Top 10 Awesome Anime Moments Ruined By Terrible Animation

“Junji Ito Collection” (2018)

In case you have been living under a rock, Junji Ito is one of the definitive horror authors of our time, his creations are pure nightmare fuel that continue to terrify us to this day. And then Studio Deen decided to besmirch his work with this little anthology. Though our pick of the litter has to go to the time when one of his most infamous characters – Fuchi the Fashion Model, rises out of a swamp to scare the bejesus out of Souichi. Not only do they fail to capture how haunting her entrance is as her hulking frame ascends from the murky depths, but her overall design isn’t so much terrifying as it is…meh.

“One Punch Man” (2015-)

Like a lot of things in this second instalment, it wasn’t that the fights were necessarily bad, it’s just that the drop from season one was painfully obvious, especially when it comes to the Hero Hunter taking on the big guy with the even bigger swing. In the manga, this is hailed as one of the best fights, but sadly in the anime it just gets a passing grade. The choppiness of the fight, especially when compared to some of Garou’s later confrontations, doesn’t do this brawl any favours, especially with how this little tussle was meant to be Metal Bat’s shining moment. Bit of a ways off from reaching the top of the hype meter, don’t you think?

“Overlord” (2015-18)

Not that watching Ainz sacrifice seventy thousand enemy soldiers wasn’t horrifying to watch, we just wish that the Lovecraftian goat demons he summoned as a result looked a little more Eldritch than poorly rendered PS2 boss monsters. They certainly cause some carnage and have the intended effect on all of Ainz’s foes, but all we can think about is how these hentai rejects are way less scary than some of Nazarick’s servant monsters. Admit it, you’d happily take on the giant balls of teeth and tentacles over a date with Neuronist.

“Baki” (2018)

Out of all the cases of randomly inserted, terrible, CGI fight scenes in this show, this is the biggest offender, which is a buzzkill since we still had high hopes for this following the brutal throwdown between Hanayama and Speck. Guess that Netflix money must have run short. So instead of seeing the ultimate karate practitioner devastate a death row inmate in glorious 2D, we instead got subjected to what appeared to be an alpha version of a scrapped Virtua Fighter game, one that kept switching between visual styles in the most jankey way possible.

“My Hero Academia” (2016-)

First of all, no, we don’t think this fight is terrible. Not even close. Mirio will always be our boy, and the flashbacks hit us in the feels just as hard as that spike hit his spleen. The problem is…it could have been so much more. Not sure if they blew their budget or were forced to cut corners, but on reflection the amount of implemented still-shots were very distracting, and was overall a far cry from the series’ usual epic hero vs villain clashes. Like seriously, there’s barely animation here. Of course they more than made up for it when Deku hit that final blow on overhaul, but it still would have been great to see Mirio get his due!

“Berserk” (2016-17)

Were we so desperate to see Guts unleash the Berserker Armor that we were willing to look past the terrible CGI? Probably. But since that that happened last decade, now we’re free to comment on just how badly they messed up one of the greatest moments from the arguably greatest manga of all time. We’re talking about when Guts lets his rage consume him and in doing so became a creature of such power that even a demonic dragon like Grunbeld paled in comparison. And the anime totally flubbed it. Watching the helmet shift with such poor animation is actually physically painful…

“Fate/stay night” (2006-)

You want to remove the canon threesome between Saber, Shirou and Rin in exchange for a random battle with a dragon? You’re breaking my heart, but I’ll live with it. You want to make said dragon the worst looking computer-generated abomination to come out of the 2000s? That’s just pouring salt in the wounds. We can understand the studio worrying that general audiences may not be prepared to watch Shirou lodge his Noble Phantasm into Saber’s Holy Grail, but did the alternative have to be this crap?!

“Golden Kamuy” (2018)

If watching Sugimoto run and gun his way through enemy lines like maniac was this series putting its best foot forward, then the proceeding struggle against the weirdly realistic Bear is it putting the other foot in the grave. Whatever tension this battle may have had was instantly lost when we got a good look at this ball of fur. How are we supposed to worry about whether or not Sugimoto and Asirpa are going to live to see the dawn when it looks like they’ll just phase through the bear when it gets too close?! It sucks because this is one of the most intense moments from the incredible manga.

“Dragon Ball Super” (2015-)

Ah yes, the one battle that was produced and received so terribly that it almost left this sequel series dead on arrival. Which is kind of perplexing, since we’ve already seen said fight done right in the movie version released a couple of years earlier. But here, as Goku goes Super Saiyan 3 in an effort to bring down the God of Destruction, it looks like the animation is coming apart at the seams with every punch thrown. Would it really have be that hard to recycle the film footage? Would have at least spared us from seeing Goku’s face melt away between frames!

“The Seven Deadly Sins: Wrath of the Gods” (2019)

You see Studio Deen, this is why we’re no longer on speaking terms. What in the name of Escanor’s godly moustache is this? You took the long-anticipated confrontation between an evil Meliodas and the Lion Sin of Pride, the one fight set to dwarf everything else in the series so far, and treated it with all the care and dignity of a Naruto filler episode. Seriously, we’re talking MS Paint levels of bad animation here - We thought we were on Newgrounds. The blows have no impact, Escanor looks like a dishevelled cosplayer version of himself, and the reveal packs nowhere near as much punch as it should. Isn’t this licensed by Netflix? What the hell is going on?