|
As ever, the rules Worst Anime 2020 1.) Pick 3 titles from the list that you have watched at least three episodes of 2.) Write about why the show was bad. Was it disappointing? Was it poorly animated? 3.) Discuss choices, but keep it civil. Someone disliking something you liked isn't the end of the world. 4.) Feel free to rank things 1-3 if you want, but the votes are unweighted (weighted votes may be counted seperately) 5.) Feel free to give dishonourable mentions to other things that nearly made the list, but please differentiate these from your votes To be clear, the reason for rule 1 is to avoid everyone's lists being filled with incest animes you didn't watch. I'd much rather focus on things you tried but didn't like, and the reasons why. Most Avoided Anime 2020 The main worst anime votes require you to have put in at least a three episode test. This is different. This is about the anime that you felt the need to avoid based on the premise, the anime that you watched one episode then turned it off in disgust. This is your wildcard vote and will go into its own competition 1.) You now get three votes in this category. Choose wisely 2.) There is no minimum watch period. You don't even have to have seen it! 3.) Put a reason why you avoided it. Generate that discussion! 4.) Once again, feel free to debate and discuss choices 5.) Don't be a bigot when using this vote. A list of anims that I shamelessly lifted from Squark's thread can be found here: https://pastebin.com/Ahvgzksq. Full credit to Strange Quark
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2020 13:54
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 28, 2024 09:55 |
|
|
Senyoku no Sigrdrifa: It pretended to have serious drama while never delivering on that front. It had a funny episode (4) but then never dared to do more in that direction. It baited me with finally having a military anime with adult characters again, but then made them minor characters who accomplish little. In the end it delivered nothing but fanservice. Great Pretender: Started out somewhat smart, quickly became an entire series of anime smart like in this youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JI9LmB1FZY The post credits stinger was also incredibly absurd and the rest of the ending wasn't any good either! You never actually feel any tension that their scams will fail, cause the main characters have such bullshit intuition. And if they fail? That was actually part of the plan all along. That the backup plan failed? Also part of the plan. As a whole the writing is terrible, the villains are a combination of cartoonish evil and stupid that they might as well have come from an episode of Jonny Quest. I won't even get into the plotholes that break the believability of the cases. Its a beautiful show though! Dounika Naru Hibi: bland romance movie. I regret paying money to see this. Ore wo Suki nano wa Omae dake ka yo: Oretachi no Game Set: This wasn't THAT bad but I want to take the time to complain about 2 facts: 1. the whole series is supposed to be a parody of the usual anime harem fantasy by making the dense anime protag actually just an incel (fairly freaking ftw) pretending to be that way, a premise that it immediately abandons by the mc becoming that standard dense and nice mc. 2. The central conflict of this ova is idiotic. So the challenger guy, an actual harem mc, challenges our mc, fakecel, to a competition. The one who gets the most confessions wins. The other can't talk or interact with main girl any more. Now this other guy doesn't go to the same school as our main characters and main girl has explicitly told him she doesn't want to talk to him any more. And yet everyone treats this competition seriously. Just tell him to gently caress off, nobody but actual 15 year olds could get invested in this nonsense. BNA: The geniuses at Trigger managed to make an anime about racism where actually the racists were right, the animals are brutes incapable of controlling their emotions. Sol Levante: Netflix spend some time hyping up this 4 minute 4k anime short. Its ugly. Isekai Quartet 2: Didn't laugh once. Kyochuu Rettou Movie: I'm all for some nice gruesome horror but this was so censored you couldn't see poo poo and so obviously low budget you wonder what they used the movie budget on.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2020 15:27
|
|
|
BNA sucks. That's it, that's the post. I don't watch bad stuff and that was the only thing all year that made me mad. Well alright, Burn the Witch also sucked but it feels off calling it one of the worst things of the whole year. Hmm what was that show where the first ep, a buncha posers plant weed on ppl, get them arrested and then pat themselves on the back over it? Ikebekuro West Gate Park? Yeah, that can go in here. Pootybutt fucked around with this message at 16:03 on Dec 28, 2020 |
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2020 15:58
|
|
|
Worst Shows: This was difficult to come up with because there were a lot of absolutely terrible shows I would have put here if I’d managed to endure three episodes of them. Kamisama ni Natta Hi: Started out as a comedy, at which it was moderately successful (apart from one really creepy “joke” about an adult woman trying to rape a teenage boy), but then it makes a half-hearted attempt at becoming a sci-fi show towards the end before falling face first into overwrought melodrama. Rifle Is Beautiful: Just plain boring. One semi-decent joke in the first episode convinced me to give it two more, but that appeared to have been a fluke. Senyoku no Sigrdrifa: Utterly bland “girls fight things” show with a villain whose motivation makes no sense. Most Avoided: Now this is where I’m spoiled for choice. Even picking a top ten most avoided would have been tricky. Kabukicho Sherlock: A boring mystery show with some very strange and out-of-place humor tacked onto it. I have no idea what they were going for. Ikebukuro West Gate Park: I bounced off this thing super hard once it became apparent that it had such a regressive attitude towards drug use. Apparently it was based on a book from the late 90s but its understanding of weed comes straight out of the 50s. Kami-tachi ni Hirowareta Otoko: Last year’s Isekai Cheat Magician may still hold the award for most painfully generic anime title, but Kami-tachi certainly outdoes it in terms of how its premise rigorously adheres to all of the genre’s lamest clichés. It has a loser hero turned absurdly powerful, slimes, overly-generous gods, no hint of any real conflict… just awful. I didn’t even watch a single episode.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2020 17:40
|
|
|
Worst anime I always find this hard to do because I rarely give shows more than an episode if it looks like it's really going to be bad but here goes. The God of High School - Boring and unimpressive action meant that I gave up early on. I think I made it to three episodes or at least close enough to I feel confident about putting it here. Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out! - The ratio of laughs to stony faced silences that this show brought out in me was not in the shows favour. There was an occasional laugh which meant I made it it up to around episode six before quitting. My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! - I finished this series but I ended up frustrated. Catarina being so stupid just meant it didn't work for me, the various characters all had feelings for her but it was all so one sided that they might as well have been in love with a brick wall. Maybe that was supposed to be funny but by the end I felt like I had wasted my time. Most Avoided Burn the Witch - From the creator of Bleach and set in the Bleach extended universe? No thank you. Fire Force Season 2 - I quit part way though season 1 so I wasn't coming back for season 2 Princess Connect! Re:Dive - According to my Crunchyroll history I watched 14 minutes of the first episode, I don't really remember much about it but I guess it didn't really do anything for me.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2020 19:23
|
|
|
Worst Two Anime (That I Watched To Completion) Wandering Witch -- When an adaptation of an anime leaves you questioning which of the higher-ups involved in its production is secretly a narcissist incapable of empathy, you know something's gone wrong. Online, this show's supporters often paint that criticism as a desire for the cliche trope of a goody-two-shoes protagonist who comes in and fixes everyone else's problems and incurs no cost for it. Nonsense. You can have a show where the protagonist doesn't fix everyone else's problems, but the creator needs to be aware of that and work with it rather than ignoring it and hoping the audience will do the same. This was a very "you love it or hate it" series, and I hated it. Each episode was either plagued by dissonant tonal problems, or was so laughably trite that it only served to undermine the other episodes that tried to take things seriously. Looking back, the only episode I actually liked was ep 8, and that one was still laughably stupid but at least the show seemed in on the joke for that one. Well, at least it was well-produced visually. That's about all the good I can say of it. Deca-Dence -- Before I get pelted with tomatoes for putting multiple people's AOTY candidate on the Bad Anime list, I'll explain. The premise was great. Visually, it was fantastic. And the story was solidly ok, if a tad formulaic. However, I hated, hated, HATED the robot segments. It completely ruined the show for me, for all the same reasons that low-grade Cartoon Network fare turned me off of Western animation in general. Do you like weird, ugly, flat character designs? Do you like butt jokes? Do you like poop jokes? Do you like vomit jokes? Do you like poopy-vomit jokes? Yes? Ok then, maybe you'll have a good time with this anime. But not me. Sorry animators, (some of) you tried. Most Avoided Rent-A-Girlfriend -- Ever watch a show where you hated the premise, the music, and every single character? Yeah, me neither. loving dropped on the first episode. God of High School -- From what little I watched of it, it was visually fantastic. However, the story was deficient in every writing 101 area. Really, I'm putting this here as a stand-in for all of the korean-manga-turned-anime this year by Crunchyroll. Not only are they hideously rushed (as in Tower of God's case), but they're all bad in the same way. It's just "what if we copied that one wildly-popular-yet-questionably-written shonen we all liked, but without a semblance of a proper story". Which for someone like me who is already tired of most shonen titles, is the death knell of my interest. These productions have guaranteed that I will avoid every manwha adaptation that comes out. Gibiate -- It looked like crap. That's it, that's the reason. Aaand I don't have much else to add. There were plenty of shows that looked mediocre, or were very Not My Thing, but my avoidance of them was more due to a lack of effort than a conscious decision to never watch them. Malsangoroth fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Dec 28, 2020 |
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2020 20:50
|
|
|
Worst anime I watched to Completion: Dropout Idol Fruit Tart: Started out as an okay to good comedy anime that felt gay. And than the bathroom humor started, and the fanservice. And it just overwhelmed the show so much that it just felt super uncomfortable to watch to the point that the show became horrible
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2020 21:52
|
|
|
Worst anime I've watched (that's still airing, but I've watched all of thus far): Yashahime: As someone who went into this not knowing poo poo about Inuyasha, I was really excited about it, because it looked and sounded more interesting than a lot of the other sequels to popular shonen manga (the kids of the MCs all being girls, the old characters not being shoved in everywhere like in DBS on Boruto), and I thought the plot about sisters and cousins growing closer to one another as they tried to find their missing past also sounded really interesting, and had the potential for a great story. Plus, Moroha looked cool as gently caress. What I got instead was a story about a twin sister who's obsessed with getting her twin's sleep and memories back, even though said twin doesn't even want them back, and the "curse" is actually beneficial to her. In addition, the show so far hasn't done a great job of building the relationship between the twins and their cousin, with the relationship between Towa and Setsuna feeling forced as gently caress, and the twins constantly acting annoyed about Moroha, even when she hasn't done anything to be annoyed with. Doesn't help that Towa and Setsuna do some pretty lovely things with regards to Moroha (plotting to steal her bounty and take advantage of her loneliness, leaving her behind when she asked them to wait a minute). And don't get me started on the pacing. Holy poo poo, it's 13 episodes in, and aside from being two of the four mooks of the big bad being killed, nothing has really happened. I know that Inuyasha was criticized for its filler, but at least in the manga, you saw the characters grow with each other in those fillers, and most of the time, the MOTW was tied with the big bad in some way. Here, a lot of the episodes don't really have anything to do with the big bad, or the main plot about chasing the Dream Butterfly, of which they've haven't even gone after. The only good thing about the show I can give it is that Moroha is a great character. She's funny as gently caress, adorable, and has cool powers, being the kid of a demon and miko. She also has a far more relatable and sympathetic background, having grown up alone because of her parents disappearance. However, the show is so far up its own rear end on focusing on Towa and Setsuna that she usually gets pushed to the side, and is treated like a joke. Doesn't help that they haven't really even given her a main goal, other than wanting to pay off a debt that the show has refused to hint at thus far. I'm still sticking with it in the hope that it gets better, but so far, it's been extremely disappointing, especially considering how much I (surprisingly) enjoyed the original manga Willo567 fucked around with this message at 02:13 on Dec 29, 2020 |
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2020 00:40
|
|
|
I did not watch any anime from 2020 this year(or maybe all the weed I did made me forget) but Gundam Seed is an assault on the eyes, misognystic in new and novel ways for the franchise, and doesn't really offer anything that other series don't do infinitely better.
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2020 01:03
|
|
|
Thanks for the white noise post 
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2020 01:22
|
|
|
I don't really have a worst or most avoided but Most Disappointing! Wandering Witch: The Journey Of Elaina - I really enjoyed the novels so I was looking forward to this one a lot, but goddamn aside from the most mechanical, technical production standpoint this adaptation was loving disastrous. I don't think every individual story in the novels that have been translated so far is a winner or anything, but the anime version of every single story it adapted - even the early ones I liked, once I get past the excitement of the strong production and hearing characters I like be well-voiced - was a regression across the board. Good stories lost varying amounts of charm and coherency, bad stories devolved into downright farce. The whole production had no mastery of tone or character subtlety at all, and made tons and tons of weird adaptation decisions - some small, others bafflingly large - that consistently served to strip stories of what made them most interesting and doubled down on a genuinely-flawed protagonist's worst traits, while skimming through or outright omitting most of the scenes or even entire stories that might have served to effectively endear her to the audience rather than flooding my twitter timeline with weekly discussions of whether she's a sadistic slaver psychopath or just a narcissistic moron. I was wildly relieved when the 3rd manga volume came out and was actually outstanding, because this disastrous adaptation was beginning to make me wonder if I was just some kind of moron for liking the novels to begin with. Dishonorable Mention: Deca-dence: For much of its run, Deca-dence was disappointing mostly by comparison to director Yuzuru Tachikawa's other work on Mob Psycho 100, one of my favorite shounen action series of all time - and this was probably an unfair comparison on some level, as I've since learned that he wasn't chiefly responsible for some of the incredible action scenes on that show that were a big part of why I was so excited for Deca-dence. The writing and delivery makes a good-faith effort to hold up its end, too, with some genuinely insightful and cutting commentary on the self-reinforcing systems of late capitalism, and how people are malformed by those systems. And the action scenes we did get are hardly bad, they're still quite good when you're not comparing them to the ungodly level of something like a Mob or a One Punch Man. But I just felt like the deeper we got into the series, the more its support pillars started to visibly buckle. Our two leads, Natsume and Kaburagi, are immediately endearing and believable, but the problem is that you basically know everything there is to know about them by episode 3 - maybe episode 6 if you really stretch it - and their arcs basically just coast from there, and the supporting characters are basically all some mix of essentially-one-note and wildly underused - with perhaps the most egregious being a Traitor arc so predictable and by the numbers that I keep entirely forgetting that it even happened. And then we get to the finale, which is actively a disaster and kind of threatens to push the show from "disappointing by high standards" to "actively bad" IMO - after spending the whole season building up this idea of radical revolution, of tearing down evil systems entirely, of radical revolution, our finale sees Kaburagi (Natsumi has basically no relevant role in events at this point beyond yelling "KUMICHOU" a whole lot) doing a cool action scene that nonetheless basically just follows the exact script the system laid down for him in episode 1, going through a death fake-out I did not even come close to buying or having any feelings about whatsoever, and then experiencing a flash-forward to our heroes' glorious new society.....which is basically identical to the one they were rebelling against - with the exact same people sitting, unpunished, unbothered, and basically unchanged - operating the system more or less exactly as it was before but with some of the rough edges sanded off. I could even maybe get behind this if it were clearly intentional or the show were making some sort of deliberate statement, but the gulf between the heroes' expressed goals and the point at which they ultimately declare a complete and unambiguous victory goes entirely unexamined and un-commented on, as if the show forgot what it was even doing. Just a baffling turn of events that really completed my heel-turn on the show as a whole. Spiritus Nox fucked around with this message at 01:25 on Dec 29, 2020 |
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2020 01:22
|
|
|
Oh man I've been waiting for these: Badshows: Wandering Witch * OK the final episode of the season may *conceptually* save the season, but honestly it was just such whiplash going from story to story. Even if it was beautiful, the content was a toss-up between "am I getting a cute story or am I getting a wrist-slashing ode to indifference this week" and the main character just comes off as uncaring. God of High School * HEY let's have a tournament arc as the opener and get rid of literally any interesting character with a gimmick 3 episodes in. Let's also tease the Super Duper Semifinals Tournament where people suddenly have stands. Pass. Noblesse * Dracula awakens and... hangs out in... high school? Wha?? I Should Have Known Better: * Dogeza: I Tried Asking while Kowtowing The internet exists, why... who... what reason is was this animated? I guess at least they tried to be funny for an episode? * Super HxEros Horny Power Rangers, but not as interesting as the plots from MMPR because we have to shoehorn in LN hentai cutscenes. Oh what the premise could have been in the hands of a comedy adaptation. * Interspecies Reviewers 
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2020 01:24
|
|
|
higurashi gou felt like a big waste of time
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2020 01:45
|
|
|
Worst Anime: 1) Vlad Love - I wasn't expecting Oshii's long-awaited return to animation (and his even longer return to animated comedy) to be his best work, but I certainly wasn't expecting it to be so dull. Is it the worst thing I've watched this year? Of course not. But it's the most disappointing by a mile and a disappointment is worse than just a regular ol bad anime. 2) Burn the Witch - A speedrun of Bleach's worst qualities. 3) Iwakakeru -Sport Climbing Girls - Like most shows that try to combine sports and fanservice it does a poor job on both fronts. 4) Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out! - Dreadfully boring. Most avoided: Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story - Avoiding might be too strong a word for me, perhaps? Regardless it's just a spinoff done in a way that is completely unappealing to me and based on what I have heard from folks I trust I know that watching this would be a frustrating time for me.
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2020 01:47
|
|
|
Namtab posted:Thanks for the white noise post pot calling the kettle black much
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2020 02:04
|
|
|
I watch a lot of Netflix trash so I'm really sad Mushikago no Cagaster or Dragon's Dogma aren't on the list but that said: 1) Gibiate This series is honestly kinda unique to me because usually when I think about bad anime, I think about things I find offensive somehow, or the ones that drop the ball real hard at some point. But Gibiate was very consistently awful in a very inoffensive way. Pacing, animation, writing, it was all terrible but the worst reaction this series got out of me was falling asleep in the middle. If there exists objectively terrible show, Gibiate is it and I almost value the experience of watching it just because it seriously made me reevaluate my standards. 2) 22/7 This one wins the award for the most disappointing following of a pretty good first episode. Like, what the gently caress was that wall about? Why did they tell this one girl who didn't want to pose in a swimsuit that she has to suck it and do it for the group? Watching Sally Amaki's youtube channel is 100% better experience. 3) Jeweller Richard It was so loving boring. I legit would rather watch Gibiate for the second time than this one, at least in Gibiate I can laugh at cg bugs and general terribleness. Richard's premise had some potential but the presentation was so flat. Shows like this really need better production. There wasn't anything I immediately noped out from (it was my year of coming out of anime comfort zone) but the biggest disappointment for me was Deca-dence and Great Pretender . Deca-dence was my favourite show of the summer, and then it ended, and I didn't think about it since. Great Pretender was more of a case of too high expectations going in, since everyone on the Internet praised it. I liked the first arc and then found myself caring less and less, even before watching the last arc, which yeah, was pretty bad.
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2020 12:17
|
|
|
Star Twinkle Precure There’s probably something to be said about complaining that the cartoon franchise for six year olds doesn’t innovate enough, but this series felt especially safe. For all that it espouses about the power of imagination, every character only gets one attack that they use for every fight, and the show is quick to tell Hikaru no whenever she wants to do something too interesting, like drink the furry dog potion. The characters never feel like they’re ever challenged or face any real hardship, so every battle ends predictably, and coming off of watching several Precure series in a row, it’s definitely capped off my burnout on the franchise for a good number of years. It’s a shame though, because the movie that came out in 2019 is great. It shows that this series can be creative and have engaging action scenes. They’re just not anywhere present in the TV show.
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2020 17:35
|
|
|
If there was one thing I learned this year, it was that we finally live in the future we were promised by S. Morgenstern. But that's not very anime related. If I learned one thing that's actually on topic for this thread, it's that there's a world of shows out there, and that if you look long enough, you'll probably find something that does what you want, and even does it well. There might only be one show like Tatami Galaxy, but Tatami Galaxy exists, and if you keep trying new things you'll find other things almost as distinct and interesting. Unfortunately, I also was reminded that old shows, like modern ones, are mostly crap. And that I'm bad at listening to warnings, as shown by my returns to Gundam SEED. What I'm saying is, most of the bad shows and OVAs I watched this year don't qualify for this thread. What does, though, is... Deca-Dence Like with some of my "winners" from past years, it's not a horrible show. Honestly, it might even technically be above average. It looks nice, fights included, you don't hate the characters most of the time, the twists seem like they could be exciting... But none of it goes anywhere. Where something like Gridman or Attack on Titan drops major plot twists early in the show because it knows it has even better cards to play down the line, Deca-Dence does its big reveals in episode 2 and is done. We get Kabu dying over and over to establish stakes because he's a mentor, but then we get him back because he's the lead. We get Natsume being cute and almost contributing, but she's unaware of any of the real enemies, so what she does means nothing. We get supporting cast intros like when Attack on Titan wants to kill a bunch of people, but nobody dies, making it easy to wonder what the point was of even having the characters. The ending's terrible too, with all the problems solved by killing the big monster. It's like if the reveals in Attack on Titan were the same, but killing the Colossal was enough to fix everything in the world... somehow. Also, they killed the cute mascot animal for no good reason. Not the worst show I saw this year, but the worst current one I watched to completion. chiasaur11 fucked around with this message at 12:07 on Dec 30, 2020 |
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2020 08:10
|
|
|
drat, I wish I'd put Deca-Dence on my list instead of the mostly bland and tedious Rifle Is Beautiful. I'd completely forgotten just how offputting the robot designs were, and all the poo poo jokes and so on.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2020 12:04
|
|
|
I didn't watch anything this year that made me want to gouge my eyes out, but I still feel this is relevant to the thread: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKTKRS71whE Never watched Gibiate, but just looking at the clips in that video made me want to do the needful. AlternateNu fucked around with this message at 12:40 on Dec 30, 2020 |
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2020 12:36
|
|
|
Worst stuff I actually watched Deca-Dence as mentioned here, this is about half of a great show and half really unentertaining attempts at humor and political commentary. I thought the premise was great and was with it for the most part. The prison arc started dragging it down then the ending itself ended up unsatisfying. Isekai Quartet S2: The first season was goofy and cute. Season 2 already carried the stigma of poo poo Hero being added and there was a noticeable dive in the writing as well. Wandering Witch Just a bad adaptation. You can kind of see the good parts of the source material trying to come through at points but the showrunners just botch everything but the visuals and for some reason wanted to make it extra grimdark. Most Avoided Anime 2020 Interspecies Reviewers It just was completely unappealing from the very first trailer.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2020 16:22
|
|
|
Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna This movie can go gently caress right the gently caress off forever. I struggle to think of the last time I was so thoroughly disgusted with something I've watched. It probably doesn't help that I'm a Digimon lifer and so am one of those tedious people with OPINIONS on things, but I honestly find everything about this particular movie to be genuinely toxic and unpleasant to consider. It looks good, it was nice to see the 02 cast after Tri hit them with a truck, and the movie is at the very least a well put together and coherent in its theme and message, it's just that that message is dogshit. Without going into a point by point invective I will simply state that the message of the film is soul crushing in a way grotesquely antithetical to any other Digimon media I can name. In another series and from another perspective this movie would be seen as an obvious bad ending, the fate everyone gathers to fight against, but here in this movie we're supposed to see the entire cast inevitably losing their best friends as somehow not only natural but also GOOD. Because, as the series shows us via a character example, giving up on your friends for the sake of something you don't really care about and was imposed upon you by your family in direct defiance of everything that had previously been established about you is not character assassination, it is "maturity". No, seriously, that is quite literally where the movie goes, and no I don't know why Toei seems to just hate Sora. "Growing up means you shouldn't care about Digimon anymore" is a breathtaking pitch considering the franchise exists such as it does in large part on nostalgia on the part of its now adult fans. It's also a breathtaking pitch because of how far removed this is from literally any other Digimon series, even the really bad ones. So kudos on creating a movie that runs against every imaginable grain, and for bringing back a fascinating and underexplored setting in Digimon's mythology just to give it a death sentence. Double kudos for being so cowardly that the production had to go and preemptively confirm that the epilogue to 02 is still Canon even though it doesn't line up the movie at all, and triple kudos for actually making me stand behind said epilogue which I remind you has been hated near universally by fans for a good 20 years now. DA:LEK is in all imaginable ways the perfect Digimon movie for 2020. I look forward to this movie being relegated to the dustbin of history alongside peers like Eureka 7: Pocketful of Rainbows and Nadesico: Prince of Darkness. I'm not going to pretend the currently airing Digimon Adventure series is amazing, in fact it's quite bad in some respects, but at least it's not a depressing and stupid hot take of a thing. BNA The cast of this series deserved a better show to star in. I legitimately loved just about everyone in this series, the leads were great and had a genuinely great dynamic, the mayor was a cool character, the rival had a fascinating thing going on with her, and most of the one-off characters were just great and fun and interesting. And it was a Trigger show so of course it looked awesome. Meanwhile the show had no loving clue what it was doing. As was pointed out in this thread it is a BAD show about coexistence and multicultural racial harmony when one of the takeaways is that the cartoonish racists were actually completely correct about the minority stand-ins, but here we are. And I don't think something that jaw-droppingly appalling was the intended take away, which may be the most searing indictment against the show I can give. That the show ended up there happened I think because the show had no drat clue what was doing or what its metaphor was supposed to be, see all those early and middle episodes where the show is ambiguous about how good or bad a place anima-city is which a problem when the main narrative that finally arrives is about trying to protect it as some shining city on a hill. And I don't even mind the idea that a series should little bit of ambiguity over the merits of what people are fighting to protect (Yes, hello, I watch Gundam), it's just that the narrative is poisoned by that very ambiguity. When you use serious, ongoing, real world issues and messages and have proxies of real people in your metaphor and that metaphor can, by design, be applied to specific real populations of real people who do come under fire and are inflicted with real genuine harm, that you are performing without a net. If you want to try that particular act then I suggest you pay attention to BNA: don't fall and go splat like BNA does. BNA hit the third rail and started thrashing about wildly, but it hit it in the first place because it was already thrashing about wildly. And again, I love the hell out of this show's cast. If BNA had even the barest clue what it was doing with its story and its allegory I think it probably would be considered one of Trigger's greats. It didn't and it hadn't so it isn't. Wandering Witch So this didn't work. I was extremely here for the pitch, but the actual series of Wandering Witch was incredibly slapdash when it wasn't wholly incoherent. I never read the original novels, but the anime on its own was not a compelling ambassador. Broadly speaking the series had no control over its own tone, the stories varied WILDLY in quality, and the setting was curiously flat. It was probably a mistake for a travelogue series to play it as safe as it did, because the the world put forward by the series feels completely filled in. There was never a sense of adventure or of exploring the unknown or of seeing something wonderful or mysterious, Elaina obviously enjoys her travels but I never got a real feel of anything magical in the setting, ironic considering how many witches Elaina meets. Thus you have a show that mostly has placid, low stakes, largely comedic affairs in a world that seems designed for such gentle comedy and so it is jarring as hell when the series suddenly goes hyper dark out of the blue. Shout outs to episode nine which tries so hard to shock it's practically swimming in gore by the end, yet is so loud and the twist so obvious I actually started laughing when the bloody murders happened. So the series flits around with bad things occasionally happening around Elaina (but never to her, the show doesn't seem to have the guts for that) but mostly not, and if Elaina isn't around the show digresses to shrink the world by having a recurring cast of characters who show up all the time so it isn't even really about Elaina's travels. Shout-outs to Saya who is an incredible creep and the loving worst and nearly managed to ruin an entire otherwise okay episode just with a cameo in the epilogue. If there is a second season I would recommend not adapting any stories with her being that she's basically Elaina but an obsessive creepy stalker, and incidentally that's another problem: none of the characters really feel all that different from each other. I hope the novels are better because the anime was utterly disposable. Honorable Mention goes to Healin Good Precure for failing to put over its main cast and then promptly burying them for the new girl in such a way I completely lost interest. Most Avoided Interspecies Reviewers I didn't watch this show, but I did watch the backlash to the show and the backlash to the backlash to the show with some amusement. Never felt compelled to look at the actual series, though. Whatever poo poo Sword Art Online Anime Aired This Year No way. Once bitten, twice shy. A friend streamed SAO 2 a couple of years ago which fans seem to swear up and down was one of the best arcs of the series. It sucked immensely. My same friend has been watching it on Toonami and giving me "trip reports" which amount to angry screaming rants, so frankly I don't regret my decisions. Higurashi Gou I have no idea if this is actually bad, I was interested in watching a remake of Higurashi because I've never seen it and as a media phenomenon it passed me by entirely. I'll probably never get the original experience just because already know some of the big spoilers by osmosis, but I was willing to take a shot and try and put myself in the mindset of the first viewing. Thing is the show doesn't appear to be meant to be anyone's first viewing of this material. When it turned out it's not a reboot or remake but a distaff sequel/sidequel(?) naturally I dropped it because it's not what I wanted.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2020 19:22
|
|
|
Most avoided: Anime I don’t think I watched a full season of any anime this year
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2020 19:51
|
|
|
then perish.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2020 19:59
|
|
|
thetoughestbean posted:Most avoided: Anime
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2020 20:07
|
|
|
Omnicrom posted:Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2020 21:00
|
|
|
Endorph posted:wait isnt this how tamers ended, already Serious answer? No. I say that primarily because Tamers considered the kids separating from their digimon to be unequivocally a bad and sad thing. Takato is really sad that Guilmon is going away when they promised to be together forever, it's framed as a truly unfair and unjust thing that Impmon is going to be torn away from his partners after finally making amends with them and being forgiven by Juri, Jian's dad collapses going "oh god what have I done" for the small part he played in their separation (even though they had to in order to save the world) and it hurts him even more because his son forgives him for doing it, and then the series ends with the idea that the tamers and their digimon might reunite and that's treated as a good and joyous thing and framed as a chaser to the otherwise very bittersweet ending. DA:LEK, meanwhile, differs fundamentally by stating that the characters being separated from their partners is a normal thing because you're just going to outgrow Digimon, so get over yourself because if you don't like it you're just being a spoiled child and need to grow up. Again, in a franchise that's been coasting on nostalgia for at least a decade. According to the movie when a kid grows up and figures out what they want to do with their life their digimon partner disappears back to the Digital World and they will presumably never meet each other again and this is called maturity and it's good. Indeed, the villain's entire motivation in the movie is that she lost her partner due to this newly invented time limit thing and is going to insane degrees to try and stop this from ever happening to anyone else, and we're meant to understand she is wrong not only in her means but in her desired ends. By contrast, Sora, who gives up on her partner without a fight and refuses to lift a finger to try and help any of her other friends even while they are fighting for their lives to rescue thousands of people from around the world, is held up by the movie as a paragon who is more mature and better than anyone else. I point out again that this message is deeply at odds with any other Digimon work including in the details of the movie's direct prequels, and that's without getting into the bit where the movie's big dumb idea is inconsistent with ITSELF. tl;dr: Digimon Tamers recognized that tearing people away from their best friends for no reason other than some dude decided it should happen ought to be considered a BAD thing.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2020 22:50
|
|
|
I didn't have the time to finish it last year, but I'd like to make Japan sinks my number one. A bafflingly bad anime that frequently had me laughing from its bad writing. Its shockingly ugly for a Science Saru show as well.
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2021 00:41
|
|
|
Sorry, but I've been thinking about it more, and I thought of another reason why Yashahime is so loving frustrating: the show loves to poo poo on Moroha. For those who don't want to watch it, Moroha is essentially homeless, and has to pretty much rely on bounties in order to even eat. One of the running gags in the show is that they always end up killing the demon the girls go after, meaning that Moroha can't cash in her bounty. In one of the few times they actually get said bounty, Moroha says she's happy she won't have to starve, and the show hints that she's so desperate that she sometimes ends up having to steal food. All of this is played for laughs, and it's probably one of the most mean spirited jokes on a character I've seen; it's like if in Chainsaw Man, Denji having to dig out of the trash for food is treated as one big joke. It doesn't help that she's essentially an indentured servant to a bastard racoon who treats her like poo poo, and her cousins really aren't any better, with one episode implying that they were going to steal her bounty. The show treats the twins separation like it's the true tragedy, but it's so loving forced, because they were seperated as toddlers, and at the most, Towa remembers maybe a year of her life with Setsuna. Plus, she and Setsuna actually had homes and adoptive families that took care of them, while Moroha spent all her life alone. In the same episode where the twins plan to steal her bounty, Moroha is even about to cry because she thinks that her cousins don't care about her, and laments that she's been alone all her life. Sorry for my rant, I had to get it off my chest Willo567 fucked around with this message at 02:55 on Jan 3, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2021 02:52
|
|
|
Willo567 posted:Sorry, but I've been thinking about it more, and I thought of another reason why Yashahime is so loving frustrating: the show loves to poo poo on Moroha. For those who don't want to watch it, Moroha is essentially homeless, and has to pretty much rely on bounties in order to even eat. One of the running gags in the show is that they always end up killing the demon the girls go after, meaning that Moroha can't cash in her bounty. In one of the few times they actually get said bounty, Moroha says she's happy she won't have to starve, and the show hints that she's so desperate that she sometimes ends up having to steal food. All of this is played for laughs, and it's probably one of the most mean spirited jokes on a character I've seen; it's like if in Chainsaw Man, Denji having to dig out of the trash for food is treated as one big joke. I mean, it is a joke in Chainsaw Man. It's just it being a joke doesn't prevent it from also being portrayed as tragic. Denji's got a weird thing where his horrible, horrible life is both a sympathetic and grounded emotional anchor to the series and the source for a lot of the humor in the series. Of course, it's important there that most characters who became aware of his circumstances were sympathetic and shocked. Denji's poverty wasn't funny because a child suffered. Denji's poverty was funny because of how he responded to it, and his escape from it was one of the most cathartic moments in the early manga. This feels more like it was meant to be the Bebop crew perpetually being stuck eating ramen, but it misses a few key points. First, that Spike is always getting by. He wants something better than instant noodles, but it's rare for the crew to be out of food. Similarly, he and Faye are the ones grousing about being out of money, which is usually due to their own handling of the situation. Here, meanwhile, Trowa and Setsuna are often the cause of the debt, but they can just ditch and get food and supplies from their families. It's a common gag, but the gag is seemingly copied without understanding what makes it work, while Chainsaw Man puts a lot of thought into balancing Denji's suffering to let it be funny when it's meant to be funny, tragic when it's meant to be tragic, and both at once more often than you'd expect before reading it.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2021 03:47
|
|
|
That movie sounds a bit like the Goofus of how to make something targeted at older fans while Cyber Sleuth is the Gallant.
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2021 16:57
|
|
|
Justin_Brett posted:That movie sounds a bit like the Goofus of how to make something targeted at older fans while Cyber Sleuth is the Gallant. You are incredibly not wrong about this.
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2021 18:47
|
|
|
babylon is somehow eligible this year so its the worst. i think it was eligible last year and i am pretty sure i voted it then too, but if anything deserves to be the worst twice its that piece of poo poo. one of the most god awful offensive trash fires i have ever or will ever see, and that is despite its climax being hillary clinton debating the morality of giraffes while floating in space
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2021 23:21
|
|
|
Peter Grill might be the angriest I’ve ever gotten reading a manga so the anime probably counts for worst anime
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2021 23:35
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 28, 2024 09:55 |
|
|
Sounds like a Family Guy character, so it checks out 
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2021 00:05
|
|
