10 Worst Anime (That I’ve Finished)

Introduction

It’s time for another “Top 10” list, although this time you can think of it as a “Bottom 10” list. Since my Top 10 Anime post was much longer than anything else on this site, I’ve decided to try to shorten the description of each anime for this list to keep it reasonable.

Instead of basically doing another full review on each entry, I’ll simply be picking one or two reasons why I think they deserve to be on the list.

Further, this list only mentions anime I’ve finished. There are other anime that I dropped, but would have made it onto the list had I finished them, such as Magical Girl Ore, Pop Team Epic, Arpeggio of Blue Steel, Deadman Wonderland, Fairy Tail, and the “newly” dropped Lucky Star.

10. Yuki Yuna is a Hero (5/10)

I’m sure Yuki Yuna fans are tired of hearing that it’s simply a Madoka Magica clone, but I’ve honestly never seen a good argument against this. The best argument I can come up with for why it isn’t a Madoka clone is that Yuki Yuna is mediocre at best, while Madoka is amazing.

The first season of Yuki Yuna was a 6, the Washio Sumi Chapter was a 4, and the Hero Chapter was a 5, which is why I averaged these ratings and gave the series a 5/10 overall. But if I like Madoka so much, how could I hate a Yuki Yuna, which is so similar?

Yuki Yuna attempts to take the core concept of a dark magical girl anime from Madoka, but then introduce a hearty amount of slice of life content into the mix. This simply doesn’t work. One minute we’re watching the girls playing outside, the next someone dies.

The series constantly jumps back and forth between these two opposing plot structures, but fails to properly lead from one to the other. There’s no buildup leading to a fight, and similarly, there’s no cool-down after a fight, everything is perfect once again.

Further, the slice of life aspects of the series just feel like filler since they really add nothing to the story. Filler isn’t something you want when your first season is 12 episodes, and then your next two seasons are only six episodes each.

9. Sword Art Online (5/10)

Sword Art Online does have a lot of things going for it, but the reason I don’t consider it to be a good anime is mainly because of the writing.

Sure, nobody liked the two times it went back to ALfheim Online because it wasn’t the same concept that we initially signed up for, however, the issues with the writing go beyond that. Just looking at the two main characters, Kirito and Asuna, we can see how poor the author is at making compelling characters.

Kirito is our standard light novel protagonist, who’s essentially a blank slate. This already shows that the series probably isn’t going to be the most compelling story. However, while the blank slate protagonist is supposed to be relatable, he was written as a jerk who’s completely over powered.

Asuna, on the other hand, was originally a strong female lead, but after the first cour she’s pushed into the background and is essentially just Kirito’s “trophy girlfriend.” I’ll skip over Asuna’s rape for now since I already covered that in my Sword Art vs. Evangelion post, but I’ll probably do a full breakdown of it at some point in the future.

8. Log Horizon (4/10)

Look at that, the second MMORPG Isekai on the list, what a surprise. The first season of Log Horizon was actually a better story than Sword Art Online (although executed poorly), but the real issue is that there’s a second season of Log Horizon.

While season one follows the main characters of the anime, who are fairly interesting, the second season mostly follows a group of side-character children who I couldn’t care less about. They don’t get into exciting battles, their backgrounds aren’t interesting, and they’re generally boring.

I feel that because of this second season, we won’t ever get a third season and therefore will never actually learn the mystery of the world the characters were transported to. Good job, Log Horizon season two, you ruined everything.

Log Horizon is a perfect example of what happens when a side arc takes over the main arc of a series. Side arcs are generally less involved, so dedicating most of a season to one is generally going to be pretty slow (like the Lizardmen arc of Overlord II).

7. Knights of Sidonia (4/10)

Knights of Sidonia is the mecha entry of this list, and showcases some of the things I dislike the most about newer mecha series (Darling in the FranXX doesn’t apply). First, take a look at the CGI animation; gross.

While this isn’t the worst CGI I’ve ever seen, it’s a fairly typical example of what the mecha genre has become over the past decade. I’m not really sure why mecha has been the genre to take CGI and run with it almost exclusively, but it really needs to stop.

Moving past the visuals, this anime has two other things working against it. The first is the giant alien tentacle monster (why do you do this to me, Japan?) and the slice of life elements which detract from what would otherwise be a good space opera plot.

I think the reason why I consider the giant alien tentacle monster to be a bad thing is fairly self-explanatory, so instead let’s briefly talk about the slice of life aspects.

This is an anime about a war in outer space using mechs to fight off an alien race. So why do I need to watch the two main humans, and the giant alien tentacle monster, play house? What does this do for the plot that some brief dialogue or one or two scenes couldn’t achieve?

It really made me feel like I was watching the ALfheim Online portions of SAO all over again, and that’s never a good thing.

6. Sakura Quest (4/10)

Although it’s a 4/10, Sakura Quest isn’t really that bad. It’s just not an anime I ever felt like watching when the next episode was released.

This past Winter season we had Laid-Back Camp, which was cute girls doing cute things, and A Place Further Than The Universe, which has been called cute girls doing cool things. If that’s the case, then Sakura Quest was cute girls doing boring things.

It wasn’t really comedic, it had no action, no adventure, and it was only somewhat “feel-good.” Basically, it was as plain a story as you can get about some girls working as tourism board members. I don’t watch anime to see the same mundane things I could be seeing by working myself.

The art for the series is good, but that’s just about the only thing it has going for it, and that’s not really enough to make it a good, or even average, anime.

5. Alderamin on the Sky (4/10)

Alderamin on the Sky had potential, it really did. It’s a story about a military officer who climbs through the ranks by strategically winning battles in a magical version of world war one. Okay, so the magic part immediately takes away from the potential, but the strategy is the main thing here.

Unfortunately, I found all of the characters to be unbearable, and the strategies used inevitably always came down to sacrificing large numbers of soldiers as a distraction while the rest of the army attacked from the rear.

I guess you could say the protagonist Ikta is kind of an anti-hero since he doesn’t care about the number of casualties as long as he wins the battle, but while I like that, it’s not enough to make the anime good. He even goes a bit too far sometimes and sacrifices hundreds of soldiers because why not? It’s not him dying.

Also, to go along with the use of magic and fairies, there’s a princess who’s in love with the protagonist. I guess you need some generic light novel stuff thrown into the mix in order to sell anything these days.

4. Gunslinger Girl (4/10)

Despite being this far down the list, Gunslinger Girl is probably my favorite anime featured in this post. The concept behind the show, as well as the execution, may be mediocre, but it does tell a compelling story about the mental state of cyborg child-assassins.

While I really enjoyed the darker themes of this series, the art, animation, and pacing weren’t always the best. By this I mean that the series doesn’t always look too nice, and it can be very slow at times despite there being plenty of action throughout.

Also, the song that constantly plays throughout the second season is just an instrumental version of Scarborough Fair by Simon and Garfunkel. This song, lyrics included, is also used multiple times. It’s almost like an OST was outside the budget so they got the rights to a single song instead.

3. School Days (3/10)

School Days was the first “bad” anime I reviewed on the site if I remember correctly, and guess what, it’s still bad. The series is infamous for the ending scene in which both Makoto and Sekai end up being murdered, but even that doesn’t make up for the rest of the anime.

Basically, this anime is a fairly low quality anime version of an eroge visual novel (hentai, but it’s a game). Just based off that, we should know that the plot isn’t really going to be any good. However, the anime also cuts out the pornographic scenes so all that’s left is the bad plot.

*Disclaimer: I believe there is an uncensored version of this anime simply due to what I saw while picking an image to use here.

Terrible plot aside, all of the characters except for Kotonoha are the worst people you’d ever meet, much like the cast of A Silent Voice. So, without a good plot, or likeable characters, there’s nothing really going for this anime.

2. Koihime Musou (3/10)

Koihime Musou is very similar to School Days, except it’s a Yuri anime based in history instead of a straight anime based in school. Other than that distinction, they’re basically the same thing and Koihime Musou suffers from much of the same things School Days does.

So, I’ll skip over all that and talk about the cast. There are way too many characters in this anime. Even after finishing season one (which is all I ended up watching) I only knew the names of about three of the roughly 30 recurring characters.

With that many characters there’s very little time for each one to make enough of an impact to really be memorable. This, combined with the fact that many of the characters had similar appearances like hair color/style, made it hard to keep track of everyone if I didn’t see them for an episode or two.

Koihime Musou is also an excellent example of how not to use ecchi in anime, but if you want to read more about that topic, you can find it here.

1. In Another World With My Smartphone (2/10)

We’re finally at the worst anime I’ve ever finished, In Another World With My Smartphone, and I know what you’re thinking, how can this be the worst if it’s only a 2/10 instead of a 1? Well, dear readers, it’s simple: why would I want to finish an anime that’s a 1/10?

As you can tell from the extra-long title, In Another World With My Smartphone is a light novel adaptation. However, this could be considered the ultimate light novel adaptation because it takes just about every terrible trope from light novels and combines them into one.

We have an extremely overpowered protagonist who was transported to another world and is suddenly the best at everything there is in this new world such as fighting, magic, and, of course, getting all the girls to form a harem centered around him.

Also, just look at him, he’s just as edgy as Kirito from SAO, but also wears that stupid white coat just in case you weren’t sure how much of a tool he is. Oh, and unlike most harem anime, he actually agrees to marry all the girls in his harem so this one takes the wish-fulfillment aspect to a new high (or low?).

I truly believe that liking this anime should be classified as a mental disability. Either that, or the person who likes this is literally 12 years old and is always wearing an Angry Birds or Minecraft shirt. Take your pick.