Top 20 WORST Anime of All Time

We love schlocky monster movies. We love so-bad-its-good anime. At the very least this should have been some passable cheesy fun. But nope. It’s just gross. Ignoring the horrendous 3D animation, there’s something fetishistic about how each of the busty students are killed off by the colossal bugs, making for a really uncomfortable watching experience. Even if the characters are all asshats practically begging to get taken out, there’s no morbid joy to be found here. There’s a right and a wrong way to do campy horror, and this ain’t it.

Yeah, we hadn’t heard of this one either. Then we watched it, and instantly regretted our decision. The plot is beyond generic, focusing on a pair of brothers who hunt down tentacle monsters by…transforming into housecats? Not exactly the pinnacle of imagination. Pair that with the dullest and most uninspired romance among any OVA from the 90s, and it becomes all too tempting to want to throw this kitty right in the trash. Though we do have to applaud just how awful the dub is for this one. It’s impressively atrocious.

We’ve seen side-scrolling beat-em’-ups be turned into legitimately great anime over the years. And this is most certainly not one of them. They took scantily clad idols dressed like Tekkaman rip-offs, who happen to shoot lasers from hula hoops, and made it boring as all hell. Maybe that’s due to the five minute run-time or choppy animation, but it gets to the point where you’re wondering if you’d be more entertained if this were a hentai. Either that, or next time, pick a better arcade game to adapt!

And just when you thought the truly abysmal anime was locked away back in the wilderness of yesteryears. No chance. Some of these modern cash-grabs are in a league of their own. Following off the back of EX-ARM and Berserk 2016, if anyone even cared to watch this thing, it may have been the next big WTF in anime, but as it stands, it sits in the squalid shadows of those that came before it. Don’t be fooled though, it’s still terrible, with the 3D animation leaps and bounds behind the times, made all the worse when the fight scenes and background art look like this!

To say the magical girl genre has become saturated would be a mighty understatement, let alone that of the idol scene. So, what happens when you smash both together without bothering to do anything interesting with the result? An abomination of 3D so lazily cobbled together that even at the time, anyone at home could likely have put together something better. What’s the story? Does it even matter? Seriously, this makes the Precure girls look like high art.

When the title, which is an abbreviation of Lady Sports, is the cleverest thing about the show, you know you’ve got quite the train wreck on your hands. The idea of an all-female sports team battling it out in a sci-fi setting isn’t the worst idea we’ve ever heard. The heights that regular sports shows can reach by themselves are beyond impressive. As always, it’s in the execution, and from the looks of things, we’re guessing some poor intern who had never animated in his life was forced to cobble this together. It’s more like a glorified slideshow!

No, this isn’t a flash animation on Newgrounds. It’s a legitimate anime. Alas, it fails at the starting line. Even if your nostalgia for this art style rings true, it buckles under the weight of its lofty narrative aspirations. Human/alien hybrid raised to be a weapon, struggling with her identity, military vs extraterrestrial shenanigans, we’ve seen all these a million times before, and each of them hit the mark better. It’s sort of tragic because deep down you can tell there was passion for this…it’s just that the budget couldn’t match the ambition.

First thing’s first, there’s no actual ninjas here – so that’s strike one. But even if there were, nothing could save this series from the sum of its parts. Its crudely animated, unscary, and obnoxious parts. Horror and spookiness can take all kinds of forms in anime, even with a minimalist approach to the visuals. But there is a limit, and unfortunately, this anthology is nothing more than a waste of time that somehow was broadcast for all to see. There’s a reason why Yamishibai: Japanese Ghost Stories is still going strong and this…isn’t.

There have been a select few anime whose overall ineptitude caused them widespread condemnation upon release, and Ex-Arm sits happily among that pantheon. The combination of average 2D art combined with truly abysmal 3D art here cannot be understated. This thing is ugly to look at when the characters are static, and downright laughable when they throw themselves into a fight scene. The sci-fi narrative isn’t anything to write home about either, but even if it was penned by a master wordsmith, we doubt anyone would give it the time of day when it looks like the 3D models are actively trying to unalive themselves.

A samurai and a ninja get pulled into a dystopian future plagued by infected humans. And fall flat on their face every step of the way. Before release, this thing was supposed to be the next big thing. And yet, between penning the idea and releasing it onto the world, everything went wrong. Characters are flat, the art is ugly to behold, the story has no weight, the fight scenes an exercise in frustration, and all you get from binging the whole thing is a profound sense of wasted time. It’s a landmark in modern anime failures, and hopefully we’ve seen the last of its kind. I mean, we probably haven’t, but we can dream!

Given the series’ creator had to apologize for how much of a negative reception it received, it’s fair to say that it’s so bad its good status was unintentional. The story itself is rather uninspired, with a gun-wielding samurai warrior traveling 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.

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 subpar animation quality and a bland lead character who's 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.

Even with low animation quality, many a series has 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 female lead being assaulted by the so-called protagonist. There’s some other plot points about the gold rush in the Amazon rainforest, but it's as drab as can be. What’s that? She ends up falling for him right after he attacks her? Because of course she does.

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. 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. This ain’t Gundam Build Fighters!

If the aim of the game was to – literally – promote a game with this adaptation, this thing is a spectacular failure! 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 inhabit to life. You know, for a supposed generation filled with it, we don’t see a lot of chaos going on here.

Because that’s what one of fiction’s 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 in lew of terrible gags, 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.

Fancy checking out a classic anime movie? Well do yourself a favor 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. That might sound like a hilarious head-trip, but trust us, it’s not worth it. Its editing leaps all over the place, its story doesn’t go beyond ‘muscular physician punches demon’, and features a slew of unwarranted sex scenes complete with synth music. You don’t have to be psychic to tell how bad this flick is.

And this is why low-tier 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. The alien menace, which is frankly an animated sin against the medium, practically takes a backseat to the would-be harem, who in themselves have no character to speak of. The fact they essentially tried to lore-dump a whole season’s worth into a single OVA is startling.

Prepare yourselves, because this is where things get 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 the older brother get dissected over and over since he can regenerate his flesh, allowing his little sister to eat pieces of him, every adult act out their sadist wants, and finally, the bittersweet conclusion as brother and sister turn into hideous monsters and devour each other. Have fun scrubbing that from your brain.

From the same company that gave us Skelter+Heaven comes what can only be considered an epic failure in anime. How does it hold up? Characters that are thinner than paper. Below sub-par animation. A narrative 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. Long may it live in infamy.
Which anime do you consider the worst of the worst? Let us know in the comments!