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Epic fail: the worst anime ever

Posted by Martin  [Tags: Rants]

Thanks to my apologist leanings I’m prone to fanboy raves and ‘best evar’ lists but often I’m quicker to recommend stuff I like rather than warn people off stuff I don’t. I’m not rude by nature (not intentionally anyway) so I’m more likely to make recommendations than indulge in bashing and ranting. Until now.

For one night only, I give you my rundown of the barrel-scrapings, the colossal misfires and fabulous flops that I’ve had the misfortune to see in my experience as a fan. Some anime is great, most is watchable but some is nigh-on unforgivable…in the best-case scenario it does carry some entertainment value, if only for the reason that its inherent badness is in itself hilarious. As in all top-X lists, you won’t all agree with what I have to say here so make use of that handy comments box to present your own choices of Epic Fail - if nothing else, you can spare others the pain you experienced.

Eiken

I watched this in a severe state of inebration at a convention back in ‘05, but not even copious quantities of alcohol were enough to make it enjoyable. In such a state I can tolerate fan service shows because my reduced mental faculties take the emphasis away from the actual *plot* and towards the comedy but while fan service is at worst a minor annoyance for me, in Eiken’s case it was woefully unfunny to the point of being actually offensive. I’m not unused to, ahem, out-of-proportion character shapes in anime but while there’s sexy and there’s laughable, the cast of this show were neither - they were actually grotesque. The innuendo even went beyond the embarrassing and unfunny Carry-On variety to something that was actually quite disturbing and sinister in a sexual violence kind of way. Not only does it fail at even the relatively simple concept of puerile slapstick, it also manages to make boobs look UNattractive. Seriously.

Ikki Tousen (Battle Vixens)

Hey, while we’re on the subject of ineffective attempts at female body exploitation, what about the show that tried to marry sexiness and historically-inspired martial arts only to fall into the Chasm of Crap that lies in between? Ikki Tousen never pretended to be anything but a no-brainer but it forgot how to be entertaining along the way too. Forget the importance behind the destinies and allegiances: it’s one of those shows where it’s okay just to sit back and watch people kick the crap out of each other for no reason at all, preferably when they were well-endowed females. I could forgive it for that, funnily enough. Unfortunately, the said females were either annoying, stupid, not actually hot at all or a combination of the three (the only one who was remotely cute or likable was only on-screen for a couple of episodes). The series tried to be exhilerating in its brutality but that would demand decent production values, which is one of many things this show lacked. The humour was misplaced, there was little opportunity to get to know the characters, let alone grow to like them and the whole thing achieved the dubious accolade of making the premise of Hot Chicks Fighting to be deathly dull.

Lady Death: the Motion Picture

Although it can be argued that this isn’t strictly speaking anime, viruses are not strictly speaking living organisms either but they can still inflict untold pain and misery. The laughable badness of Lady Death is such that it thoroughly deserves inclusion here, even if it is a partly Western collaboration. Kudos to ADV for branching out and chipping in a few for their own adaptation but when it sucks as much as this my congratulations ring a bit hollow. Actually, I’m a bit sceptical on the finance side of things because the animation and artwork is more on par with the 80s Saturday morning US cartoon shows. Whether or not the movie is aiming for the cheesy Masters of the Universe vibe it’s hard to say, but this film lacks the sophistication of a mature production and is too dark and brutal for kids; it’s hard to imagine who the target audience actually was. On the plus side, I got a laugh out of the fact that Satan’s character design is almost exactly the same as that of his portrayal in South Park.

You thought I was kidding, didn’t you?

Malice@Doll

The Ryutaro Nakamura/Chiaki J Konaka Headfuck Combo is one of the most innovative and fruitful collaborations in the industry today, giving us classics such as S E: Lain, Kino’s Journey and Ghost Hound. Sadly their highbrow, avante-garde approach to sci-fi fell flat on its pretty, innovative face in this experimental OAV, although the unusual art style does offer one or two bonus points. It’s a fable of sorts, showing how the gift of becoming human in a dystopian world populated entirely by machines can have less than desirable effects. Or something. Unfortunately the storyline proper is kicked off by what is essentially tentacle rape so it’s no surprise that ANN labelled the piece as “NOT HENTAI” on their info page just to clear things up. It’s actually too obtuse and arty to be hentai but at the same time the sexual undercurrents (the lead characters are out-of-work robotic prostitutes) make it a bit of an uncomfortable experience for those who tune in for the cerebral stuff. The last-minute decision on the part of the director to reduce the brightness of the frames was baffling, since it was already a thematically dark production; it just made it even harder to work out exactly what was going on. Not that you could bring yourself to care by the end anyway.

Ninja Resurrection

Remember that classic of violent historical fantasy that was Ninja Scroll? Sit back down folks, this isn’t it. Given the title logo design, the brave stab at historical relevance in the premise and the name-dropping of a (but not necessarily the) man named Jubei, it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that this somehow inherited the awesomeness of the original. Presumably the distributors hoped you would too, because Ninja Resurrection screams “Cash-in!” from the rooftops. Jesus is reborn as a samurai warrior, a priest forces his drugged daughter to have sex with a man whose arms have been hacked off and a ninja flies around with the aid of a rocket pack. Yep, a rocket pack. Sadly the latter point isn’t nearly as cool as it sounds; nor is a demonically possessed warrior using his dangling entrails as flails in combat. The action looks lacklustre, which is a shame when there’s nothing else to recommend it beyond the humour factor at how such a simple concept could go so wrong. The sequel has never seen the light of day but fortunately it doesn’t hinder the cliff-hanger ending because the storyline never made much sense to begin with. It’s not often I say this, but the abrupt ending was a relief rather than an annoyance.

Robotech

I don’t dislike Robotech because it’s old and poorly animated. Hell, it let enough of the original Macross series’ quality of storytelling to shine through to create an entire generation of mecha fans in the West, and reminded me why I need to see the original. Besides, splicing together three unrelated shows is more of an act of inventive scripting on the part of Harmony Gold than sacrilege. My beef with this series is that the remaining two shows that they used for source footage were so mind-numbingly boring. Feel free to correct me on this but the creators of Macross practically invented the variable fighter concept so the other two series that show planes turning into robots and motorbikes are merely jumping onto the bandwagon…the second and third arcs therefore lose all the charm and power of the first because the space opera and intergalactic warfare themes were repeated ad nauseam. Save yourself the hassle and watch SDF Macross instead.

This Ugly Yet Beautiful World

Not one of the worst per se, but TUYBW certainly comes through as one of the most disappointing. With Gunbuster 2 serving as the sister project to celebrate my perrennial favourites Gainax in their twenty years in the industry, I was expecting something a bit more epic and daring. Instead, the inexperience of its director showed through and a staff roll-call that otherwise made a Mahoromatic studio reunion created a succession of underdeveloped ideas, sloppy plotting and missed opportunities. I’m well aware of how well Gainax can play the kawaii and fan service cards (Mahoromatic worked well in that sense) but when there’s not much else in the deck the end result is generic and forgettable. Thank heavens Gurren Lagann arrived to re-affirm my faith.

SPECIAL AWARD

This has to go to the eternal bugbear of anime fandom, Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend. Its vileness is two-fold: firstly its reputation spreads ahead of it like some sort of toxic spillage, threatening the good name of adult-centric animation along the way. Fortunately the likes of GitS, Makoto Shinkai and Satoshi Kon have begun to undo the damage but there’s no denying that it is a textbook example of Tentacle Porn. They say curiosity killed the cat but it can also kill your faith in everything that’s good and pure: I borrowed a copy to see if it really was as bad as I had been led to believe and since that one viewing it has sat, unreturned, in the bottom of a drawer, never to see the light of day. My fear is that the very sight of the DVD case will bring on terrifying flashbacks akin to a ‘Nam veteran with PTSD.

Secondly, the sick and twisted story (which earns a sort of grudging respect from me, if not watchability) is subject to numerous edits at the hands of the BBFC. The end result is that, aside from the fact that the feature extremely violent and graphic, what’s more serious is that it isn’t the violent and graphic groudbreaking movie it was originally intended to be. My main reason for avoiding this then is not because of the tentacles, but because when footage is cut the tentacles don’t make a whole lot of sense.

Almost made it

There are some titles that, for a number of reasons, never made it onto this list. Some, such as Kiddy Grade, Bokura Ga Ita and Myself; Yourself remain on-hold and unfinished so I cannot attest to their overall quality; others, such as Aquarian Age, are lifted into mere mediocrity by a good soundtrack. Others have such a bad reputation that I’ve been afraid to waste my money on the but looking back on some of the more amusing times spent laughing at the crapness of the titles that make up the meat of this post, I might look into them for curiosity’s sake.

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