Top 20 Most Controversial Anime Episodes of All Time

“Pokémon” (1997-)

Citywide destruction, extreme flooding, and hundreds of jellyfish monsters causing havoc. Despite the fantastical element of it all, it certainly wasn’t something western audiences wanted to see so shortly after the tragic events in 2001, leading to Ash and Pikachu’s kaiju adventure being temporarily banned. You’d think that would be the end of it, but the episode was hit with a double whammy when it was also knocked off the air for a while on account of Hurricane Katrina. It was certainly a bad time to be a water Pokemon.

“Dragon Ball Super” (2015-18)

By itself, the scuffle is one of the poorest to ever blacken Goku’s record, purely due to the animation being in such a sorry state that you can almost see his face peeling off mid-swing. Throw in some choppy cutaways and lack of fluidity and this was a dismal start to what would become a Dragon Ball triumph later down the line. What’s worse is that fans had already experienced this fight in all its glory back in the Battle of Gods movie, which made its tv counterpart not only look like an even sloppier affair by comparison but also salt in the wound knowing what could have been!

“Psycho-Pass” (2012-13)

In preparation for the imminent arrival of Psycho-Pass 2, the original neo-noir detective thriller was condensed into an eleven hour-long episode collection, albeit with never-before-seen footage. They might have thought their timing was perfect, at least until life once again decided to imitated art. Turns out on the eve the fourth episode was set to debut, the one that chronicled the murderous student who butchered and arranged her classmates like statues, a real-life decapitation took place with eerily similar circumstances. You can see why it was hurriedly taken off the air.

“Mobile Suit Gundam” (1979-80)

The Gundam franchise has some goofy episodes to its name, even if you ignore the more light-hearted spin-offs and just focus on central series. However, there is only one episode that got itself personally scraped by the creator himself, who was so displeased with the result that he tried to spare western audiences from its mediocrity. For those of you that want to track it down, be warned, you’re in for some terribly animated trash involving the RX-78 clumsily fighting Zeon forces on an island while trying to protect a bunch of kids, all in the lamest way possible.

“Inuyashiki” (2017)

Anime and gory deaths tend to go hand in hand, but even within the safe confines of cell-shaded animation, seeing someone mercilessly gun down police officers, reporters and other innocents like he’s going for a world-breaking kill count tends to ruffle some feathers. The heaping mounds of dead bodies would be bad enough, but the fact that Shishigami decided to conclude his rampage by dropping a passenger plane and killing everyone onboard pushed the envelope a tad too far. Cyborg or not, realistic murders on that kind of scale tend not to go down well with some audiences.

“Oreimo” (2010-13)

Trading tongues with your sister while leaving a trail of broken-hearted best girls in your wake? It’s sadly become a standard in this bizarre sub-genre, and while fans weren’t exactly pleased about Kirino being the one to steal Kyousuke away, at the very least it was still within the realm of cringy anime romance that we had all come to expect. Deciding to marry her and go all in? That’s a bridge to far! This wasn’t so much a comedy plus heaping piles of innuendos; this was full on support for blood-related bed-breaking!

“Gurren Lagann” (2007)

Possibly the only blemish on this rambunctious sci-fi epic, and according to sources, the blame stems from the work of guest animator and director Osamu Kobayashi, whose style did not sit well with fans. Naturally, they did what fans normally do and made their criticisms known. Nothing unusual there, right? As it happens, Gainax co-founder and Lagann producer Takami Akai was a friend of Kobayashi’s, who didn’t take kindly to the critiques – which he stated was akin to “putting his face next to an anus and breathing it deep.” His resignation swiftly followed.

“Excel Saga” (1999-2000)

Hats off to the creators for having the cojones to stick to their guns up until the very end. This satirical slaughterhouse certainly wasn’t afraid to push its parodies that one extra step, making it one of the best animated comedies of the new millennium. So, how do they choose to end it? With the sole intention of making an episode destined to be banned. And you know what? They succeeded. Not only was it exactly a minute too long to be aired on TV stations, but featured excessive amounts of nudity and violence.

“Outlaw Star” (1998)

There’s something hilariously poetic about this particular cancellation. Back when Cartoon Network was still blasting out classic anime, the likes of Gene Starwind and his companions were regulars, and while there was certainly the occasional censorship, younger anime fans could still indulge in the show’s space pirate goodness. Except for the hot spring’s episode. Turns out that there were simply too many boobs and naked bodies to crop, so the higher ups gave up and skipped the episode altogether. The power of Aisha’s cleavage compels you!

“The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya” (2006-09)

By this point, everyone and their-time travelling gerbil has had their say on why this collection of episodes does not work. As a concept, Ms Suzumiya looping her summer vacation over and over holds a lot of promise, but giving us the same damn episode eight times in a row with little to no difference just for some sense of authenticity? It’s not so much a time loop as it is a time waste! They could have executed the same storyline with half of the number of episodes and the impact would still have been felt. But eight? That’s just excessive.

“Darling in the Franxx” (2018)

If you want to see a character’s popularity and likeability plummet in the blink of an eye, then you need look no further than the time that Ichigo forcibly kissed Hiro and confessed her love to him, just as he was about to chase after Zero Two. Let’s just say some people did not react very favourably to this act, and would use the hashtag #Bitchigo on Twitter to show their frustration. In fact some would take it to an even more extreme degree, sending death threats to the series producer Yuichi Fukushima. All this for a show that has since been mostly forgotten.

“Sword Art Online: Alicization” (2018-19)

Just when you were out of the woods, just when the visual splendour of this series was about to make us forget about Alfheim Online, this happens. Much like what happened with Oberon, the show pulled something of a faux pas by using this scene as a throwaway plot point to demonstrate that the bad guys are bad and they do bad things. The scene would be censored for international streaming and even more so for the American TV broadcast on Adult Swim. Author Reki Kawahara would later state that he has since moved on from this sort of plot device and won’t be using it again in his future works.

“School Days” (2007)

We don’t deny we got some major morbid delight from watching Makoto get stabbed by one of his many, many lovers after she discovered that he had cheated on her with one of the other poor saps that agreed to mount his extra-curriculum. Too bad that on the day that this abysmal series was about to end an actual murder took place with some shockingly similar circumstances surrounding it. What to do in the face of such a moral conundrum? Delay the episode and post replacement footage of a nice boat to avoid any controversy. Yeah, you can see how that worked out great.

“The Seven Deadly Sins” (2014-)

This one hurts. This one really hurts. We were so ready to forgive the dumpster fire aspects of this series, including a shocking start to the third season with weird censorship of blood, just as long as they gave this monumental fight between two sins the respect it deserved in adaptation. They didn’t. Instead they dishonoured the Lion Sin of Pride by reducing the reveal of The One into a “meh” moment, while the physicality of the fight was totally ruined due to the animation being of such poor quality. Escanor deserved so much better than this.

“Overlord” (2015-18)

In hindsight, Bone Daddy Ainz fully embracing his role as the big bad of this fantasy world isn’t all that surprising. We’ve seen him viciously kill off his opponents before and use the NPCs of the world as his tools on numerous occasions. Apparently, some fans weren’t so convinced, and were outraged to discover their precious skeleton was now full on chaotic neutral, willing to lead innocents to their deaths for his grand amusement. That, or they just couldn’t handle the scene with the carnivorous cockroaches.

“The Rising of the Shield Hero” (2019)

Such a shame that many chose to not give this masterful isekai the time it deserved because they weren’t too keen on the opening episode. While the subject of false rape accusations and slavery are indeed brought up, many are in agreement that the way the series handled such subjects was both mature and narratively vital, since the slander thrown against Naofumi sends him spiralling to the very bottom, making his eventual rise into a true hero all the more spectacular. Not that the protestors would get to see it, since some maintained their displeasure to the very end.

“Pokémon” (1997-)

The pocket monsters are no strangers to controversy. However, out of all their unfortunate exploits, nothing can really top the time they set a new Guinness World Record for the most amount of epileptic fits caused at once. A scene featured in this cyberspace based episode saw Pikachu cause an explosion with a strobe effect, which resulted in many children an adults all over Japan having epileptic seizures among other ill effects. The show would be taken off air for four months and would change Japanese animation practices. Ironic that such a forgettable episode would have its name cemented into the public mainstream because of such a terrible mistake.

“Goblin Slayer” (2018)

Oh boy. This one was something, wasn’t it? Granted, if audiences had known what they were in for and a convenient mature tag had been put in place, then maybe there wouldn’t have been such a huge backlash against this dark fantasy’s opening episode. Say what you will about the overall quality of the series, the sudden and brutal death of a group of adventures at the hands of an evil bunch of little green mutants certainly got people talking. That and the not so tactless implications of sexual assault against its female characters. You could see the rage train coming from a mile away.

“Neon Genesis Evangelion” (1995-96)

Congratulations Evangelion, you did it. You managed to enrage your fanbase to such an extent that you succeeded in earning yourself that rarest of distinctions that only a select few series gain when their watchers become obscenely irate; death threats. Yeah, the folks over in the land of the rising sun lost the plot a bit when they discovered the end of the show was just Shinji caught between a mental breakdown and a philosophical reflection, complete with major budget cuts. It’s not exactly what we had hoped for, but it is memorable in its own kind of way…we just wish others had seen it that way. This unpopular ending would later be rectified with the release of “End of Evangelion”.