[Awards] Anime of the Year Awards 2016 Presented in 4k TruHD(TM) Part 1: Za Worsto

2016 was a terrible year, because Trump won, some celebrities died, and people were super racist and sexist which never happened in any other year. The bad aspects of this year most certainly weren't things like politics becoming an enormous fucking joke because of things like this, it wasn't all of the terrorist attacks in europe(and even a couple in the states) that killed 100+ people total, and it for sure wasn't that california will bar police from arresting child prostitues, effectively legalizing child prostitution. No, no, Carrie Fisher and Prince died, a guy you don't like was elected, and like Beth totally dissed me at the party like OMG how could she say that???

But instead of an obviously sarcastic rant about le current year, how about I actually get onto talking about anime like I'm supposed to, unlike Giant Bomb when it comes to video games this year.

First off, since we're speaking about bad things of this year, let's do the obvious and discuss some of the year's absolute worst anime. The gradual but inevitable decline and collapse of american and western civilization in general isn't all that was bad this year! Japan is also gonna collapse if they keep making anime like these!(Will contain spoilers almost assuredly):


Dropped Anime of the Year:

EDIT: Anne Happy
This was an actually fun show at first but as time went on it just kept re-using the same jokes or just plain making cliched and unfunny ones. It got boring and so I dropped it


Kumamiko.

Pedophilia and "the joke is her life is a living hell because of the other characters" the anime. I'm serious, either middle-aged to old-aged men are creaming their pants over this 12 year old girl OR someone is traumatizing this poor girl for a joke. It's not funny. Worst part is this coulda been a cute and fun little slice of life show, oops. I think the worst part is the fanbase for this, which oddly enough isn't just cringey lolicons but a lot of people who try to explain away the pedophilia as some kind of "deconstruction" or parody, and treat the not-funny comedy as a brilliant black comedy. No.

Joker Game.

A show made for edgy 14 year old fedora tippers, possibly by 14 year old edgy fedora tippers. Not only does the cast of 20 year olds that look like 13-15 year olds also happen to all look the same, the plot and dialogue is some of the most pseudo-deepshit I've seen in a long while. Basically the plot of this thing is some super moralfag stick up his ass military man(not necessarily a bad character type) joins up with this organization to train spies. He then proceeds to get totally pissed off and indignant that these spies are doing spy things. They scoff at him and explain the harsh dark jaded truth to him via a totally pointless spy version of poker called "the joker game" that makes no sense in context and actually wouldn't help them train as spies at all, but is claimed to be a deep metaphor for international politics. So, basically, if you're a teenager who thinks he's got the world figured out by way of just injecting your emo angst into everything, you'll probably enjoy this!

Re:Zero

Straight up did not even finish the first episode, though maybe that's because they split it into 2. It was just THAT important. Man fuck this show and the hype that surrounds it. It's a stupid self-insert harem anime that desperately tries to have an actual reason to exist by having pretentious and edgy shit happen. No thank you. Yeah, I'm sure the show with the twin loli maids is a true masterwork of art, fuck off.

HaruChika

This is another one, like Joker Game and Re:Zero where I dropped it right off. Honestly, it's not that bad of a show but it's really boring and up its own ass. It seems like it's maybe gonna be about music but it's mostly about puzzles and shit and they're really boring tittering about how smart it is kinds of things. I was interested in this because the two main characters, Haru and Chika, both have the hots for their teacher and are going after him. Not only is minors with a crush on older people a great source of drama and character development, one of the pair is a male. That's right, at the end of the first episode he states very clearly he is a homolord who wants some of that sexy teacher. How does the show use this interesting premise? Uh... I dunno there a rubix cube or somethin and like it has sentimental value but it can't be solved or something so they paint it to trick her into thinking they solved it and... uh... yeah whatever I'm done.

Mob Psycho 100

I mean I don't really need to explain this very much. This show looks like a low-rent [adult swim] cartoon that'd get canceled before the first season was over. No thank you, anime is a visual medium you have to at least pass a bar of "not looking like ass".

3-Gatsu no Lion/March Comes in Like a Lion

Okay, so, I was looking forward to an anime adaptation of this series for a while. It's by the same mangaka who made Honey and Clover, which is straight up my 6th favorite anime as of writing this. I wanted to like this show even when I heard it was gonna be animated by SHAFT. If you don't know, SHAFT has not had a good track record with me for some time now, they've churned out nothing but shit for a several years. When I saw a PV of it that looked like it wasn't gonna be a pretentious, surreal, and abstract mess like most of Shinbo's works I was hopeful. Well guess what? The first second first frame of this show is him being pretentious. And then after that there are lots of obtuse shots and no dialog for about 10 minutes. The whole thing is paced slowly and boringly with an effort to come off as deep like Shinbo always does. There are even these copious amounts of establishing shots because thats what artsy directors do right??? It's grating to watch and I just couldn't.

Bloodivores

Didn't make it past the first episode, wew lad. This is a show with a very silly name, premise, and even plot and it's super self-serious and just badly written. One of the first things they do is have a "bloodivore"(a vampire) murder a woman in broad daylight, then when the police come and rightfully beat the shit out of him the main character sits over here goin "god those fucking evil oppressor shitlords he dindu nuffin". This isn't the joke, you're supposed to agree. Not to mention our "heroes" are fucking criminals but no see they're the victims cuz they get framed for killing the hostages in a bank robbery. This show is dumb.

Disappointing Anime of the Year:
Regalia: The Three Sacred Stars

First we get a delay for like 4 months, to "fix the animation". The show comes back and looks the same, but I feel like the writers must have forgotten what they were going for because the show turns into a total mess halway through. A lame generic not-explained-at-all villain, nonsensical plot points, and what really seriously feels like a rip-off of stuff from Xenosaga, makes a pretty mediocre show oddly because it was good at first and did have some interesting concepts. Coulda been worse but wow.

MomoKuri

This show ended up floundering about after a while, especially since it introduced a girl who clearly wanted to make the main boy dump his girlfriend for her while not even mentioning that maaaaaybe that's a shitty thing to do. Just kinda got not good.

Nanbaka

This show was great and hilarious! Riiiiight up until it decided it was as good as gintama, and tried to shoehorn in a real serious plot with just the most laughable angst and "deep" lines I've seen. Gosh I just stopped caring for the last quarter of it man it was boring. You cannot make me take these characters seriously and in fact one of the jokes early on was about that. This isn't gintama, this isn't even undertale, it shoulda stayed a goofy gag comedy about sparkly bishounens.

Battery

Oof. Well, not as bad as a lot of the stuff on Noitamina's timeslot has been for a few years now but still not good. While it seems like it may be recovering and making some actually mature programming again, this show has far too many mishaps. The drama and character development started out great but over time it became muddled and nonsensical. They introduced a character who's only role was to facilitate and create drama for no explained reason. It came off as forced and badly written. Still, again, things are looking up for old Noitamina. Hey I mean they also aired Kabaneri of the Iron Fortess... though that wasn't exactly mature.

Shakunetsu no Takkyu Musume('s ending)

I really liked this show. It combines too things I like: Over the top/intense sports anime and moe slice of life. The title means something like "scorching ping pong girls", and one of the characters even says "Go! My racing, scorching heart!" at one point, so that's great already. Then you got lots of cute and fun moe girls running around smackin ping pong balls with FIRE IN THEIR HEARTS and gosh of course I'm gonna like this... it's too bad the last two episodes were crap. First they introduce a character for literally one scene to cause an internal conflict in one of the main girls so she can have the same character growth she already had, then the last episode is just more training, followed by 30 seconds of the big tournament they were gonna go too. Man wow amazing ending 10/10 I can't believe it so good so inspirational you did it.

Watashi ga Motete Dosunda/Kiss Him, Not Me!('s last few episodes)

Wew. Another fun silly show that decided no it needs to be more than just a comedy near the end. First, they undo a bunch of character growth which is always terrible, but then they give us this completely unrealistic shitty person in the form of one of the boy's brother, who causes some retarded drama for two episodes, and also locks his brother in a locker and tapes it up(which is double bad because he's got ptsd about that since he was locked in a storage shed as a kid, if the others hadn't got him out he woulda suffocated). Oh and I think the message of it was somehow the brother was trying to teach him a lesson? Like he remembers him giving him a thing he clearly wanted too when he was a kid. Like he's trying to equate giving up a present and giving up a girlfriend? Like he's trying to teach him to be more selfish but there was NO evidence to say he would be "selfless" and give up the girl he wants to his brother like what??? And then the show ends with a lame ass episode. Woo.

EDIT: Shirayuki-hime Second Season
I forgot about this. It was a pretty boring and lackluster sequel to a pretty good show. It was totally pointless and featured no progression, as well as introduced some really dumb shit that contradicts the plot or just sours some aspects about it.

EDIT: Flying Witch
Not much to say here, it started off as a fun relaxing show that ended up becoming much more boring than comfy.

Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans Season 2
This could be the most disappointing but it isn't all that bad so far. Really it's a minor disappointment cuz this season isn't very good and kinda feels like a cash in or a formality. The reason I'm tempted to say it's the biggest disappointment is because the first season was so good. It had a misstep at the end with them retconning some character deaths, but over all it was great. It was deep, it was dark, it was gritty. This season mostly feels like something that'd be a quick arc in one of the longer Gundam series at best. That saddens me. Also, the new OP isn't as good as this one.

Biggest Disappointment Award:
Lostorage Incited Wixoss

The reason this is the biggest disappointment is because while IBO2 is not a very good sequel, it's not that bad and still has it's moments. It doesn't feel like the people making it completely don't understand what the show is about, or worse that they didn't even watch it. You know what does? Lostorage Incited Wixoss.

This isn't even really a sequel, or a continuation, it's not even a spin-off. At best I would call it maybe a reboot of Wixoss. In fact, yeah, it feels like a crappy reboot. So lemme give you the skinny, see if you can pick up what I'm puttin down, ya dig? Copacetic. So Selector Infected and Spread Wixoss was a series that appeared at first to be a card game anime, but took a darker twist with it. While maybe not as dark as it, it kinda feels like it did what Madoka Magica tried and mostly failed to do. It wasn't about the cards really, that was just the means to the end. See, girls become selectors and they fight in card battles with their LRIGs, sapient card girls, to beat the other selectors and get their wish granted. The catch is, if you lose too much you not only don't get your wish granted, you get whatever desire or ambition you had sucked out of you. For example, let's say you wanted to be an amazing singer, that was your wish. Well if you lose, you don't just not become a famous singer, you fucking can't sing ever again. Hell maybe you won't even know what singing is. It turns out, though, that if you win, while your wish is granted, you actually switch places with your LRIG and they get to fulfill your wish/live it out instead. Oops.

So knowing that, what's the problem with Lostorage Incited? Well first off the name makes no sense. See it was called "infected" and "spread" because well, wixoss infects, and then it spreads. But incited? Well I guess that works? But hold on, it was called selector because they were selectors. What does lostorage mean? That's not even a fucking word. So right off the bat there's a problem though... the card battles are way more focused on. Originally they barely even tried to make the card battles have real rules and shit, but in this while they don't outright explain it, the logistics are way more important, where as before stuff just kinda happened. This is a problem because it makes it feel like this was made to sell the real world card game that came from the original show. This ain't yugioh. Second problem is, the way it works now is you got a coin. When you win you get a coin, and when you lose a coin disappears. The problem is that the more coins you lose, the more memories you forget. Then, when you lose all coins you lose entirely and forget who you are. There are two problems with how this works. 1. You can lose the game entirely in your first battle, since you start with 1 coin. That's bullshit. 2. The reward for getting 5 coins is you no longer have to fight in a battle that will cost you your memory. That's it. The prize is not having to be punished. Wow, amazing. Why though? The original Selector game was made by a crazy, locked up, friendless girl who wanted to give people karmic punishment. It wasn't just some shitty death game-lite like this is. That's why if you win you lose, and if you lose you lose. Here, you lose, or you win the chance not to lose. The fuck is the point? And why are they still called selectors if it's a different fucking game? Worse, there are now male selectors. Which that'd be fine if it wasn't for the fact we now have the question of where the fuck do the LRIGS come from then? The LRIGs are all female, and used to be human. So either that's not how they work anymore, or when you win the game(which I remind you means just not having to play anymore) if you're a dude you just get turned into a girl. Forgetting ALL this, the show isn't very good anyway, the writing sucks the characters suck, it doesn't even have the same atmosphere as before. I spent more time on this that I should have wow moving on.

"Didn't Even Watch it LOL" Award:
Berserk. Berserk plus shitty CG? KEK no thanks man.

Some of The Worst Anime of the Year:
High School Fleet

RaTTs, experimental labrats with totalitarianistic disease, that evolved at the bottom of a submarine that sprang a leak and became mind controllers and then managed to get out because the sub resurfaced and then they took over the minds of navy captains so they could kill everyone for no reason but it's okay cause a bunch of girls training to be naval ship operators who aren't good at it and are idiots defeat them using very simple and basic tactics that didn't get them killed because the RaTTS are only smart and good at naval combat when they're up against actually trained top-tier soldiers. Also I think some girl dual wields water guns. This show is retarded.

Bungou Stray Dogs 2

So hey just fuck up the second season to a pretty good show just go ahead I don't care.
 
Occultic;Nine

God damn is this show bad. I can't even begin to explain. First off the direction is fucking horrible, The pacing is terrible and I mean fucking dialogue pacing too. They talk at a fucking rapidfire pace that doesn't leave you any time to decipher what they said, which I think they're hoping for because if you stop to think about it it'll make no fucking sense. Then of course the characters are godawful, all of them are obnoxious and unrealistic waaaaay beyond how anime characters normally are, some of the most unbelievable I've ever seen. They come off like something you'd do to make fun of anime but it's not a satire. To top it all off, it turns out this joke character was actually a descendant of Nikola Tesla, and is actually his secret daughter's soul inhabiting this descendant. Also, she has a little toy gun thing that turns out to be an important item. Also I think they're in the matrix. This show is garbage, how did this writer manage to be Steins;Gate, one of the best anime there is? I don't fucking know.

Shuumatsu no Izetta

This wouldn't be here if not for the ending. See, the main character, Izetta, sacrifices herself for the country... except she doesn't. She's fine actually, just in a wheelchair. This turned a mediocre show that was getting on my nerves into a fucking terrible one. I'm done talking about this it makes me angry.


Runner up/Second Worst Anime of the Year:
Orange

Man, I don't even know how to explain this show. Like you're gonna say "that doesn't sound that bad" but trust me, it is. So this is a show about a girl who gets letters from the future that're telling her what she needs to do to prevent the death of this guy, but even after the letter turns out to be true she still doesn't fucking do it. Then it turns out these letters aren't just to save him, it's to make sure she ends up with him instead of the guy she's married to in the future. Yes, she willed letters back in time so she could un-marry this guy. What a bitch, she even has a kid! Like wow. Better, that husband? He supports this. He wants to change the past so she doesn't get with him. He wants to be fucking CUCKED. He even says in one scene that he's sorry for taking her away from the guy. This is so fucking... like I can't even describe, I can't explain. It speaks for itself. Literal cuckoldry. What in the fuck man. And then it turns out everyone got time letters, but they somehow still are having trouble with this thing. Probably because none of them read the whole goddamn letter and just keep reading more and more as time goes on. There is critical info in there you fucking clods. God damn I hate this show.

Worst Anime of the Year:
Erased/Boku Dake ga Inai Machi.


Do I gotta explain this one? I hate this show, more than orange I hate this show. My god I fucking loathe this show. The ending pissed me off so much that I actually sat there flipping the screen off for the last 10 minutes. If you want an in-depth discussion of how awful the entire show is, go here. But I'm gonna focus on the clincher, the part that just made me wanna fucking punch whoever wrote this. Hell I might actually do it if I ever meet this guy, hopefully he'll understand. So, they beat the bad guy by tricking him into dropping the MC off of the hospital roof. You see, somehow they knew this would happen and had this whole complicated plan to get him arrested. That's bad enough but see, they make it seem like MC is killing himself so that he can have the only true victory over the bad he can, because he's the missing piece of the bad's life. He fills the hole, he's his arch nemesis and he needs him to be complete. Only by dying can you truly defeat him, only by losing him is he truly defeated. But no, fuck that, we beat him the real concrete way and not the deep psychological way by just arresting him. And then? Not only is there a rescue bed down below the bad didn't notice somehow, but the MC then fucking winks. But the bad can't see him winking from there, so there are too options: A the writing is so fucking bad he didn't realize that, or B that wink was for us the audience. He was going "heh, don't worry, I didn't die I beat the bad in the end cuz I'm the great hero aren't I cool?". It pisses me off. Then it goes into some pseudophilosophical ranting about how believing is the hope that we can believe or some shit. Then a rather confusing thing happens because I don't really know when the ending is taking place, but regardless I think MC is gonna fuck a teenage girl as an adult. Also, there's graffiti that says RE:RE, which is the name of the OP. Fuck this show I wanna kill it I wanna make it not exist. I'm gonna have to go back in time, yes, to the days before it was made... then I'll stop it. That's right! AHAHAHAHAHAHA.

And there you have it, part 1 of the anime of the year, the worsts. I hope you enjoyed, please leave any comments down below!