, in particular (which Takahashi handled with great sensitivity and humor), made me nauseous.

Has no damn right to be boring - Almost every tentacle hentai ever made
I’ve seen at least six of these, and I swear that 90% of every single episode is 1. incredibly tedious, labored exposition, 2. soul-wrenching angst, 3. lame hijinks I’ve seen in a gazillion non-adult titles, 4. arguing, arguing, arguing, and 5. waiting for something to happen, which usually turns out to be one of the previous items.

Two hours of agony, two weeks of wondering why - The Kimugure Orange Road Movie
One of the first anime titles I ever saw…and boy, how I wish it wasn’t. I have never been so utterly disgusted at an anime character as I was at Kyosuke Kasuga. (Happosai steals women’s underwear for a reason. Kyosuke ripping out Hikaru’s heart defied the very existence of same.)

I’ve also seen a whole bunch of overrated or ill-conceived material, but nothing as bad as anything I’ve mentioned.

29

I think this one was Wicked City. For the record, I enjoyed it.

The dirty old man and the giant spider woman with the vagina dentata always make me chuckle.

30

I’ll leave out the hentai I’ve seen and nominate “Banner of the Stars”.

It’s the sequel to the somewhat passable show “Crest of the Stars”. Our young heroes are stationed aboard a scout ship that’s just one part of a vast space armada.

The entire series is buildup to one space battle, which isn’t some huge mega-battle to determine the fate of the galaxy, but just one of several battles in a much larger war.

It’s like watching someone else play a particularly boring turn-based strategy game. Whole episodes are dedicated to showing tatical maps and fleet dispositions. “But sir! Red Squadron lacks the fuel to get to the secondary jump point and still travel to Qumquat VII before the enemy can travel to plasma node 8!” “Dammit, I don’t care! Send Admiral Snorkle to sector seven!” <cut to Admrial Snorkle, whom we’ve never seen before until now> “What!?! Sector seven! The enemy will eventually come out of sector 14, and we’ll be sitting ducks when they finally get here, which won’t be for another six episodes!”

Even when the battle finally got started it was boring. Lots of “We should see them by now, where are they?” and entire episodes where they just fly at each other to get into firing range. They mostly fight by dropping mines and hoping the enemy runs into them.

Each episode ends with a cliffhanger teaser - things like “Next Episode: Battle is Joined!”, only that’s not actually what happens in the next episode. The next episode will be about the main character’s cat.

It’s really a lot like reading the Wheel of Time series. Whole books pass without anything actually happening.