First of all, I am going to re-explain that ‘Worst of’ is probably a misleading title for these given this is the worst of the anime I actually watched and when I ask people to vote for their ‘worst’ anime I ask them to vote for the worst one that they didn’t drop. What that means is, there are a lot of anime out there probably more unwatchable than anything that makes any of the lists here and I’m certain everyone has their own idea of what makes an anime the worst of the season, so I invite you to share your picks for worst anime of the season in the comments below and get a discussion going about how and why they failed for you.
To the awards… (Best of awards coming next post.)
Worst Story – Record of Grancrest War
Okay, I know this one isn’t finished yet, but really it is all over the place. It has almost no cohesion, character motives are vague or erratic, and plot points appear and disappear seemingly at random. Even with episode 12 indicating the show is going to pick up, it well and truly deserves the award for the episodes it gave us during the Winter season.
Worst Visuals – Junji Ito Collection
I know I did an article about whether something was atmospheric or poor visuals when I looked at Vatican Miracle Examiners, but Junji Ito Collection seems to have the same idea that just making things dark and ugly will somehow create horror. There’s plenty of other issues with the Collection, but the visuals most definitely made themselves noted for all the wrong reasons.
Worst Opening – The Ancient Magus’ Bride
Probably a controversial choice, but I really didn’t like the change from the first opening to the second. So, while this probably isn’t the technically worst opening, it is the one I resented the most during Winter.
Worst Character – Akira (Devilman Crybaby)
I genuinely couldn’t stand him as a character. Mostly because he was a stand in for various ideals but not an actual character and while physically he underwent a massive transformation, he really didn’t get very far on a personal or emotional level.
And now…
Worst Anime of the Winter 2018 Season – Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody
Seriously, I’d have dropped this if I hadn’t set the challenge to myself to watch an anime I’d actually read the source material for. I kind of regret that this was the anime I chose to start that with. It isn’t so much that this is an unwatchable anime. It is more that there is little to no point in watching it. While it does walk us through the events of the source material, fairly faithfully, they haven’t considered how to use the fact that it is an anime now to make it interesting for viewers. What is fun to read isn’t always fun to watch and adaptations need to understand what their audience are actually looking for.
Finally, Reader’s Choice
I couldn’t include the graph from the poll as there were just too many titles to choose from and they wouldn’t fit in a way that made it possible to still read the graph. Instead, I included only titles that collected votes.
As you can see, we have a tie. People couldn’t decide whether Death March or Ito Junji: Collection deserved the title but both of them gained a respectable 10 votes in favour of them being the worst of the season. At one point, Darling in the Franxx was winning this poll, but after the initial votes, it kind of didn’t move again.
And there we have it, the worst of the season. Thanks everyone who participated in the poll. Be sure to leave a comment sharing your thoughts on the season below and be sure to predict what you think will win the best of poll.
Thanks for reading.
Karandi James
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Yeah Junji ito visuals were a bit weird
I hated the new OP for The ancient Magus’ Bride too. I don’t think I watched enough anime or even openings this time to say whether there were really worst ops out there, but the sudden change in the music style really annoyed me.
I think we’ve learned that something doesn’t need to be the worst for people to dislike it. In this case, just taking away something that was beautiful and exchanging it for something average was enough for most of us to hate it.
OMG Karandi I agree with nearly everything you said. Grancrest is a mess. Get organized! The hub put on Death March last night. I was bored from the first scene. I fell asleep on the second episode. I always give the “oops I’m in a video game” anime the side eye though. It’s hard for them to stand out.
I don’t mind the premise as it works well enough, but they have to do something with it, and this anime just walked us through things as slowly as possible. I actually enjoyed reading this to a point (I did stop at the third book, but I was still liking it enough). The anime however, was boring.
Many things can be said about Violet Evergarden but I’m a bit confused as to how 2 voters found that the worst anime of the season.
Call me if you ever need support defending your resentment on the OP of Magus’ Bride. Reused footage never is a good choice for an OP. Such an OP can be made by anyone with passable video editing skills and an archive of footage and in my book anime studios are supposed to be better than that.
I think the 2 voters probably didn’t have a lot on their watch list. The conditions are the worst show you are watching which is why some reasonable shows do get votes as a lot of people don’t watch things they actually hate (sensible really). It skews this particular vote every time, but I’d prefer people were voting for shows that were actually watched than voting for something they watched five minutes of but don’t really know what it ended up doing.
And thanks. I’ll direct any complaints about that choice to you.
It would makes sense. That’s why any decent poll should have more than 2 participants.
That’s why I would like to see vote participation continue to grow. At the moment, small anomalies have a big impact. More votes would help smooth these out.
I was looking forward to this article!! I’m so so disappointed with the Ito Junji show, I was really pumped to see all the awesome horror good-ness but it fell flat. I hope you do give the manga a shot, as it’s definitely worth a read and nothing like the anime! I’m surprised to see B: The Beginning didn’t get higher up on the worst list, I checked it out on Netflix but wasn’t too keen. I’ll wait to see if it makes your best list tomorrow , and may give it another go :)!
I wouldn’t bother. I’d put the B: The Beginning as one of the worst things I watched this season. It was entertaining to a point but from a narrative and character point of view it just didn’t manage to pull off its ambitions. Normally I’d say give it a go and see what you think, but with this one, unless you just happen to like ‘cool’ and will put up with poor everything else as long as things are ‘cool’ then you probably won’t end up enjoying it much.
Yeah you know an OP is bad when you skip through it almost every time…
I get the feeling it’s one of these shows that win the Best Of: YuruCamp, Yorimoi (A Place Farther Than the Universe), Devilman Crybaby or After the Rain. They were definitely some of the top shows in regards to getting positive talk this winter.
I expected Yuru Camp to do better than it did given how positive people were about it in their reviews.
As much as Akira is an amazing character in the 80s OVAs and the original manga Devilman Crybaby truncated his character arc and changed him quite a bit. Where before he was an interesting and nuanced character, with an actual personality and motivations, in the new series I also couldn’t stand him. It’s really quite a shame.
His character had a lot of potential but instead of characterising him, the anime chose to just have other characters keep telling us about what a big heart he had (despite little evidence other than a plethora of tears). It was really a shame because he could have been a really interesting character.
second op of mahou tsukai no yome was an inferior song set to a bunch of reused scenes from the first half, so i dont particularly have an issue with calling it the worst op. personally, i think the death march op was worse, but it’s a close call
The Deathmarch op suited its show perfectly. Bland and completely unmemorable. While that doesn’t make it a good song, it wasn’t on my radar for worst because I didn’t particularly take issue with it.
yeah, im heavily biased because i just did not like that song.