What is the worst anime you’ve ever seen?
I’m in a mood to torture myself and watch some truly awful, terrible anime over the Christmas break. Modern anime preferably (within the past 10 years.) Give me your worst suggestions. My taste is comedy and/or romance.
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I remember how they censored a kiss with a bright light glare because they didn't know how to draw/animate the kiss lol
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It was actually *twelve* episodes.
Author's thinly veiled fetishes, uncomfortable and cringy. Badly written and just all around stupid.
And then nothing happened and I felt like such a fool!
My friends still bring it up occasionally when I’m on the losing side of an argument :(
I never found this anime particularly difficult to understand. The central question is simple: where does someone feel at home, and what do they need to give up to remain there?
The story mainly focuses on Kakeru and Touko, and almost everything that happens around them serves to reinforce this theme.
Jonathan, for example, isn't just an eccentric detail. Within the work, it functions as a representation of Kakeru himself. This fits with the director's style, who often uses chickens symbolically in other works. In Glasslip, Jonathan ends up reflecting the protagonist's internal conflicts, more than existing as an independent character.
This is already apparent in the first episode, in the conversation between Kakeru and Touko about whether a chicken should live free or in a cage. Kakeru's statement is noteworthy precisely because he associates freedom with danger and instability. He prefers the idea of the cage, of security, of something fixed. This position makes sense when you understand his history: someone who has never had a permanent place, who lives in constant motion.
The tent fits perfectly into this. It's not a random choice. Since Kakeru's family moves all the time, he can't put down roots anywhere. The tent ends up being the only constant space in his life, something that remains the same regardless of the city. It's the way he finds to carry a "home" with him.
The anime reinforces this state of transience with the seabirds, which appear and are heard frequently. They migrate, follow the seasons, and never stay in the same place. This image directly relates to Kakeru and the loneliness that comes from this life in motion. It's this pattern that Touko notices and that scares her: the possibility that, when circumstances change, he will leave.
From this, the main conflict is established. Kakeru needs to choose between continuing to accompany his mother, repeating this cycle of departures, or remaining there with Touko. Staying, however, is not a simple decision. It means taking responsibility for one's own life and accepting that there won't be an easy way out if things go wrong. This insecurity explains his hesitation and frustration throughout the story.
Touko, in turn, also carries her own fears. Having always lived in that city, the idea of separation is especially difficult for her. From the beginning, her desire is to keep the important people close, to preserve the bonds. The fireworks symbolize exactly that: a moment when everyone is still together. When she gets involved with Kakeru, this fear intensifies because he has the real possibility of leaving.
The so-called fragments of the future emerge as an extension of this sensitivity of the two. It's not about alternative worlds or literal supernatural phenomena, but about imagination, emotional projections, and anxiety. It's a way of expressing feelings that cannot yet be organized directly.
Everything else in the anime functions as a backdrop. The narrative centers on the two protagonists and the question that runs throughout the series: Will Kakeru find a place to stay? Will Touko be able to keep the people she loves close? The answer to this is what truly drives the story.
I rated it 9/10, and I feel this is one of my most unpopular reviews.
**That creepy anime about the wife being turned into a 9 year old**
**Rent a girlfriend but that’s irredeemable garbage**
**Uhhh mahou sensou**
And I really like a lot of the stuff with the two MC's grandparents. Is kazuya a hopeless dunce shelling all his money away to his neighbor? Yeah. But he also does have a pretty big heart imo. It's hard not to like the guy at his core, its very easy to dislike him at his surface level for all his dumb behavior lol.
I too, unironically watch and like it for it's ridiculousness. Plus, the rent a girlfriend concept is a rather interesting one. There's a loneliness epidemic right now, and, whether the idea helps or hurts that epidemic, it's at least doing something instead of nothing. Which is interesting to think about. The show doesnt explore this at all because that would involve way deeper writing than the show clearly wants, but it's a concept I think about in my free time because of the show.
It's my personal worst of all time, because I've never seen a show damage someone close to me in real life before.
- 3-minute long episodes
- Shitty ED and OP
- Incomprehensible plot
- Ugly visuals
- Horrible censoring makes it unwatchable
- Laughable dialog
- 2 taboo subjects (incest, cannibalism)
- Finale has nothing to do with the rest of the show
This and **Skelter+Heaven** are my only two 1/10 shows on MAL. At least Skelter is enjoyable in a "it's so bad" manner, but there isn't anything to get out of Pupa.
Note: I only rate shows I finished. However out of the shows I haven't completed, **Conception** is the only one that I think would come close to a 1/10. Most shows I "drop" are for maybe a single reason (like DearS' awful MC). Conception is all around awful, AND it's boring as shit, AND it has a SUPREMELY annoying character.
I do have seen worse actually, but this show ends on Christmas so its better fitting.
I was gambling on the 1% chance it was so bad it was good. I didn't win.
As much as I loved the original record of lodoss war, try watching the midquel reboot, chronicles of a heroic knight. The OP is legitimately great but I think thats where 99% of their budget went because while the show actually started out pretty decent, it descends into a 1fps crayon drawing animation by the end. Its a slow motion train wreck explosion.
Also another failed reboot, original magic knight rayearth is a great classic magical girl series, but the 3ep reboot "rayearth", the one with a dark blue DVD cover, is a confusing insult to the original.
Some people swear by it but here and there now and then is like a lunch table of teenage boys writing what they think deep and grimdark is. Animal abuse, raping women to show the effect on the men and then ignoring the victims, and possibly the most cartoonishly unbelievable antagonist ever written. I lasted a handful of episodes in awe of how bad it was and waiting for it to live up to a fraction of the hype it got.
The first season of NG Knight Lamune & 40 is some classic Saturday morning shonen comedy. Season two is hotly debated and hated or loved. Season three must have changed IP ownership yet again because its incredibly cringey bordering on rape porn. Barely got thru one episode and change in total shock what they did to a beloved childhood memory. One of the few shows where I popped out the DVD and literally snapped it in half before tossing it in the garbage.
Enjoy your holiday warming your hands by the festering flaming dumpster fire.
“My life as inukai sans dog”
Yea i watched it all :)
Dropped = i got a cheat skill in another world and became unrivaled in real world too
I had to search it just to remember the name. I can’t believe I suffered through the full thing.
It's okay if you haven't heard of it. Even when it aired there years ago, few people watched it. And everyone else has no idea how fortunate they are that they skipped it. The character design is worse than Ex-Arm. The animation is worse than Abunai Sisters. The plot is worse than Gibiate. The music is atrocious. The sound design is hideous. The voice acting is literally done by a boy band.
I would rather watch My Life Growing Grass In This World than one more minute of this putrid excuse for an anime.
* Char's Counterattack
* Macross
Insanely bad visuals, awful plot, terrible character writing, there is nothing redeemable about it. At least with stuff like Ex-Arm it can be fun if you get really drunk or high and watch it. Gibiate is just pain
Ex-Arm... I don't remember a single BGM from that show, and I'm a masochist who watched 9 episodes of this crap.
Just wanna share a funny story: Last time I saw someone asked this question, the OP vehemently said Spy × Family was her worst series because it was full of sexual contents. And after a lot of questions toward her and explanation, she answered nothing and kept her "you are weird for that" stand despite it was clear that she has never watched Spy × Family but just saw it on Tiktok or something.
I don't know where that girl is gone. Hope she found some actual thing to watch.
*Which was later clarified to mean that she finds sexism and violence against male characters entertaining and totally fine, just not against female characters.
Though it's still a stretch to call that sexualised.
That one scene where Loid is so outraged over someone insulting Anya that he punched a table really his me in the mommy button
He only did stuff like ordering kidnapping of a teenage girl. Poor victim.
Mars of Destruction
Worse than Ex-Arm
It’s “every anime trope ever but executed poorly, the anime.” And for a combat shonen most of the fights involve two people more or less standing still while
they use their abilities at each other back and forth.
The themes and abilities have the *potential* for it to be a pretty dark and interesting anime in line with like AoT or JJK, but its like the writer didn’t have the balls to go that far or the editors hamstrung the artist so it ends up being super tame and edgy instead.
It’s unapologetic isekai slop (with the thing being it’s not REALLY isekai, just a magic portal door he can go through as he pleases), but it’s still well worth the watch for how absurdly funny it is. It’s literally ‘I did something super awesome and EVERYONE clapped’, the anime.
Sometimes literally. I swear there really was a scene with everyone clapping after he did something ridiculous lmao.
Then everyone would clap for absolute no reason on the most absurd bullshit you have ever seen, it was beautiful garbage, 0.6/10, would watch again
people who keep saying One Punch Man season 3 are either forgetting various anime they already watch or hating OPM Season 3 too much
I have a pretty high tolerance for trash, but this one was unwatchable for me. It's often called "and then everyone clapped, the anime." The secondhand embarrassment and cringe is almost literally painful.
Instructions unclear, I recommend Violinist of Hamlin (1996). It is literally the worst anime adaptation of all time.
* It's based on a gag manga about people who play oversized instruments to fight demons, which occasionally gets dark, and immediately goes back to very very stupid gags.
* They adapted it as a grimdark fantasy series
* Fight scenes are basically 5 frames per minute. It is so bad.
I'll pick up random anime sure but Ill read up on it. Some anime get worse over time like every Isekai under the sun.
You know what your getting into basically. If a person hates a show then what pulled them in to watch it in the first place? For Boruto its name brand a brand it couldn't live up too.
It's the actual story that sucks ass, and I always imagined the anime staff living in horror of the next chapter of the manga coming out, knowing they'd have to adapt it eventually, instead of some fun, inconsequential filler.
It starts off like a lot of the recent VRMMO/isekai shows but without the stakes. But instead of growing on your, the MC just gets more and more annoying as the show goes on.
He's constantly complaining that he wants to be left alone, and yet he still puts himself into situations that he KNOWS are gonna draw attention to himself.
Show ends with him literally telling everyone to fuck off and then walks off with a stupid grin on his face.
If we are including dropped shows, shoutout Val X Love for just being terrible. And if we’re including shows that need some context, the finale of heavens lost property is such a disaster, it’s the only thing I’ve given a 1/10 on mal.
If you want something that's awful for a totally different reason... you said you liked romance anime? Sit through 26 episodes of Watari-kun's xx is About to Collapse and you might reevaluate that. It's the year's worst miscommunication-based dumpster fire; it's bad specifically because it *could have been good*. The basics are there: characters, backstories, plot skeleton even... but it's wrapped in writing that makes said characters only take the lines of action that make the least sense. Condensed into 12-13 episodes I could see it being... maybe ok, I guess? But 26? I've been watching it week by week and am anticipating the final episode airing this weekend simply to be rid of it.
There was a point where it was like one of the most dropped shows ever on Mal
Boring, one-dimensional characters;
Mary Sue protagonist;
In their darkest moment, the supporting casts finds motivation in the MC's dream instead of their own;
Wastes an interesting concept for the monsters;
Nonsensical backstory;
One backstory character asks the other if she read his letter, even though they literally fought a war over her not being able to read;
Has a six-year-old piloting a sex-metaphor robot;
Makes a big deal out of the villain coercing the love interest into piloting a sex-metaphor robot with him, while the MC forces multiple people to pilot with him, including the love interest
But in all seriousness, To Be Hero. Not to be confused with To Be Hero X, which is actually good and a hero anime. This one is 12 episodes and is kinda stupid funny but is just not really good overall. Its about a guy who is divorced and gets sucked into a toilet and becomes overweight and has to protect his daughter from like aliens or something. It's been years since I've seen it. (Watched it as a joke with my brother trying to find something stupid). Ending is also stupid from what I remember.
Uff, this was like glorifying red flags and say "See, it's not that bad. He's so much love. Isn't he cute?".
It's the year 2025. How can they still produce toxic stuff like that? 😑
I guess I'll go with M.D. Geist
And before anyone accuses me of not having seen much because they haven't checked my list, I've been in the trenches. I watched every Idea Factory OVA I could find (Skelter+Heaven, Generation of Chaos, Mars of Destruction, School City Valanoir, etc). I made it through all of Ex-Arm unharmed. Somehow I subjected myself to Hand Shakers. None of them were nearly as much of a slog to get through. ~~Me naming CotE here is saying something because Hand Shakers was close to making me throw up from motion sickness.~~
This show keeps telling you these are super smart high schoolers who engage in 4-D political chess with each other, but their schemes are super basic and predictable...
Compare it with Kaguya-sama Love is War, where the characters are very smart in a believable way, but are constantly sabotaged by their teen hormones and lack of real world experience.
This one has a great manga but a terrible anime Project Arms
**Shows with romance tag on Anilist**
\- Ulysses: Jeanne d'Arc and the alchemist knight
\- The master of Ragnarök and blesser of einherjar
\- Val x Love
\- Venus versus virus
\- If her flag breaks
**Shows with comedy tag on Anilist**
\- My sister, my writer
\- UzaMaid!
\- Mikagura School Suite (tbf I can see other people who are not me still enjoying this one)
\- Do you love your mom and her two-hit multi-target attacks? (as an MMO gamer the mum annoys me)
\- Netherworld Battle Chronicle: Disgaea (I enjoyed it as the 3rd anime I ever watched. How much I enjoy something and how good it is are different categories)
**Other just bad shows**
\- Magical Girl Site
\- The Price of Smiles
\- Chronos ruler
\- Kingdoms of ruin
\- High school prodigies have it easy even in another world
Ever heard of Darling In The Franxx?
As an Inuyasha fan this show was supremely disappointing. I watched the whole first season only.