The worst anime of 2014

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > VEGETA > The worst anime of 2014

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

OK, these may not be the worst shows this year, but they're the worst I've watched any significant amount of. In no particular order:

Saint Seiya Omega Season II: The first season was low-budget but fun shonen with an endearing cast of characters. The second season made the budget even lower, leeched out all the fun, introduced an irritating kids sidekick, and buried that endearing cast under an endless, meaningless parade of fanservicey cameos from earlier shows in the franchise.

Wizard Barristers: Spent most of its runtime as a pretty but incredibly poorly-written urban fantasy action show with a wafer-thin law-procedural veneer. Then they ran out of time and budget in the most spectacular, hilarious way possible.

Nobunaga The Fool: The premise suggested we were in for some silly, entertainingly spectacular Code Geass-style action, but they didn't have the budget or direction talent to pull it off. Jesus Christ, guys, you had mecha battles between Julius Caesar and Oda Nobunaga. How the gently caress did you screw that up? :argh:

Dropped halfway through.

Honourable mentions: M3, Captain Earth, The Pilot's Love Song, and Buddy Complex were weak and dull but not aggressively bad, and Nanana's Buried Treasure needed way less anime and way more Indiana Jones. I dropped all of them before they ended.

Still waiting for someone who's watched enough of Recently, My Sister Is Unusual to justify putting it on their list. :unsmigghh:

Darth Walrus fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Dec 21, 2014

# ¿ Dec 21, 2014 17:33

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 19:06

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

laplace posted:

Mahouka, Terraformars, Persona 4: The Golden, Psycho Pass 2, and Knights of Sidonia are unquestionably some of the worst shows to EVER be MADE EVER (this year). Objectively terrible animation, terrible pacing, confused writing, and extremely dubious content meld to make some seriously bad garbage that for some reason people convince themselves is good. I haven't seen everything this year but I have seen a large majority of it and these were the standouts aside from the obvious poo poo like Bottom Biting Bug that doesn't even count because it has the budget of a bacon egg and cheese sandwich.

Terraformars is kinda racist, Mahouka is just... bad. I don't even know how to explain it. Persona 4: The Golden starts off as a pseudo-self-aware comedy about New Game Plus before devolving immediately into a cashgrab. Psycho-Pass 2 is just more Urobuchi writing "twists" that everyone understands and knows are coming because it's loving Urobuchi, all he does is write the same story constantly.

P-P 2 wasn't written by Urobuchi. That's most people's biggest gripe with it, due to its utter failure to grasp the first season's themes and characterisation.

# ¿ Dec 22, 2014 12:24

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

WickedHate posted:

So a show's bad just for depicting rape?

And shooting the scenes like a porno? Definitely. It's completely possible to depict rape tastefully (GARO: The Animation, one of the most underrated shows of the year, provides a good example in its first episode), and the way KLK did it was pretty much the opposite.

# ¿ Dec 24, 2014 00:56

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Namtab posted:

Usually, yes.

People who I have down as having voted:
Aers, Alder, Aleksei Vasiliev, Blitzblast, Blockhouse, Cake Attack, Cao Ni Ma, Darth Walrus, Davincie, Demicol, Genocyber, Good Listener, Harettazetta, HerpicleOmnicron5, Hivecommander, Hocus Pocus, Laplace, Mad Lupine, Metal Ray Sunshine, MonsieurChoc, Namtab, Outer Science, Paragon1, Pentyne, Sakurazuka, Silver2195, SSNeoman, Stall_19, Strong Mouse, The Monkey Man, TheCornKing, Wark Say, WickedHate, Witch Fetish, Yes_Cantaloupe, Ytlaya, ZenMasterBullshit (37 voters, not bad)

If your name is not there and you feel it should be, it's because I couldn't tell your vote apart from general discussion.

Can people please ensure that future votes are bolded to make them stand out.
Additionally if you edit your votes please post to let me know as everything prior to this post has been counted and I don't intend to look back

Wark Say, No Game No Life was not counted in your votes as you stated you'd only seen 2 episodes (plus if I'd included it you'd have voted for 6 things).

E: Interesting Stats:
1.) The current #1 worst anime has over double the votes of second place.
2.) Only 1 of the current top 10 did not have a thread in ADTRW

Stat 2 isn't actually surprising given that we're only allowed to vote for shows we've seen a substantial amount of. It's pretty much a list of the worst shows of the year that enough people on SA were interested in to make threads for. The genuinely hideous poo poo, like Recently, My Sister Is Unusual, just isn't showing up for obvious reasons.

# ¿ Dec 24, 2014 01:03

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

WickedHate posted:

It wasn't meant to be titillating at all. It was really disturbing, and wasn't about showing Ragyo as evil but informing the audience more about Satsuki and what's been going on with her and her life.

I don't want to get into detail for fear of (further) creeping up the thread, but are you familiar with the cinematic concept of the 'male gaze'? Basically, KLK uses that throughout its run, and fails to switch it off when the creepy incestuous rape comes along. Visually, this means that it's hard to distinguish from the show's many attempts to get its audience's dicks hard, carrying the uncomfortable implication that this, too, is a form of fanservice. It doesn't help that the male gaze was tied with violence and rape imagery for a great deal of the show (having your heroine room with a family of molesters and strip down into a ludicrously skimpy outfit before getting her rear end kicked by a string of tough opponents contributes to that), though never before was it so explicit.

# ¿ Dec 24, 2014 01:28

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

OK, I realise this is a big ol' derail, but it touches on an interesting subject, so Imma chat about it.

The first thing to understand is that since stories are constructed works, everything in them serves a purpose. This also applies to camera-work, as articulated in the concept of 'gaze'. Basically, whose perspective the camera is looking from, what it's looking at, and how contributes to a scene's mood and purpose. So, for instance, a lot of tight, claustrophobic shots with sinister lighting from one character's perspective will convey a sense of oppression and paranoia. A great example is this shot from It's You Guys' Fault I'm Not Popular, which nicely captures the mental state of a bitter, depressed, and very lonely otaku:

Terror in Resonance also does some masterful work with gaze, particularly with regards to lighting. In fact, it's a great show to watch if you want to learn more about cinematography. One of its biggest themes is that its child protagonists are overshadowed by the vast, uncaring machine of society, rendering them insignificant and limiting their options for making their voices heard. Now look at this shot:

It's a picture of one of the protagonists entering her school, but it's more than that. Here, we are the machine, and a small, vulnerable girl is walking into our jaws. It's this girl, Lisa, as society sees her. Ditto for this scene, where the two outcast terrorist-children are shadowed from our gaze in a sterile, brightly-lit cityscape that dwarfs them:

Observe how the boys are tucked away in a corner, further drawing our gaze away from them and underlining their irrelevance.

There's a subtype of cinematic gaze called 'male gaze'. It's where a picture, scene, or entire show is shot from a male perspective, with a woman as the object. Advertising has some great examples. A product will often be sold with a hot woman draped over it, carrying the implication of 'buy the product, get the girl'. A particularly extreme example is this BMW ad, where a used car is depicted as a beautiful, naked woman luring the (presumed male) viewer in with a seductive gaze:

Similarly, fashion adverts are often shot from the perspective of a drooling man (and may in fact contain actual drooling men), showing that if you buy this dress, you too will be an object of lust. An example (note the wide-eyed conductor at the back):

In fiction, the male gaze is used to put us in the shoes of a male audience, with the women on screen being there for us to ogle. KLK is shot from the perspective of a horny teenager, constantly looking down the female cast's dresses and up their skirts. We're encouraged to identify with this, to accept the message of 'these girls are hot, enjoy it'. It also uses a female gaze, especially when Aikuro's doing his male-stripper routine for the camera - the way the scene is framed encourages you to ogle all that delicious man-meat. A good example of KLK's use of male gaze is this shot (NSFW) - Ryuko's face is out of frame, the camera is centred on her crotch, and we're getting a good look at how her (skimpy) outfit is falling off her. It makes her look vulnerable, and it make her look hot. Even when the show itself hangs lampshades on this and pokes fun at it, the gaze is still doing its job and encouraging the presumed-male audience to leer at the pretty ladies.

Now, that hypocrisy is one reason KLK's fanservice is disliked - it's both mocking and indulging in the male gaze, trying to have its cake and eat it. The other, more serious complaint is that it very often accompanies its male gaze with violence and rape imagery, making them implicitly part of what we're supposed to be drooling at. Look at this shot (NSFW). Ryuko's battered, unconscious, and vulnerable... but the scene is shot from the perspective of the creep leering at her, and her boobs are front-and centre in the camera's framing. This becomes most explicit in the infamous rape scenes, where the presence of the male gaze (the long, loving pans down naked bodies, the tits and rear end taking front and centre) implies that incestuous rape is also something we're supposed to be enjoying as fanservice. Which is an incredibly creepy thing to ask of your audience.

# ¿ Dec 27, 2014 13:29

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Harettazetta posted:

All these people on the internet are wrong and I must prove them wrong and I am certain they will listen to me

Hey, I find cinematography interesting, and I have fun writing :words:

about it on the Internet. Sue me.

# ¿ Dec 27, 2014 17:49

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Davincie posted:

the gay boy samurai fighting blu ray i just checked says yes, they are a thing

You know, you're really not narrowing things down much here.

# ¿ Dec 28, 2014 19:12

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Endorph posted:

my guess was sengoku basara, actually

And I was potentially considering Rurouni Kenshin, though that's slightly less gay.

# ¿ Dec 28, 2014 19:55

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Smoking Crow posted:

None of you can say anything about bad anime this season until you have watched Bladedance of the Elementalers

There are people in this thread who have got more than five minutes into Recently, My Sister Is Unusual (though I've yet to see anyone stupid enough to have given it the three-episode test).

Your move.

# ¿ Dec 29, 2014 00:18

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Namtab posted:

I've not seen anyone post that they've watched that anim.

Certainly no votes for it so the system works.

SSNeoman posted:

I watched this show in exchange for getting Batman: AA on Steam. I only made through 1.5 episodes before I quit. And I skipped through them a lot. That show is even more awful than you can imagine.

Actually. Bulletstorm is on sale on Steam. Whoever does a three episode summary will get a new gift in their library!

I think there were a couple of others as well. The three-episode rule is the only reason it isn't getting votes, because who the gently caress is willing or able to sit through an hour and a half of that?

# ¿ Dec 29, 2014 00:23