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The Worst Anime of Winter 2024

Metallic Rouge has since mutated into a bloated and convoluted mélange smashing dozens of figures and tropes of varying importance into a story progressing with all the breathless speed and intermittent intelligibility of a blender on its highest setting. In short, it's a mess. There are story detours that work against its best facets. Its themes are buried under several layers of equivocating mud—in which potentially meaningful points are undermined by its desire to be nuanced without taking the time to earnestly grapple with that nuance.

They should probably just surrender the bulk of this article to someone else, some independent voice that makes an effort to really look at the actually worst shows, Like Jeff from My Mother's Basement or like that. The regulars can also briefly list these "worst of what I watched" choices.

I don't think nobody actually expects a scientific investigation into what is objectively the worst anime of the season from an article like this. I mean, the closest you'll ever get to that would be just to point out what rated the lowest on MAL or something, and everyone can just look that up easily (it's Delusional Monthly, by the way). Something like this will only ever be "here's some things we personally thought were pretty bad in this season and we want to write about", only with a more catchy title.

It's just that it's pretty eyerolling when every writer feels the need to drop the same disclaimer up front instead of owning that their "worst of the season" might possibly not actually be the one everyone agrees on. If you're going to do that, you might as well just change the title too.

Personally, I second whoever suggested renaming it from "The Worst" to "Our Worst". Rolls off the tongue better, fits the end product better, and still technically correct!

It's a shame there's not more reviewers digging around in the trash here. Consuming and dissecting garbage shows can be quite fascinating. My partner and I have had more in-depth conversations about the bad shows than good ones. Where they went wrong, what they could have done instead, what their intentions were, where they ran out of money, ect. ect. Though I understand that time is limited and an article about popular shows will get way more clicks than an article about why Fluffy Paradise imploded, or whatever.

I can understand folks not getting into Dungeon Meshi. It wasn't, like, generally transcendent, or anything? It just had an unusual hook that it explored with way more passion, attention to detail, and polish than most shows, and it executed on character fundamentals decently besides. If its unique(-ish; food themes are getting more common I suppose) hook didn't appeal to you, especially after a few episodes, I can't imagine any of the rest of the show changing that. Watching what crazy way their party'd dig into the dungeon's ecology next really was core to its appeal IMO.

Philville wrote:

... endless debate about whether criticism is objective or subjective... I don't want to go further off topic, but the fact is that "authorial" intention (or "goals", or "motives") is tricky business, and that isn't just the case for artists who died half a millenum ago... It isn't lazy to say that criticism is subjective, simply because "criticism" is a fluid historical category, and something performed by people, who necessarily have varying perspectives and prejudices

"It's hard to figure out the author's intent; we can only guess" doesn't imply that (all of?) criticism is subjective, just that you have uncertainty -- maybe great uncertainty -- about what the author's goal was. If someone's throwing darts at a target, but a curtain hides the target from you, the target hasn't disappeared.

There are of course plenty of cases where authorial intent is murky even to the artist or constantly shifting or something, and maybe even rare cases where it's just straight-up ill-defined, and there are plenty of components of most criticism that are quite intentionally "just, like, my opinion, man". However, anyone who has set out to create art knows perfectly well there are many occasions where you have a pretty clear vision and simply fail to execute on it; where failure is a 'skill issue', not a difference in artistic vision. That kind of failure can be objectively, albeit with uncertainty, inferred and commented on.

This seems largely irrelevant to this thread, though. People are mostly complaining that even the reviewers themselves disavow the goal stated in the piece's title; in many cases they're not saying they interpret "worst" differently, but that they explicitly don't plan to write about what they felt was worst. That doesn't personally really bother me; it almost feels like a cheeky tradition of the ANN writers at this point to play pretty liberally with this kind of ranking assignment, I guess? But, I can see why maybe people feels it's click-bait-y, or why it might bother people who are new to ANN more, or some such.

I do kind of wonder if there was a time period where it wasn't so common to be so playful with the assigning of 'worst'. I have the vague impression that a half-decade ago it wasn't, but that's as likely a false memory on my part as a real one. Might be fun to dig up some of the old columns and try to get a sense if it sort of became more fashionable over time to play with the idea of 'worst' more.

Quote:

This anime could have been made about people of any age, but they chose very young characters. .

Given that Gushing is parodying magical girl shows, which tend to have a very young cast, and is parodying Precure specifically, which has a middle school cast, I don't think the creators could have made the characters differently aged without making the allusions less apparent.

YourNameIsMitsuha:

Quote:

And I have gotten a fair helping of "ick" from it.

Is Alice sexualized? Well, Alice isn't ever stripped or herself subjected to anything.

Personally, my worst of the season is Ninja Kamui. The action animation is solid, but it's a little too excessive on the murder for its own good. That and it's really running Higan's angst about his family being dead iPersonally, my worst of the season is Ninja Kamui. The action animation is solid, but it's a little too excessive on the murder for its own good. That and it's really running Higan's angst about his family being dead into the ground.nto the ground.

Out of everything I've seen this winter, the only thing I found myself not enjoying is Frieren. . . . Of course this is just my thinking, but I just couldn't get myself to liking this series for some reason. I like Freiren as a character, but the overall story seems....forgettable? Like, I cannot remember what happened after the demons were defeated and I keep forgetting why they're travelling afterwards. . . . And Frieren's past party friends are okay, but I wish the flashbacks didn't go back and forth with the continuity (like before they defeated the Demon King and after they defeated the demon king).

It's hard to figure out the author's intent; we can only guess"[/i] doesn't imply that (all of?) criticism is subjective, just that you have uncertainty -- maybe great uncertainty -- about what the author's goal was. If someone's throwing darts at a target, but a curtain hides the target from you, the target hasn't disappeared. . . . There are of course plenty of cases where authorial intent is murky even to the artist or constantly shifting or something, and maybe even rare cases where it's just straight-up ill-defined, and there are plenty of components of most criticism that are quite intentionally "just, like, my opinion, man". However, anyone who has set out to create art knows perfectly well there are many occasions where you have a pretty clear vision and simply fail to execute on it; where failure is a 'skill issue', not a difference in artistic vision. That kind of failure can be objectively, albeit with uncertainty, inferred and commented on.

I think usually reviewers would say "this is the worst that I watched this season" and sometimes they would say "there wasn't anything bad among shows I watched this season, so since I don't want to label any of them as 'worst' unfairly, I'll tell you what disappointed me most instead". This is first time I've seen basically every review say "this isn't actually bad, but", and in one case even go for "this reminded me of my shitty hometown". Like, people were writing for centuries about leaving city life for small communities, why get on a case of silly ecchi romcom for this? Frankly, this seems more worth of TWIA column about good but disappointing anime. I still recommend title "most undercooked" despite it making me cringe. . . . As for objectivity, that quote from Baudelaire is pretty good. We can never get 100% objective measure, like telling if Frieren is really better than FMA because it dethroned it on MAL, but we should strive for as broad view as possible - review consisting mainly of reviewers feelings is not worthy of being called as such. . . . . Similarly, we can clearly tell in many cases if anime is good or bad, even if we personally and subjectively enjoyed or disliked it, and if someone claims that popular and critically acclaimed anime like Frieren or "...Diaries" are worst of the season, it's either trolling for views or dumb opinion, either way signaling that its writer is not worth listening to. . . . I'd say reviews should strive to be objective in a sense of being emphatic, and also clear to many different readers, which mean some degree of commonly understood objectivity. That does fit with "written from an exclusive point of view, but a point of view that opens up the widest horizons". Anyway, simply saying "reviews are always subjective" is IMHO just lazy copout, in this I agree with Jabootu.

Thanks for the discussions, everyone, it's been instructional and fun. I'll leave the field at this point, as I believe I've explicated my positions to the extent that I'm capable of. After this it would be (further?) wheel spinning on my part. I always appreciate coming across another K-On! buff, though.

You are right that there are plenty of instances where a work fails execute on its vision (which may also be due to things like budget, staffing or crunch problems in the case of anime, as we know) but I still don’t see how this qualifies as “objective” failure... The moment there is "uncertainty", as you say, then it isn't really "objective" anymore -- and that's fine.

More relevantly, when a critic says that something failed to live up to their own personal expectations (as is often the case in this article), it is necessarily subjective, which was my initial point (in reply to a comment Jabootu made).

I think usually reviewers would say "this is the worst that I watched this season" and sometimes they would say "there wasn't anything bad among shows I watched this season, so since I don't want to label any of them as 'worst' unfairly, I'll tell you what disappointed me most instead". This is first time I've seen basically every review say "this isn't actually bad, but", and in one case even go for "this reminded me of my shitty hometown".

How did Dungeon Meshi make the list?? That's sad really. My pick for the worst anime would be:

Metallic Rouge: The story was all over the place, couldn't enjoy it after the initial few episodes. The animation also turned bad towards the end.
The Fire Hunter: Everything except those still images that came up twice or thrice each episode and the clothes design was bad in this anime, especially the animation. But unlike Metallic Rouge the story had some potential. If only a better studio animated this.
Brave Bang Bravern!: Contrary to popular opinion, I hated this anime. The silliness made me laugh sometimes, I will admit, but overall I couldn't stomach it. It's a worse version of Samurai Flamenco, which at least started out strong. Also the constant Engrish and the art-style just aren't for me.

Also disappointed seeing so many people mention Solo Leveling. It might be generic, but the animation, at the very least, was really good. Do you guys seriously think it's worse than the ones above? Smh.

You are pointing out that the reviewer’s criticism of a series because of negative personal experiences isn’t much of a critical argument, since it is a biased reaction. Then again, if this is an opinion piece (and even if it were a review), we can’t really fault the authors for this. What is problematic, as the comments show, is labelling these things “best” or “worse”, especially since this might stop people from actually checking out a series that might be worth their time because of their reliance on reviews (which was my initial point, in my first post). I'm always wary of reviewers who try to pass off their subjective impressions as fact, but at least most of these authors actually provided disclaimers (for which they are now getting flak). So, once again, the problem resides in the article title: if the words "best" and "worst" hadn't been used, we wouldn't even be having this discussion -- and perhaps the article would then have gotten less attention (which is the cynical way of seeing this).

My opinion is Gushing over Magical Girls is the worst anime of the season because the creators chose to sell it on sexualized middle/grade schoolers when they did not have to. That to me is creepy and unrecommendable. I thought some reviewers generally agreed given reactions in the preview, so I feel genuinely surprised that none mentioned it whatsoever, even as an aside. Guess they didn't watch it, and that's probably for the best.

And yes, K-On! deserves all the love it can get. Did you like Bocchi?

And Frieren's past party friends are okay, but I wish the flashbacks didn't go back and forth with the continuity (like before they defeated the Demon King and after they defeated the demon king).

Freiren isn't a bad show, but it just wasn't for me. I don't know why, but I was never fully engaged in the show despite watching the dub since it premiered.

Friday was Frieren Day, Saturday was Dangers in my Heart Days, Wednesday was Gushing Over Magical Girls day, but Thursday was just the day that Delicious in Dungeon happened to be playing if I remembered to check on Netflix.

a_Bear_in_Bearcave wrote:

I think usually reviewers would say "this is the worst that I watched this season" and sometimes they would say "there wasn't anything bad among shows I watched this season, so since I don't want to label any of them as 'worst' unfairly, I'll tell you what disappointed me most instead". This is first time I've seen basically every review say "this isn't actually bad, but", and in one case even go for "this reminded me of my shitty hometown".

Huh, maybe I'm not misremembering, then, and it's just something the reviewers have enjoyed playing with and have run a little amok with this year?

Honestly, the worst thing I think I've seen this season is officially this thread.