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Post by Nachtkern on Jun 17, 2022 14:31:29 GMT 1
!! Please remember to use spoiler warnings and spoiler tabs when discussing spoilers !!Title self-explanatory. I want to hear about the absolute worst things you've seen, and what makes you think so! To kick this thread off, I'll start: I've seen a lot of terrible anime, so there were quite a few contenders here (and I may add more onto this thread later), but a series I watched all the way through and genuinely and thoroughly hated was Mawaru Penguindrum ( AP page). Originally I was going to name maybe Watamote (one of the few series I couldn't get myself to finish) or Black Butler 2 (a steep low even for Black Butler), but honestly, I knew what I was getting into for those, and why I wouldn't like them even before starting them. Mawaru Penguindrum however, looked like a pretty decent series from the cover! The artstyle and animation are lovely, the music is good, and the Penguindrum staff was involved in other titles I did really enjoy, like for example Revolutionary Girl Utena. The series was generally well-received and has a high user rating. The story premise (as presented) is that two brothers must search for a magical artifact to save their sisters life. Nothing on the outside gave away just how much of a shitshow this 24-episode series is, and I had no reason to suspect it would be one of the worst shows I've ever watched in my entire life. Spoilers below, including ending. Content warnings for: sexual harrassment and rape, pedophilia, incest {Spoiler}The series starts off strong, with the first third of the show being nearly exclusively about a teenage girl sexually harrassing her teacher, with seemingly no relation to the premise of the show. The context is explained (much) later, but for the time being, all there is to her character is her stalking her teacher and attempting to seduce or trick him into having sex with her, going to extremes to try and succeed her goal. This is a little weird and uncomfortable for obvious reasons, making the first part of the show a pretty rough sit. Although fortunately, she doesn't succeed in her attempts, and eventually even realizes that perhaps, she shouldn't be having sex with her teacher anyway, that was the most coherent part of the show, and things only go further off the rails from there. Other characters are seeking the elusive penguindrum as well. Stalker girl has her late sister's magical diary that everyone wants. Her teacher's fiancee turns out to be a terrible person who attempts to rape her, and her teacher himself endangers the brother's sister's life - for reasons, but reasons that aren't explained all that well. One of the brothers turns out to be a cult leader I think. A ( real-life) terrorist incident is the red thread that tangles all of this mess together. A lot of things happen in this series, and then it takes a sudden dive into the abstract towards the end. For you see, to explain what the penguindrum even is, why the magical diary is so important, why that one brother is a cult leader, and more importantly, why there are so many scenes of implied kissing between the sister and her brothers... we must now go to the Child Broiler. An abstract place that looks like a location from the music video for Two-Faced Lovers, where unneeded children are dumped in an incinerator. One of the brothers saved their poor sister from the Child Broiler, and so she was adopted into their family, as though this makes all that stuff about the brother being soulmates with his sister not weird at all since they aren't blood related, and retroactively makes the last 20 episodes magically suck less. Both brothers then die to save the girls, who won't remember them. ... And no, I still don't actually know what any of that had to do with the original premise of the show. The (spoiler-free) tl;dr of why this is one of the worst anime I've seen is that it was a very rough sit content-wise, very difficult to follow, and has an unsatisfying ending that doesn't explain the story well, or makes up for any of it, despite having looked like a decent or at least average show on the outside. About half of its episodes feature extreme sexual harrassment done by and to a teenage girl, and there's a bunch of incest and pedophilia in this show for seemingly no real reason. The ending was not only confusing, it was also very suddenly abstract, despite the rest of the show taking place in (comparatively) the real world. Also, the comedy-relief penguins were really fucking annoying.
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Post by misdreavussoda on Jun 17, 2022 17:04:11 GMT 1
The Wallflower. It's a type of Ouran High School Host Club reverse harem style anime where a bunch of rich guys all live in a mansion together, and their landlady goes "hey my niece is a shut in and kinda ugly. Fix her or your guy's rent will triple lol" before shoving the poor girl into the rich people's world. Where this fails, where ohshc succeeded, is in a lot of key aspects. ( the wallflower was created two years before ohshc, however their concepts are close. ) One: holy FUCK is everybody ugly. Oh my SWEET MERCIFUL LORD everyone has yaoi hands and uncomfortably rendered lips and weirdly sparkling, eyeliner bolstered eyes. Dont get me started on the noses. Two: the message is God forbidden awful. Where in OHSHC, eventually the dudes just let Haruhi be who she is, only to dress up for club activities, ( and all of them liking her outside of who she is at the club ), The Wallflower makes these five rich dudes go "HOLY FUCK YOURE UGLY" at this girl, who has been a shut in for most of her life. They decide to try to teach her how to be elegant- however they poke and prod and make fun of her the whole way through their 'lessons' ( iirc one episode they call her fat??? Even though she has the exact same body type as everyone else in that show ). There's a lot of episodes of them ripping her from the comfort of her room to make her serve them tea correctly. Three: Holy shit it's racist too! During intermediate segments where they try and "teach" the audience "how to be a lady" as well, (racist depictions/eating issues) emaciated black people with large afros present and commentate on each segment. So yeah. All those, combined with painfully unfunny dialogue just. Ew! Its a bad show! Ran from 2000 to 2015 and somehow had no social awareness! The only funny part of the show is that the main girl has like, a major interest in horror gore movies, and has a friend that's just a human anatomy model. |
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Post by Nachtkern on Jun 17, 2022 19:43:26 GMT 1
I'VE SEEN THAT LMAO. While I'll give you that the Wallflower is in no way a good anime, it was still a solidly enjoyable watch for me. The premise sucks, but because the main character is genuinely really funny and likeable, it made the boys that were trying to make her more feminine seem like total jackasses, and it made the whole thing a lot funnier. Also, it's been a while since I've seen it, so I could be misremembering, but: (spoilers) {Spoiler}I'm pretty sure that around the end of the series, the girl's aunt comes back and scolds the boys for misinterpreting her instructions? I think they were supposed to teach her how to be "a proper lady" or something like that, but not to terrorize her into being more feminine or harrass and insult her like they have, or to have treated her like a housewife. Doesn't really change much about the premise or what happens in the show, but my takeaway wasn't that there was anything supposedly "wrong" with the main character other than being painfully shy and reclusive, and not grooming herself very well. Another series I really hated was Watamote ( AP page), which is a little similar in some ways, but without all of the bishonen trying to change the protagonist. It's about a girl who enters highschool, determined to finally become popular and start living her best highschool life, but she's just kind of a weird, poorly-groomed, nerdy girl, so "comedy" ensues due to her being so out of touch and quirky - similar to what happens in the Wallflower. The main difference, and what makes it so intolerably bad, is that the girl from Watamote genuinely sucks. She's a horrible and creepy girl, and most of the comedy of the show relies on cringe. I think the watcher is supposed to relate to her - to see her as a sort of hyperbole of the kind of person you are, so that the stuff that happens in the show is cringey, but distantly relatable... but I don't think I could stand to be in the same room as anyone who could remotely relate to a girl like that, she's that unlikeable. Characters in the show are genuinely nice to her, and she treats them like shit because they don't mean very much to her and she lives in her own little world where she can't begin to relate to any of the people around her. She constantly misconstrues situations to be sexual, and her perverted ideas about others bleed through in her treatment of them. She isn't just weird, she's a complete creep with no regard for others, and it's hard to find any of her interactions funny because of it. I couldn't make it through more than 4 episodes of Watamote. It was like everything about that show was finely tailored to me hating every second of it as much as humanly possible, and by comparison, the Wallflower was just a lightheartedly stupid show to me. |
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Post by misdreavussoda on Jun 17, 2022 21:56:48 GMT 1
GOD WAIT YEAH. I REMEMVER SEEING THE FIRST EPISODE TO THAT AND, EVEN AT AGE 12, GOING "eeeeggggghhg..... No thanks i think."
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Post by astraldreams on Jun 19, 2022 10:22:40 GMT 1
I admittedly haven't watched that much anime (finished only like 5, not counting movies, because there I can't remember what I've watched), so I'm not the most qualified to answer this, but! I have watched all of Yuri on Ice, and I want to rag on it.
Very quick premise: Iceskater Yuri Katsuki is depressed due to a constant string of losses and unofficially retires, returning to his parents hotspring resort to just work there. But after he meets his idol and famous iceskater Victor Nikiforov who offers to coach him, he returns to the iceskating scene now determined to win and show Viktor what he can do. Over time, there's a budding romance between them. So far so good, fairly standard premise, and if you were online at the time this came out you probably heard about it at least once, if only because of the romance. (Also the protag's rival is also called Yuri and I think that is really funny).
And in all fairness, it's honestly nothing overly terrible, just really not all that good, but quite frankly that just makes it more boring? At least if it was uniquely horrible, that might be funny. But as it is we're just kind of left with... nothing. YOI is, supposedly, a sports & romance anime. In reality, it's neither- the sport takes away from the romance, the romance takes away from the sports, and in the end neither is really given the time or attention that would've benefitted it. It's clear the romance was it's main selling point though (remember guys?? It's the first ever gay anime omg!!!), and while that could be blamed on the kind of treatment of shows tumblr/twitter fandoms just kind of have, it's pretty clear that it was absolutely intended and encouraged by the producers. I have (unfortunately) been exposed to enough "is YOI deliberate fujoshi bait or not" discourse to last me several lifetimes, and while quite frankly that whole discussion is a little bit pointless (and annoying), the fact remains that there is enough in the show and the creators statements to sustain this discussion forever. And that is also annoying.
There are plenty of things people have complained about with this show, such as the main characters not actually being all that likeable or great people (but presented and treated as if they were), a power imbalance of the main romance taking place between an iceskater and his coach (and the coach specifically hinging romantic actions on how well the skater does at the competitions), one of the main characters being introduced with his whole entire ass and dick and balls out for no reason, or the iceskating bits just really not being all that cool to watch? But everyone else has already talked about all of this and more (to a less or more reasonable extent) and I'm not here to engage in Internet Discourse, I'm here to personally complain. So here's the thing that made me personally go "wait what". {spoilers for the final episode}He doesn't win?????? He doesn't win the Big Event at the ending he gets second place and he doesn't win. WHICH. Don't get me wrong! Is a perfectly fine story development in general I suppose, you can make a lesson of it not being bad to not always be first, or the protag learning to put something else first, or literally whatever, but in the context of this show it's just incredibly baffling. We spent the whole show being told that Yuri can't do it both by other characters and himself, Viktor at some point even is like "if you don't get the gold, i won't marry you lol" (paraphrased, but barely), and then he does in fact just not do it! I'm not even gonna say it was a bad storytelling decision necessarily, but it was weird! And anticlimactic! And it didn't feel satisfying. Which brings me to my main point again, being: this is not a sports anime LMAO, this is a romance with sports themes and while there's nothing bad with that inherently, the romance is also not fully committed to (despite being the first ever gay anime omgomg can you even believe it), and it ends up being just kind of a forgettable nothing. A nothing that was severely overhyped and attracted some of THE worst fans (and haters) I have seen in years.
If you like ice skating, it's fine, but there's better things out there. If you like gay romance, just watch something else. Despite what the fans want to make you believe, there are other things out there too.
At least the opening is nice (though, admittedly, less pretty than I remember it being?? I thought there were more colors lol).
EDIT oh my god I know I said I wouldn't acknowledge the discourse, but I just remembered my favourite thing and I have to share it, because it was so funny. All the fans going "if this was m/f you guys would all love it!!!!" and all the haters going "if this was m/f you guys would all hate it!!!!". Anyway. That's enough reminiscing for a life time.
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Post by bird on Jun 19, 2022 11:41:38 GMT 1
Maybe not THE worst ever, but it is one that I remember a lot for being disappointing, and that is Mekaku City Actors.
If you're familiar with the vocaloid community, you might know about the Kagerou Project, a multimedia story project who started with a series of vocaloid songs by Jin. In it you can also find a light novel, a manga and finally an anime : Mekaku City Actors.
There's honestly a lot to get into story wise about this project, and even I'm not fully familiar with it as I've yet to read the mangas and light novels.
To look at it in the most basic way: a bunch of teenagers got superpowers, but also there's some fucked up time loop shit going on. That's the best way I can summarize it tbh.
The main issue with the anime? Its lack of focus.
The song series are composed of vignettes of the different characters followed by songs explaining shared events. This works perfectly fine for the medium! However... It doesn't work as well in an anime.
The show constantly switch POVs, stories and characters. Sometimes it's even hard to fully understand the timeline of events just because of how much it switches around, and while sometimes it feels intentional other times... Not so much.
And probably the worst thing for this anime: it acts like everyone already knows about the songs. Sure the show is based on them, but the fact that it doesn't try to introduce the story better to newcomers must have really affected its popularity. Like despite the song series being popular this is still fairly niche, you NEED to have all viewers to be on the same page. But many times, I've found myself thinking "How the hell is someone who didn't listen to the song before suppose to understand what's going on HERE?"
The worst example in my opinion is probably the episode based on Kagerou Days. It's already a fairly hard story to tell due to it being a time loop (in a time loop I know that shit is a little confusing) but oh my god it barely explains what's going on???? So people who already know about the song feel cheated because it's a worse retelling of the song they like and the people who don't end up incredibly confused.
It's such a shame too, because the anime genuinely had a lot of potential! It had a really cool art style and retranscribed the character designs of the characters really well. But it ends up just... Dropping the ball.
Another sad fact was how rushed it was, which is especially clear in episode 9. Suddenly for NO REASON whatsoever, the show loses all of its charm and art style and everything is replaced by some of the worst of the early days of anime 3D. The studio just. Didn't have the time to make the actual art and had to scramble to still release something on TV. Thankfully this was fixed in the blu-ray release, but it's sad that they had to resort to this.
So yeah, great potential, horrible execution.
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Post by Nachtkern on Jun 19, 2022 12:47:11 GMT 1
I admittedly haven't watched that much anime (finished only like 5, not counting movies, because there I can't remember what I've watched), so I'm not the most qualified to answer this, but! I have watched all of Yuri on Ice, and I want to rag on it. AH... YOI... I certainly was online when that was airing, yes, and I also actively decided not to watch it because of the way people were discussing it online. I can't really say anything for that whole whether it's fujoshi bait thing, but I can definitely say, that a lot of the people who were watching and recommending it were fujoshis. Which is fine, it's whatever, but regardless of what YOI was about and if it was any good, regardless of if it was "good gay rep" or any of that, seeing people talk about their smol gay babies made me not want to touch it at all. And by the time it ended, the online arguments about it had absolutely exploded, so I never went back. I... didn't think I was missing anything, but it's good to know anyway LMAO. Also this sort of reminds me of Amanchu! ( AP page) which, is actually a really nice show, though wasn't really for me. It's about two girls who become close friends over scuba diving, and from the premise, it looks like it's a show about scuba diving... but they do surprisingly little diving in it! It's more of a sweet, slow-paced, slice-of-life, and is really more about the girls' lives overall than it is about diving. The reason I bring it up isn't just because it's a not-sports-anime though, I'm also reminded because I genuinely can't tell you if these girls are gay or not. Different websites alternatingly tag it as a shoujo-ai or not, and nobody really seems to know or agree if they're like, in love, or if they're just really, really close friends. It's a non-issue, because either way it's a really sweet show, right? But imagine if it had remotely the same kind of discourse surrounding it that YOI did... *shiver* Maybe not THE worst ever, but it is one that I remember a lot for being disappointing, and that is Mekaku City Actors. I don't go there, so I'm not too familiar with it, but I think lentlsoup does (and might've mentioned it before as not being very good)? That does sound pretty disappointing though. Switching POVs and jumping around the timeline is one of those things that's really hard to pull off right, so when it's good, it's good, and when it's bad, it's incomprehensible. A show that does it really well is Baccano! ( AP page) - the story is about an incident on a train, and all the mysteries surrounding it, that are slowly unraveled as things are retold from different character's perspectives, until everything comes together. It also technically is canon to the Durarara! universe (DRRR! is the more popular work, but Baccano is a better-told story imo), but set in the past, before the events of that show. I'd recommend giving it a try if you're interested, but a heads-up that there's quite a bit of gratious violence and splatter in Baccano! And speaking of potential, I've got another piece to dunk on: Fullmetal Alchemist The Movie: Conqueror of Shamballa ( AP page). I'll first have to give some context to get into why, though. There are two FMA series, Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (2009). FMA:B follows the events of the manga, with obviously a few changes, like some rearranged or omitted events, some detail changes, but is overall a very similar canon to the manga. FMA 03 follows some parts of the manga, but at some point begins setting up its own original plot points, leading into an anime-original ending. Both shows are about two brothers who can wield alchemy (think: magic), and are on a quest to try and retrieve their original bodies after losing them in an alchemy incident gone wrong.
Regardless of what other people say, I think the FMA 03 ending is just okay. They had some really interesting ideas for it, but none of them were executed all that well - I think because they tried to do too many of them all at once, and all at the end of the show, giving them no opportunity to really satisfyingly conclude any of them. (Personally, if I could change anything about it, I wouldn't change all that much; I'd probably really only cut out a bunch of the stuff introduced at the end, because while some of it was cool... it didn't really do the story any favors.) So, as is, the ending is left with a lot of unanswered questions and loose threads. It had potential, but it's just not that good, and also not that bad.
So... what they did was make a movie sequel, set after the ending of FMA 03. The movie doesn't answer any of the questions raised by the ending, and creates more. Also, (spoilers for the movie): {Spoiler}the movie is a reverse-isekai to Nazi Germany. Instead of resolving any of the things that happen in FMA 03's universe, the viewer is whisked away to a completely different universe, meant to resemble real-life Nazi Germany, with anime Hitler in it and everything, to fight Nazis on spaceships (there have not been spaceships in FMA before this point, it's not that kind of story). So that... certainly was a baffling choice. It didn't just resolve nothing, it made the whole canon significantly worse, and it was a thoroughly unenjoyable movie to boot. |
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Post by suolainensilakka on Jun 19, 2022 13:08:51 GMT 1
okay so i was debating on whether or not i should post this initially but decided ah, what the hell, why not. anyway, the anime i nominate here is Brigadoon: Marin & Melan (or Marin to Melan, ive seen both spellings used), and it's an anime about a young orphan girl who stumbles upon and befriends a mysterious sword-wielding alien called Melan Blue, who came to Earth from a rift between worlds. colors are an important thematic component of the series, and almost every character is named after a color in some way - there's also plenty other alien characters of Melan's species, called Monomakia, that appear in the show. the premise seemed really interesting to me, and i actually was introduced to the series several years ago by finding an image of Melan and getting really curious about the source. the character design and artstyle was really cool!! i Wanted to know what was up with this alien!! so i posted about it on instagram and several of my followers Immediately rushed into my dms to gush abt it and stated that i'd really enjoy the anime, and it was apparently right up my alley. i was also told that the series would get Really emotional and i'd probably end up crying while watching it. very promising! i was Definitely interested now! and then i found the episodes on youtube, started watching it, and couldn't bring myself to continue past episode 3 because there was SO much extremely uncomfortable "fanservice" of the junior highschool-age protagonist that completely soured my interest in continuing despite still maintaining the opinion that the premise and characters are really neat. {warning for sexualization of minors, its not great}
the main character (who is, as far as i remember, 13 years old) is pretty frequently placed in situations where the camera angles and other characters' actions emphasize her body in. really uncomfortable ways (there's at least one instance of Melan saving her by flying away from danger while carrying her, and accidentally grabbing her chest in the process, and i also remember there being visible panty shots in one of the first few episodes) and there was. so much of it in the first three episodes that i decided i really couldn't stomach any more of it, and quit watching after that. i'm still upset bc again, the show LOOKED really cool and i wanted to see what the fuss was all about, but all of… That completely put me off from watching any more. i still can't say if the plot is actually any good or if it does justify the hype, so i'll just have to imagine it, i suppose. i'm still mad i wasn't warned about any of its bad aspects though  also, obligatory disclaimer that it has been several years since i first saw the episodes and i have not touched the anime since, so it's very likely i'm forgetting some stuff. still, some of the things i saw in it were burned into my memory so strongly that i think i've witnessed more than enough to decide i'd rather not keep watching. |
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Post by Nachtkern on Jun 19, 2022 13:48:13 GMT 1
okay so i was debating on whether or not i should post this initially but decided ah, what the hell, why not. anyway, the anime i nominate here is Brigadoon: Marin & Melan OH NO... Unfortunately that sort of thing is in a lot of anime, so I think that a lot of people who watch anime a bit more avidly tend to look past the fanservice and sexualized depictions of little girls as though they're not there, because they're used to seeing it. Especially older anime tends to have a lot of it - I feel like a lot of the shows that are coming out now, or at least the ones that gain popularity, don't really lean into that kind of stuff as much anymore.
I had a similar experience watching Digmon Frontier ( AP page) of all things. I don't think it was nearly all that bad as what you watched, though.
In this canon, the characters themselves turn into digimon (the different Digimon seasons have different canons - usually the digimon are their partners instead). As you can see from the cover, there's only one girl among the protagonists. While the other characters turn into stuff like, a giant man-beetle, or a teddy-bear, or a metal wolf... Zoe turns into a lingerie fairy. All of the characters are really young children - Zoe is in 6th grade in the English dub, making her 11 or 12 years old. The writing was just kind of weird and out of touch, too - not necessarily in a sexualized way, but more in a "whoever came up with these dialogues and character dynamics has never talked to an 11 year old" kind of way. And Zoe, being the only girl on the team, was constantly subject to being The Girl, so she had to get into catfights with the token girl baddie over who was prettier, she had to be the romantic interest (despite the kind of show not really calling for romance at all), she had to have these stereotypically girly interests and get jealous and be all "ugh boys!!" all the time... It was just kind of really off-putting.
Digimon Adventure had multiple girl protagonists in it, (and they didn't turn into lingerie fairies), so it didn't have that kind of writing in it nearly as much. Digimon Tamers had a much more mature feel to it, not in terms of sexualization, but as in that the story was grittier, so there was no room in it at all for being weird in that way about the girl protagonist. And Digimon Savers, which I'm watching now, feels much more oriented towards teenagers than younger children, and is really more of a stereotypical shonen that doesn't concern itself with girly stuff than any of the seasons before it... making whatever happened in Frontier stick out like a sore thumb to me.
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Post by bird on Jun 19, 2022 15:35:17 GMT 1
Oooh wait, I have another good disappointment anime: Log Horizon.
Log Horizon is part of that era of SAO-like stories, where people get stuck inside a MMORPG for some reasons or another. The main difference in Log Horizon being that you don't have the same threat of death that SAO has (which btw SAO is its own can of worms that I won't get into right now)
So. What's so bad about it?
It's just so fucking boring.
The anime has a really horrendous pacing, and make it really hard to care about any of the characters or the stakes are hand. It feels both like it's going way too fast to get to know the characters and way too slow in term of the events happening if that makes any sense??? Plus it also had some fanservice (not to the extent of SAO though that's not hard)
Ok so. Boring anime.
Why is it a disappointment then?
Well you see, through some reasoning that I cannot justify, despite being quite bored by the anime I still decided to check out the light-novel it was based on.
Now take what I'm saying with a grain of salt, because I've only read the first volume and it's been years since I've re-read it.
But the biggest take-away I had from it is that the light-novel was actually an incredible fun read.
What felt like a dull world with blank characters was so much more enjoyable than I had imagined. The book was able to transcribe the sense of a community forming through a shared hardship, and actually made you care about its characters and the stakes felt serious despite not having death looming over the characters.
It definitely wasn't perfect, but it felt like a breath of fresh air in the middle of all the SAO-like Isekai I had experienced so far.
So yeah, it's sad that a book with so much charm got dulled down so much for its anime adaptation.
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Post by Nachtkern on Jun 19, 2022 18:00:09 GMT 1
Oooh wait, I have another good disappointment anime: Log Horizon. Ooh, I haven't seen that, but the name seemed familiar - and lo and behold, it's on my to-watch list, so I'll be looking forward to experiencing that for myself LMAO.
I think the thing with like, SAO and all the SAO-alikes is that it's just not my kind of genre. The concept itself isn't the problem - I do enjoy isekais, high-stakes games, virtual worlds, so all of that could be good in theory... but we're not the kind of viewers these shows are made for. They're meant to target these gamer dudes who the shows are about! And a lot of shows are like that, where the protagonist is some super-generic guy with nothing going for him so that these anime-watching neets can relate to him, or even outside of anime, where world's specialest boy is always also world's most boring boy, but it's so much more on the nose in the trapped-in-a-video-game category of isekais. So the problem isn't their concept, but how that concept is executed when the story is aimed at gamer dudes who have no life outside of their video games. The protagonists are boring, and the adventures they have are unengaging to anyone with more than one interest in life.
A show like it that I really hated was Btooom! ( AP page) - not quite an isekai, but the same idea. One of the world's top players of a player-vs-player video game is abducted and forced to play the game for real, against real people.
And he's kind of... boring? A bit of a jerk? He doesn't really have anything going for him other than that he's really good at this video game, but because that's what the show is about, he's the specialest bestest boy. It's a high stakes game, so the show tries to be all psychological about it, but because it's made for an unimaginative audience with no redeeming qualities, no one has sensible character motivations, and the main character is morally superior to everyone only because everyone else is exaggeratedly evil. Like he's up against rapists, serial killers, backstabbers who murder others without so much as a second thought, so he's the only person who didn't deserve to be trapped in this game, other than... obviously his super hot love interest, who he respects so much (compared to everyone else trying to kill or assault her).
And, obviously, a ton of fanservice. I don't mind it at all in general, but the fanservice in Btooom! specifically left a bad taste in my mouth. A lot of it was just the love interest being assaulted and put into situations upsetting to her and being over-the-top traumatized about it, all while the viewer is supposed to ogle her in distress.
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Post by gorehoundabb on Jun 19, 2022 21:04:53 GMT 1
Oooh wait, I have another good disappointment anime: Log Horizon. Log Horizon is part of that era of SAO-like stories, where people get stuck inside a MMORPG for some reasons or another. The main difference in Log Horizon being that you don't have the same threat of death that SAO has (which btw SAO is its own can of worms that I won't get into right now) So. What's so bad about it? It's just so fucking boring. The anime has a really horrendous pacing, and make it really hard to care about any of the characters or the stakes are hand. It feels both like it's going way too fast to get to know the characters and way too slow in term of the events happening if that makes any sense??? Plus it also had some fanservice (not to the extent of SAO though that's not hard) Ok so. Boring anime. Why is it a disappointment then? Well you see, through some reasoning that I cannot justify, despite being quite bored by the anime I still decided to check out the light-novel it was based on. Now take what I'm saying with a grain of salt, because I've only read the first volume and it's been years since I've re-read it. But the biggest take-away I had from it is that the light-novel was actually an incredible fun read. What felt like a dull world with blank characters was so much more enjoyable than I had imagined. The book was able to transcribe the sense of a community forming through a shared hardship, and actually made you care about its characters and the stakes felt serious despite not having death looming over the characters. It definitely wasn't perfect, but it felt like a breath of fresh air in the middle of all the SAO-like Isekai I had experienced so far. So yeah, it's sad that a book with so much charm got dulled down so much for its anime adaptation. Log horizon was never about the stakes , danger or combat. It is a show about community , circumstances , building your own society and the consequences of doing so in an established world. Calling the show boring because it’s story plays out in such a way that it doesn’t meet your personal taste is doing the show a disservice considering it came out when SAO was at the height of its popularity. The slow burn pacing serves to build the world the players are operating in. The show never really was about it’s deep well rounded characters but more so about the world they found themselves in making the best out of their situation. It’s because of this death while not permanently killing the characters offers a fate possibly worse than death ( at least for the characters) : the loss of their memories. With each death , each character loses a fraction of their memories which is possibly their most valuable possession as it tethers them to the reality of their situation and what they stand to lose if they lose themselves in the very power gamer fantasy that other shows push for it characters to progress their stories. The slow placing also serves to show how much of an impact the characters have in the game world from performing music to which the npcs only know the game’s soundtrack and nothing outside of that. The npc government / military is left in fear because of the player characters are powerful enough to level their capital in an instant but they instead desire to be involved with their politics and wish to operate as an independent nation in the npc’s space. On top of all of that they are still longing and experimenting for ways back home. If you somehow missed out on all of these details then the show really isn’t for you. |
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Post by bird on Jun 19, 2022 21:16:44 GMT 1
Oooh wait, I have another good disappointment anime: Log Horizon. Log Horizon is part of that era of SAO-like stories, where people get stuck inside a MMORPG for some reasons or another. The main difference in Log Horizon being that you don't have the same threat of death that SAO has (which btw SAO is its own can of worms that I won't get into right now) So. What's so bad about it? It's just so fucking boring. The anime has a really horrendous pacing, and make it really hard to care about any of the characters or the stakes are hand. It feels both like it's going way too fast to get to know the characters and way too slow in term of the events happening if that makes any sense??? Plus it also had some fanservice (not to the extent of SAO though that's not hard) Ok so. Boring anime. Why is it a disappointment then? Well you see, through some reasoning that I cannot justify, despite being quite bored by the anime I still decided to check out the light-novel it was based on. Now take what I'm saying with a grain of salt, because I've only read the first volume and it's been years since I've re-read it. But the biggest take-away I had from it is that the light-novel was actually an incredible fun read. What felt like a dull world with blank characters was so much more enjoyable than I had imagined. The book was able to transcribe the sense of a community forming through a shared hardship, and actually made you care about its characters and the stakes felt serious despite not having death looming over the characters. It definitely wasn't perfect, but it felt like a breath of fresh air in the middle of all the SAO-like Isekai I had experienced so far. So yeah, it's sad that a book with so much charm got dulled down so much for its anime adaptation. Log horizon was never about the stakes , danger or combat. It is a show about community , circumstances , building your own society and the consequences of doing so in an established world. Calling the show boring because it’s story plays out in such a way that it doesn’t meet your personal taste is doing the show a disservice considering it came out when SAO was at the height of its popularity. The slow burn pacing serves to build the world the players are operating in. The show never really was about it’s deep well rounded characters but more so about the world they found themselves in making the best out of their situation. It’s because of this death while not permanently killing the characters offers a fate possibly worse than death ( at least for the characters) : the loss of their memories. With each death , each character loses a fraction of their memories which is possibly their most valuable possession as it tethers them to the reality of their situation and what they stand to lose if they lose themselves in the very power gamer fantasy that other shows push for it characters to progress their stories. The slow placing also serves to show how much of an impact the characters have in the game world from performing music to which the npcs only know the game’s soundtrack and nothing outside of that. The npc government / military is left in fear because of the player characters are powerful enough to level their capital in an instant but they instead desire to be involved with their politics and wish to operate as an independent nation in the npc’s space. On top of all of that they are still longing and experimenting for ways back home. If you somehow missed out on all of these details then the show really isn’t for you. See I totally get that, but my biggest thing is that this impression was translated really well in the light novels but I didn't feel the same way about the anime. But hey, to each their own opinion! I'm not saying this is the worst show ever, just that it felt like it didn't convey the feelings it was trying to get at as well as the light novels. So if you like it, cool! That was just my opinion. |
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Post by gorehoundabb on Jun 19, 2022 21:18:01 GMT 1
Two really Bad Anime
- Gangsta -
Gangsta was promising. it had very charismatic characters, a banger opening and really good art style that harkened back to Black Lagoon. Where did it go wrong?
The character development was very surface level and garnered nothing of substance over its 12 episode runtime. A lot of the hints to the characters pasts were threads that were touched upon but never expanded upon fully in the anime. The story felt very episodic. It felt like they were leading up to something big but it never really got there.
Why did it go so very wrong? The studio behind Gangsta, Manglobe went bankrupt taking the IP down with it leaving the anime literally unfinished at 12 episodes and left the series on a cliffhanger that was never resolved.
- Seikon no Qwaser-
An echii action show were the main characters activate their powers by consuming breast milk. Its as weird as it sounds it gets more bizarre by including some conspiracy involving Christianity and the church. I could be wrong but as it stands, this is the only anime were I was so rarely invested even when it got so absurd that i dropped it on its final episode. Its a 24 episode anime. It delivered alot of the fan service you'd expect from a premise like this but it tried so hard to be serious when the premise was so mindnumbly dumb. It somehow exists in a sad imbetween where it pleases noone who either wants a good story or good fanservice.
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Post by Nachtkern on Jun 19, 2022 21:53:32 GMT 1
If you somehow missed out on all of these details then the show really isn’t for you. (Hi Mr. Gorehound, welcome to the forum!) Again, I haven't actually seen Log Horizon yet, so I don't really have much to contribute here about the series itself, but I get the feeling that understanding of the narrative wasn't really the problem here if Bird enjoyed the light novel but not the anime adaptation. Even if both of you watched the same show and saw all of the same things, the things that you enjoyed and think work well for it, can be things another person doesn't and thinks is boring. This is a thread to rag on shows you didn't enjoy, so you're more likely to find the latter in here. LMAO those both sound very unfortunate, but in very different directions. I've got a story slightly similar to the latter: A Centaur's Life ( AP page), although it was neither as weird, nor as engaging. From the outside it looks like a pretty standard slice-of-life ecchi about monster girls... and it's so much more than that, except not in its favor. As fun as worldbuilding is, it's usually better to not explain too much about how everything in that universe works, especially in fantasy. The things that are relevant will come up when they come up without having to spoonfeed them to a viewer beforehand, and you don't have to get into the logistics of most things as a viewer will accept quite a bit on account of something being fantasy. A Centaur's Life missed that memo, though. They try to explain everything, with literal diagrams and long visual sequences. Explanations about specialized clothes and how a small child centaur would put on clothes in the first place, and stuff like that. And once a question is asked, the show keeps trying to explain all the logic behind the logic, too, without knowing where to stop.
At some point, a transfer student is introduced, who is a different species from the other monster girls. Fantasy racism and fantasy microaggressions are brought up, but to explain fantasy racism further, the show also gets into the life and childhood of an important political figure in this universe, and how he navigates racial issues being a particular kind of monster. And then to get into it even further, half of an entire episode is a gritty war flashback to fantasy-holocaust, just to explain why one nameless character in the previous guy's part wasn't racist to him. All played completely straight and serious, without comedy or any of the show's promised fanservice. And then it goes straight back to girls in compromising poses involving slime.
It was like the show wasn't sure just what genre it wanted to be, and it definitely didn't know where to stop explaining itself, so it ended up not really doing any of the things it was trying to do well. All that attempted worldbuilding was awkward and got in the way of the ecchi, and the ecchi really didn't benefit from or contribute anything to serious war flashbacks and explanations of fantasy racism.
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