Worst Anime – I watched them so you don’t have to

Arguably there is no bad or good art, but people will generally agree that some of these anime can be considered worse than others. Here are some.

Pupa

Yea, this is on every list. To be honest, the first 3 episodes of Pupa were actually faithful to the manga and it seemed like the story was heading somewhere interesting… but it crashed and burned to the ground due to pacing issues. If you enjoy a combination of cannibalism and sexual incest overtones where the sister makes suggestive noises as she eats her brother alive, well, give it a watch. Plus side, it ends with a ‘see the rest of the story in the manga’.

I’m not going to say the manga was a masterpiece (even though I have the damn collector’s edition sitting in my bookshelf) but it has the atmosphere and the gravity that just pulls you in (minus the incest undertones that just gets worse once you find out Yume’s true identity). The anime has none of that. The worst choice they could’ve made is to make the episodes 5 minutes long, which simply does not work on a thriller-horror.

Skelter Heaven

Wow, this thing has a 1.9 rating! So Skelter Heaven is based on a PS2 game… by Idea Factory. *Diabolik Lovers PTSD triggered* The opening theme is pretty nice, and there seem to be some interesting stuff going on… but the animation is just downright horrible. I swear the morning cartoons in my days did a better job with 3D animation than this. I’d have thought the studio made it with Flash or something. Also, the transitions are so bad I’d think the people who made it never made a movie or even a video before…

From what I gathered, it’s about a bunch of girls in flying machines, and they fight this stupid squid alien that’s horribly animated… The main girl is an artificial being that seems to have a thing going on with the Captain. That’s all I can glean from this.

It reminds me a lot of Kishin Houkou Demonbane OVA…

Dark Cat

It’s so damn cheesy! The plot, the dialogue, the scenes, just everything about this OVA is so cheesy I laughed my whole way through. Dark Cat is about two cat brothers fighting a mwa-ha-ha villain who turns people into tentacle monsters, which ironically were the most detailed-animated thing in this entire film. It is a few steps away from being tentacle hentai. Animation itself isn’t bad for its time. The really bad thing was… okay, I can’t pinpoint what was bad. The plot was bad, the voice acting was bad, the music was bad… there’s just no single bad thing, just a glob of bad that tripled the bad. Really, this anime deserves to stay forgotten.

Vampire Holmes

This anime actually got me cracking so hard within the first 10 seconds. The plot follows a Holmes that doesn’t solve cases (or do any useful shit) accompanied by Hudson, who just tries so hard to beat some sense into his employer. The series traces key frames from a few famous anime that I cannot quite pinpoint, but I feel that those scenes were traced lol. Overall, I’ve seen fan animations that look better than this.

Moreover, that cheesy music that belongs in a magical girl anime lol

This anime doesn’t try to take itself seriously so I cannot call it bad because it was meant to be that way… this is definitely one anime that belongs in the ‘so bad it’s good’ category.

{this thing actually has a game which I will download and play. wish me luck}

Generation of Chaos

Another one based on a game made by Idea Factory, with a whopping score of 1.8/10 on AniDb. GOC Prologue covers two stories: Chiffon, a monster trainer, and Roze, a half demon. Chiffon’s story is about him releasing his bug to the wild and giving up his monster trainer career, while Roze’s is about how people burned her house and killed her sister.

The art is better than Skelter Heaven in my opinion. It’s a standard 90’s fantasy world with a standard plot that seems vaguely promising. The song is really nice, and I’d say the artworks they show during the ending theme is more interesting than the whole OVA. Roze’s story is better animated than Chiffon’s, the latter taking backgrounds and scenes directly from the source material, which is just lazy.

It’s not that bad, honestly. I’ve sat through worse stuff. The issue is that the awkward editing made it so that I have no clue what’s going on. Does this OVA make me wanna play the game? No.

EX-ARM

Hello, hello. Do I… even have to say anything? 3D anime has had their best and worst, the best (IMO) is Houseki no Kuni, while Sidonia and Blame probably falls somewhere in the middle, and the worst is… well, maybe this or Berserk. More like this one is.

I was laughing. I was laughing so hard for the wrong reasons. I was trying to take this thing seriously but I laughed and laughed. I swear, a fan-animated MMD project looks better than this. Heck, I’ve seen a middle schooler done a better job with their original action animation on MMD than this. Such a waste of a good plot, because I was genuinely interested in what was going on, it would’ve been such a great shonen anime.

Okay, so the opening sequence has a less-than-smooth transition accompanied by Google Earth satellite images with Photoshop filters. I thought: okay, maybe they’re just starting out, it’ll smoothen out later once they get a hang of how to anime. Surprise, it doesn’t.

EX-ARM’s biggest flaw is the weird, weird animation. It’s like the animators don’t know what to do with a 3D model. They look lifeless as hell I swear I can make MMD projects that look better than that. Second is the weird cinematography. There are so many scenes just in the first episode alone where I question the camera’s positioning. They don’t look professional. Sometimes they’re skewed the wrong way, focused on the wrong object, bad composition, and those goofy zoom shots and static shots… my gosh, is this an anime or a video game? Video games look a hell lot better than this. The shots look like a cheesy action movie.

Plus side: I’m giving 10/10 for the voice actors. Also, the fight choreography is great. It’s just that the execution is bad. From what I know, they hired real stunt actors to do the motion capture, and I could totally see how badass it must’ve looked as a live-action and would love to see that… but these people don’t do animation. They don’t make full use of the free-moving camera and lighting effects available to them. I wish they’d take a look at how Houseki no Kuni handled its camera positioning and facial expressions.

Just to wash my eyes, I had to see this version. It’s better animated than the whole episode and possibly the whole series.

Ex-Arm actually isn’t the worst one on this list, but it’s definitely far from the ‘so bad it’s good’ category. I wish they’d make a live action instead, or maybe get at least one person who knows how to animate, or maybe apologize to the mangaka.

Forest Fairy Five

My eyes hurt so I couldn’t get through it.

Shitcom

One minute is all it takes to convey true love. It’s not… I mean, it’s not bad and it’s technically a clay animation not what you’d expect when talking about anime, but it’s… okay, I don’t know how to describe it. Just like, WTF. But understandable kind of WTF.

Angel’s Drop

Animation-wise, Tenshi no Drop is actually on the better side of this list. Like, the animation is a benediction compared to the other stuff on this list I sat through. However, the story is… WTF. Basically it’s about a bunch of cute little lolis trying to pee out gummy mushrooms and doughnuts in order to get their wishes granted. And there goes five minutes of my life. I actually feel bad for whoever is dragged to get involved with the production.

Mahou Shoujo Naria-Girls!

I actually watched this one because I wanted to (and even wrote a review) It has its moments… but I don’t see why you’d waste your time on it, TBH. I felt like the voice actors were trolled so bad when they auditioned for a role in the anime and they couldn’t quit right after seeing the job description.

If you’re into girls just talking about weird shenanigan, you may even find it strangely enjoyable.

Special Mention: Shin Angyo Onshi

Not a bad anime, but another case of a bad adaptation of a good manga. While it isn’t that bad, the plot of the movie is just… weird. So there’s this girl in BDSM gear who became this Phantom Master’s sando AKA dingo/partner, and she acclimatized to him so quick I was going ‘wait what?’ And then after a mildly interesting first half, the MC just spends the rest of the movie at an island that we can’t give a damn about.

I could name 2 other arcs of the manga that could work better as a movie than this. The Wonsul vs Sando fight is probably one of the most badass fight I’ve seen in manga, so that would work better as the second half to the movie. And there’s the long flashback arc that works well as a standalone.

The color choices and animation is pretty weird as well, though not as bad as some stuff we have on this list. The artist’s style is hard to capture with animation but I hope they did a better job.

Ah, and as a side note, I’ve done a double feature on Amon Saga and Legend of Lemnear, which are… I can’t say it’s bad for the standards back then but it’s bad.

End

So that was the list. Have you seen any of these weird/bad anime? What’s the worst anime you’ve sat through? Let me know in the comments.

AND GUESS WHAT, WE HAVE A PART 2.