Ask John: What Bad Anime Should Every Anime Critic Be Familar With?

Question:
Long ago you once said something along the lines of, “Sometimes it helps to watch a horrible anime to refresh the palette,” since watching only good stuff all the time would keep you from telling the difference as much. So, to you I ask what are the worst animes of all time you’d recommend to somebody who’s deliberately trying to watch something bad? I usually try avoiding horrible animes so the only ones I can think of are the 4Kids dub of One Piece and the TV (not OVA) series for Record of Lodoss War.

Answer:
I don’t like to be egotistical. I don’t even like sounding egotistical, so it’s with reservation that I admit that I’m very frustrated when I hear or read fans cite titles including School Days, Bobobo-Bo-Bo-Bobo, Alexander Senki, Guilty Crown, or Bokyaku no Senritsu ~ Melody of Oblivion as “worst anime ever.” I’m even more dismayed when I encounter opinions that cite fan favorite shows like Evangelion, Naruto, Gintama, and Pocket Monster as “worst anime ever.” Certainly every individual has a legitimate right to identify the particular anime that he or she has enjoyed least. But citing titles that obviously have significant artistic merits reveals either that the critic has very little experience watching anime or has no capable sense of objective criticism. My personal reaction is, “If you think that’s bad anime then you haven’t actually watched any genuinely bad anime.”

Every fan has the option to exclusively watch Studio Ghibli films, and anime directed by Mamoru Oshii, Satoshi Kon, and Mamoru Hosoda. But watching only “good” anime results in a viewer watching very little anime. Occasionally watching genuinely bad anime provides context, allows an individual to have a basis for accurate, reasonable comparison. But not every bad anime is useful for making contrast. The 2005 Hametsu No Mars ~ Mars of Destruction OVA, for example, is commonly cited as one of the worst anime productions ever. Granted, it deserves its reputation, but it’s also a 20-minute short produced on an obvious shoestring budget as a limited edition supplemental feature for a PC game. In effect, this never had any chance of being a stellar production in the first place. It was a cheap, disposable, promotional anime, so even comparing it to more substantial productions feels inappropriate. However, in order to develop a full-bodied perspective on exactly what does constitute “bad” anime in order to compare to “good” anime, there are a handful of stinkers that I recommend every knowledegable otaku be familiar with.

Fans rarely harshly criticize anime from the 1960s or 70s because most anime from that era was produced with limited animation and simplistic art design. Yet even during that era, certain shows are appreciably worse than others. 1977’s Gasshin Sentai Mechander Robo, for example, is a good example of uninspired, redundant, and simply boring robot anime clearly produced just to cash in on the era’s fascination with super robots. 1974’s Chargeman Ken has become a cult meme, but objectively the show is terrible because its audio is noticeably out of synch at times, the animation quality is far below par even for its era, and the series’ narrative development periodically feels like large chunks of the story have been arbitrarily removed.

The golden era is often remembered fondly as a period of unrivaled anime creativity, but it also gave rise to a number of lazy, dumb, and insulting productions like Roots Search (1986), Bounty Hunter the Hard (1989), Dog Soldier (1989), and Heavy (1990). Dog Soldier is literally a rip-off of America’s 1986 Rambo cartoon, resulting in an OVA that’s so bad that it’s painful to watch. MD Geist (1986) gets a lot of criticism, but even it succeeds more than the sci-fi horror OVA Roots Search that gets absolutely everything wrong, and masculine adventure OVAs like Bounty Hunter the Hard and Heavy that want to be hard-boiled, dramatic, and violent but come across as simply dull and idiotic. 1990’s Mad Bull 34 is likewise cited as a pinnacle of terrible anime, but at least it has a sense of fun that’s missing from earlier, lesser known predecessors.

The now largely forgotten 1999 Gundress movie stands out as a particular example of embarrassingly awful anime. Despite having creative input from acclaimed designer Masamune Shirow, the Gundress movie has a weak story and minimally developed characters. Even worse, however, is the fact that the film was released to the public before it was actually completed. Scenes in the movie lack color, full backgrounds, and finished animation because the movie was rushed to theaters and then dumped onto DVD before its production staff had even finished animating the whole movie.

More recently, the beginning of the 2000s ushered in an unprecedented era of prolific anime productions, naturally resulting in an increased number of atrocious productions. No one should be allowed to nominate “worst” anime ever without having first watched a few episodes of TV series including 2002’s Barom One and Wild 7 Another. These two wretched shows are just torturous to watch because they’re poorly animated, ugly looking, and badly written. Nothing about these two shows is enjoyable. 2004’s Chou Henshin Cos-Prayers is an epic failure, perhaps intentionally as one of the anime industry’s most audacious meta-jokes. The magical heroine series had some poor animation and underdeveloped characters but is most damnable for having a story so filled with holes, gaps, and lapses in logic that it literally didn’t seem to make any sense. Whether Cos-Prayers was a victim of crippling editing or consciously designed to be one of the worst anime in history to serve as the butt of a running joke for the multi-series “Metamorphosis” trilogy. 2007’s Kissdum -Engage Planet- is a staggering train wreck because it begins with two of the most epic and impressive debut episodes for any anime series ever then abruptly transforms into an altogether different and exponentially worse beast because the Satelight studio production staff literally had to make up the narrative as production went along after the series’ creator/lead writer abandoned the production.

No article of this design could be complete without mention of 2006’s Gundoh Musashi television series. Studio ACC Production’s adaptation of Monkey Punch’s story concept is arguably the worst professional studio anime production in history. The show’s animation quality is frequently so bad that movements look noticeably unnatural, if not outright impossible. Sound effects are out of synch with the animation footage. Dialogue makes absolutely no sense at all. The series has become a cult favorite example of absurd comedy, but the production was not intended to be so ironically absurd. Every anime fan that wants to make rational, objective criticism about anime production quality should be familiar with Gundoh Musashi just to be aware of how low a major studio production can actually sink.

After seeing actually televised anime of this quality, is it really possible to call something like Guilty Crown “worst ever”?