Forum - View topicThe Worst Anime of Fall 2025
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smurky turkey
Posts: 5020 |
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I agree with the list though Inexpressive Kashiwada and Expressive Oota did make me feel something in that the latter sometimes acts like a bully. It lessens later on in the season but Oota remains annoying and very loud. Chitose Is in the Ramune Bottle is too high on its own farts.
One Punch Man surprised me. I watch most of the budget bin isekai that come out every year and for some reason most of the ones in 2025 had better animation and directing than OPM. I am comparing cheaply made dime a dozen isekai slop to the next season of a big series and yet the former is somehow of higher quality. It makes no sense. |
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Glordit
 Posts: 1183 |
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Ninja vs. Gokudo is so insanely stupid and ridiculous that's it's actually fun!
One Punch Man 3 of course get's my #1 spot for actual worst anime of the season and year. One hopes that Bandai is bleeding money but they'd probably write it off as a loss and bury it. My other choices for the most boring anime of the season: Let’s Play: Quest Darake no My Life Watashi wo Tabetai, Hitodenashi Kekkon Yubiwa Monogatari |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 19137 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Fully agree with Jairus's comments about Dusk and would certainly consider it the season's biggest disappointment, since I had actual expectations for it. I especially thought it fell apart on the writing front in its final few episodes. Of the other series on the list, Chitose is a series that I would normally go for, too, but I wasn't feeling it after ep 2 and so dropped it. I had basically the same main problem with it that Steve did: Chitose seemed too infallible. None of the other three clicked with me enough after the first episode to even get that far.
The series I finished that I would peg as the worst, though, would be Hero Without a Class: Who Even Needs Skills? It took a potentially interesting concept - could a skill/class-based System in an RPG-styled fantasy world actually be a limiting factor rather than an assist? - and executed it as a thoroughly boring OP power fantasy, due in no small part to the series trying to milk humor from the protagonist's dry, monotone reaction to everything. It's never a good sign when the protagonist is the least interesting character in the cast despite having all the coolest abilities. |
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pi8you
 Posts: 281 Location: Minneapolis |
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Dusk was easily the worst show I watched this season, just an absolute narrative/character mess, but boy was it a shiny mess.
I completely get putting Ninja vs Gokudo on the list, but like I mentioned in the Best of thread, it's bad that wraps back around to amazing, just great camp whether it was intentional or not. |
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JustMonika
Posts: 1567 |
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Dusk Beyond the End of the World and Chitose is in the Ramune Bottle are Anime of the Year contenders for me. Absolute masterpieces.
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EmeraldSaucer
 Posts: 936 |
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Dusk Beyond the End of the World was an experience running a whole gamut of emotions. Starting with cautious intrigue for episode 0 about how the show was going to tackle heavy subjects like the proliferation of artificial intelligence (turns out: it wasn't really) and how it was going to handle the potential sinister implications of Towasa wanting to jam microchips in people's brains like a modern day Silicon Valley tech mogul (turns out: the show depicted her as kind of a monster and didn't fully realize it). Only for things to go on a downward spiral, until by the end I just felt bad for all the people involved whose hard work on sound design, background art, storyboarding, key animation, etc. had to be in service of these scripts. I'm not even going to give the benefit of the doubt and say that an extra cour could've helped; more time spent with boring nice guy Akira as he experiences more poorly stitched together cliches rummaged from better works of post-apocalyptic and dystopian fiction would not have made the journey any more palpable. Bland character dynamics, lazy world building, horrendous pacing, childish messaging, all telltale signs that at some point during pre-production Tsuda needed to decide to just stick to directing (and since it's been almost a decade, maybe go rewatch his work on planetarian, there's no guarantee he'd synthesize it but it wouldn't hurt to see how Yuuichi Suzumoto crafted a story about humanity in robots and finding and passing along hope for the future through connection to others). P.A. Works has been on a rollercoaster of quality for a while now, but I genuinely did not believe they could turn out something worse than Narenare, yet they pulled it off
SI-VIS: The Sound of Heroes miraculously ended up in a better spot, something I absolutely wouldn't have guessed at the start of the season, but it's not by much. Nothing about the characters stands out as especially notable (with June particularly being a lowpoint for "if you kill him you'll be just like him" more or less being the climax of his role in the story before he once again receded blandly into the background), and the initial scuffling over placement in the band and disliking the New Kid from Generic Angry Rival felt like it never gelled properly with the saving the world aspect of the show. But what really drags down the show for me is its lack of effective integration of musical performance. Beyond "Idea make number go up", nothing about what the band members do during combat feels in any way tied to the fact that Siren is singing in the background (this only slightly improves with Nagi insofar as they get a nice glow, which doesn't solve the fundamental issue). And while on a technical level I can understand the lack of dancing, given that what little dancing we saw from Kyoya in the first episode looked painfully mediocre, that still results in an even worse dissonance and makes the whole musical direction of the show feel superfluous, something incidentally there to try to sell a product rather than finely woven into the proceedings. Which has a cascading effect on the whole rest of the show - because actual performance is avoided at all costs, every tour or concert conveniently happens in between episodes, meaning we never get to naturally see Kyoya improve, grow a fandom, and become a part of the team. We have to be told growth is happening rather than getting to see it, because that would require actually animating it |
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pip25
Posts: 268 |
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It's perfectly alright to criticize a series, but I have to wonder, did Steve Jones watch all (currently available) episodes of Chitose Is in the Ramune Bottle? Because I get the nagging suspicion that he hasn't, which is I daresay a bit unfair when nominating a series to be among the worst in a season.
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jmckenna15
Posts: 182 |
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I won't blame him if he hasn't because it went away for an entire month due to production issues and sadly a lot of people would have noped out of the show on that alone. The Kenta arc was fine for the most part as well but it didn't wow me that much. But yeah, the Nanase arc has been nothing short of great. Tense, stressful, unsettling, but revealing for both her and Chitose as characters who put up a front but masks insecurities underneath. It's a great show that is sadly spoiled by a production collapse right as it was in its ascendency. |
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MFrontier
Posts: 20003 |
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Inexpressive Kashiwada and Expressive Oota does not deserve to be on this list when Dad is a Hero, Mom is a Spirit, and I'm a Reincarnator exists.
Like, different strokes and all that, I personally found the show to be really cute and charming in a middle school romance style (and there's literally an episode where they show a flashback to when Kashiwada became fond of Oota), but objectively I cannot fathom why it would rank in the Top 5 worst anime of the season. It had been a while since I read the first novel of Chitose but I forgot how kind of pretentious and stuck up in its own butt it starts off as...but I would say Saku coming off as too perfect and extra is kind of the point for this character arc later on. At least that's my read on it. And the girls are likeable and there's some fun interactions even if they're not the best Harem of the season. But I definitely don't think it's going to be the next big youth romcom even with the delay. I think Dusk Beyond the End of the World had on paper a lot working for it...interesting setting, good animation, great character designs, an all-star cast, and actually strong direction when it counts. But the script and story is where it all fell apart even as someone who still found elements to enjoy. "nearly aĺl of them fail to be compelling, whether it be a constantly bickering lesbian couple, a couple in the middle of a failing relationship that feel like they should have never tied the knot to begin with" - Honestly I actually liked these because they felt like more realistic depictions of relationships than we sometimes see. I feel like the show was less judgmental to other styles of relationships as it went along? Akira and Yugure only wanted to commit to one person but I don't think that was a rejection of other styles of partnership, just what they personally wanted. But Amoru complicated that from both a character and plot perspective. Though I never got the vibe that they felt a romantic attachment to her compared to what they had with each other. One Punch Man season 3 is what happens when you rush a season out to tie-in to a mobile game and then basically critically injure your dwinlding fanbase. |
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birdlover
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Inexpressive Kashiwada and Expressive Oota and Chitose Is in the Ramune Bottle were far from the worst. They wouldn't have even been close to the worse in Summer 2025 which was a much much stronger season.
Inexpressive Kashiwada and Expressive Oota not making the reviewer "feel anything" .. for the record, the show wasn't merely "opposites attract." Because we see that all the time with "popular manic pixie dreamgirl romances boring guy with black hair" fantasies with gyarus being the dreamgirls of choice at the moment. Instead it is the rare romcom where both the boy and the girl are outcasts. Which is neat. Lots of boys in the target demo for this show have a ton of "will I be able to make friends and get a girlfriend" anxiety. Instead of exploiting this anxiety by serving up yet another My Dress-Up Darling fantasy, Kashiwada and Oota addressing it in a far more positive way: by giving the unpopular guy a cute but not unrealistically attractive unpopular girlfriend and have themselves experience their issues together. Even better, it does so without the self-serving "all the popular people are bad" posturing. Kind of like Bottom-Tier Tomozaki, where unpopular guy improves himself to become slightly less unpopular and gets a cute but not unrealistically attractive unpopular girlfriend in the process. But if what normie preteen and teen guys feel and experience and the existence of a far more healthy show to explore those feelings and experiences than one where the unrealistically attractive and popular gyaru Marin pushes her way into the bedroom of a guy that she has known for a single afternoon, strips off her clothes in front of him and forces him to put his hands all over her - no, I am not as big a fan of Dress Up Darling as most - rates a "who cares" response then I guess that would make Kashiwada and Oota a late stage capitalism abomination instead of an OK little show for its target demo. As for Chitose Is in the Ramune Bottle, two things. Normally ANN criticizes bland boring undistinguished self-inserts for male otakus male leads. So Chitose Is in the Ramune Bottle finally gives us a popular, charismatic, capable shonen romcom protagonist ... and ANN criticizes him for being ... too perfect? Which isn't true ... Chitose has flaws and experiences character development. It is just that instead of starting out terrible and becoming slightly less terrible, Chitose starts out as a decent guy and gets even better. Unlike the Araragi whom the author mentioned as a main character that is preferable. Why? Because Araragi starts the show as a pervert who likes underage girls and his little sisters. Araragi ends the show as a pervert who likes underage girls and his little sisters. So no, the conclusion Ougi Dark was not Aragari's climactic battle to slay his perverted persona. No, Ougi Dark was about the urgent need of a pervert to like and accept himself as a pervert. Anyone who prefers Aragari to Chitose as a protagonist is making a bigger statement on themselves than they are on any flaws, perceived or real, in Chitose Is in the Ramune Bottle. |
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Takkun4343
 Posts: 1750 Location: Englewood, Ohio |
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Methinks you're twisting the narrative of Dress-Up Darling's first arc a little hard there. Also, between all the rampant deaths-for-real in Akiba Maid War and the jumpscare vampires in Mayo Punch, I can't say I'm too surprised that Dusk Beyond the End of the World turned out the way it did. P.A. Works originals peaked at Kuromukuro, that's my hill and I'm choosing to die on it. As for my own personal "Worst in Season" - rather "Least Best in Season" - I'm gonna go with A Star Brighter Than the Sun. It was by no means a bad show, and in fact had my personal pick for Best Boy(TM) in Ayukawa, but it had the most frequent flaws of every show I saw this season. A generic shoujo plot executed well is still generic in the end, and the regularly disorienting scene transitions that tricked me into thinking they were flashbacks and/or daydreams far too many times to count didn't make the experience that much easier. The persistent mutual non-understanding that Sae and Kouki's respective attractions to the other also apply in vice-versa got a little grating at points, too, spoiler[though I'm glad they finally got through to one another in the end]. Hopefully this will be a lesson going into season 2: know what's coming ahead of time so I won't get burned. At the very least, just temporarily irritated from a surprise flume of cooking steam. |
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Piglet the Grate
 Posts: 1433 Location: North America |
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With You, Our Love Will Make it Through is the worst I have seen this season (I dropped after Episode 2 as it made me too uncomfortable to watch) since it uses the morally horrible shōjo trope of glorifying sexual assault as something a woman secretly wants.
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MFrontier
Posts: 20003 |
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I can understand if that was your takeaway from episode 2, though I will say that over time it becomes more about two teens being mutually horny for each other and doing what they both want rather than glorifying sexual assault |
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Pokenatic
 Posts: 637 Location: Neo Venezia |
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The worst for me this season was Let's Play, which, in the grand scheme of things is only mediocre rather than absolutely awful. Middling writing with some more cringy stuff towards the beginning of the show. While it seems that I avoided almost all of the bad anime for the season, I doubt any of them would be enough to take on Momentary Lily for worst of the year. (As someone who enjoys cute girls doing cute things anime, it comes off as something made by someone who looks at them with distain thinking it's so easy to make a CGDCT anime)
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Blaze_1013
Posts: 216 |
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Putting Chitose Is in the Ramune Bottle on the worst list feels wrong when it only put out like 75% of the season. You can certainly not enjoy what is out, but it feels wrong to say "this show is bad" when it still has a fair bit more story to tell that can change how someone might feel about it.
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