Top 10 WORST Anime of All Time
We're reaching for the bottom of the barrel on this one, folks. Welcome to WatchMojo.com and today we are counting down our picks for the top ten anime that just plain suck.
For this list, we'll be looking at the anime that are regarded as the worst, either due to their poor production quality or terrible narratives. Their might be a couple spoilers along the way but…do you really care?
Special thanks to our users Ashjbow, AXHP, John Marvin P. Arganda, and mac121mr0 for submitting the idea on our interactive suggestion tool: WatchMojo.comsuggest
#10: “Musashi Gundou” (2006)
This one falls right into the “so bad, it’s good” category. However, since the series’ creator had to apologise for how much of a negative reception it got, it’s fair to say this was unintentional. The story itself is rather uninspired, with a gun-wielding samurai warrior travelling through feudal Japan taking out monsters. Unfortunately, that’s only the start of its problems. Its animation is horrendous, the backgrounds look like they are taken from Google Images and the sound quality is constantly dipping.
#9: “Zaizen Jotaro” (2006)
Unintentional hilarity is the name of the game when it comes to this series, something you probably don’t want when you are trying to create a detective thriller about government corruption. However, due to very poor animation quality and a Gary Stu lead character whose pretty much Super James Bond, that’s exactly what we get. The action has no impact and the character has no likeability, so all we’re left with is a dull set of static scenes that prevent us from getting invested into the supposedly engrossing political capers of our hero.
#8: “Wounded Man” (1986-88)
Even with low animation quality, some anime have shown that they can overcome their limits and still produce amazing work. This is not one of them. Especially when you start your series with your supposedly strong and independent female lead getting sexually assaulted by so-called protagonist. There’s some other plot points about the gold rush in the Amazon rainforest but its far from interesting. What’s that? She ends up falling for him soon afterwards? Sure. Ok.
#7: “Superior Defender Gundam Force” (2004)
A series meant to celebrate twenty-five years of the Gundam franchise? Well that sounds awesome! What are you going to give us? Have a mass crossover with the main pilots? Nope. Instead what we get is a watered down 3D version aimed at a very, very young audience. Which is a stupid move in itself considering the whole backbone of Gundam is based around the repercussions of conflict and war. The mobile suits are sentient, the animation is just ugly to behold and feels more like a cash grab than a celebration of such a beloved franchise.
#6: “Generation of Chaos” (2001)
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Animated tie-ins to video games are a common thing these days, and if taken seriously can become enjoyable in their own right. Well, in the space of a single episode all this prologue manages to do is waste everybody’s time and put you off buying the game! We get a glimpse at what we can assume will be our main cast, but barely anything happens! Just a lot of badly animated walking and talking that fails at bringing the world these cardboard cut-outs characters inhabit to life. You know, for a supposed generation filled with it, we don’t see a lot of chaos going on here guys.
#5: “Vampire Holmes” (2015)
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Because that’s what one of fictions greatest detectives was missing! It needed more vampires! Though what else could we expect from an anime based on a smartphone app. What little this series could have offered is quickly flushed away when you find out that this Holmes doesn’t actually solve cases, preferring to argue with his assistant all day and to top it off its all horribly rendered in 3DCG. Are there even any actual bloodsuckers in this series? Or is just the show itself slowly killing our brain-cells in bite-sized pieces.
#4: “Psychic Wars” (1991)
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Fancy checking out a classic anime movie? Well do yourself a favour and avoid this one because we doubt you are ready to experience this level of insanity. After being informed by a cancerous growth that a demonic army is about to invade the Earth, a lone surgeon is imbued with superhuman strength and sent thousands of years into the past to defeat it. If that doesn’t put you off then maybe some of its other accolades will. Editing that leaps all over the place, a story that doesn’t go beyond ‘muscular physician punches demon’ and a whole slew of unwarranted sex scenes complete with synth music. You don’t have to be psychic to tell how bad this flick is.
#3: “Skelter+Heaven” (2004)
And this is why video game developers don’t always make the best choices for anime creators. When an alien object appears over Tokyo, it’s down to a group of young ladies all in scantily clad uniforms piloting horribly animated mechs to defeat it. What may work for a JRPG clearly doesn’t translate well to the screen in this instance as the alien menace is almost overshadowed by the much more prominent problem of which of the underdeveloped characters is the bland male lead going to romance.
#2: “Pupa” (2014)
Prepare yourselves people, because this is where things get really, really ugly. When a virus is unleashed on the populace, an affected brother and sister find themselves in something of a perpetual hell which we are forced to witness. This includes; watching the older brother get dissected over and over since he can regenerate his flesh, watching said brother willingly allow his little sister to eat pieces of him, watching every adult in this series be a sadistic asshole, and finally watch the bittersweet conclusion as brother and sister turn into hideous monsters and devour each other. And they say anime can’t be art.
#1: “Mars of Destruction” (2005)
From the same company that gave us Skelter+Heaven comes what can only be considered an epic failure in anime. The “story” follows our protagonist complete with troubled past who finds himself as the only capable of defending the Earth from an alien invasion. How does it hold up? Characters that are thinner than paper. Below sub-par animation and sound quality. The narrative is so clunky and rushed that you barely have any time to wrap your head around what’s going on before the show actually has the nerve to try and drop a twist ending. It’s so desperate to ride the high that came with Neon Genesis Evangelion that it’s kind of embarrassing.
