Forum - View topicThe Worst Anime of Spring 2026
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Antipathy
Posts: 69 |
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I think Richard missed something important in season 4 of Slime. That is the that Mariabell Rosso's skill Greed is only a unique skill, It may have been a few season ago but a unique almost never beat an ultimate skill (and Rimuru has 4 ultimates). Not sure what Richard was expecting but she was never any kind of theat in the first place. This season was always just going to about Tempast joining the council, and Yuuki stealing Greed from Mariabell. I say this a one that has read all 21 LN's, Vol 10 (which this season adapted) was lacking in combat, and emotional reveals. Vol. 10 was mainly a book that is laying the foundation for not only Vol 11, but also for the rest of the series.
TL;DR - Unique skills (Greed) can not beat Ultimate skills, and Rimuru has 4 Ultimates. Anyone who has watched the Anime, or read the LN's should know this. |
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L'Imperatore
 Posts: 1104 |
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Aniplex must have produced Agents expecting (or hoping) it would be the next Violet Evergarden. But alas.
Ah well, at least it looks pretty. |
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IronWish
 Posts: 258 Location: Ukraine |
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Yeah, but that's rather natural shape of the format, no one willingly watches 20467th iteration of "From NEET incel to slave harem owner: how my vague litrpg knowledge has entitled me to sex in another world" only to write couple hundred words dunking on it at the end of the season. So to make the cut, show has to have something going for it initially. Because of this, I think, "worst of" list had less graceful transition form individual pickings to aggregated list that "best of" list. |
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Hiroki not Takuya
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Mami-kouga
Posts: 317 |
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I like liar game a lot but Nao and Fukunaga are both certainly things to deal with in regards to it. I do think both become way more enjoyable past their introductions (Nao gets less tripped by basic plays and Fukunaga becomes an actually endearing recurring character, I also did get the sense that despite the trashy transphobic "HAHAHAHA CAN YOU NOT SEE I TRICKED YOU BY BECOMING A WOMAN!!!!" the author actually does try to engage with her as a character rather than a caricature), but I also do admit that I've never really understood why Nao's choice in the first game was part of what people deride about her, yes her ex teacher was a POS but that doesn't mean that she'd be comfortable being the reason someone was left in crippling debt. The anime is quite not great though, the slight ugliness of the manga was part of its charms but I expect way more out of an anime adaptation especially when it's live action is somehow more "animated" than it.
While comparing it to redo of the healer is probably pushing it, Agents of 4 seasons is a fascinating experience due to the fact that you can tell, at every turn, that the author really thought she cooked, and that's just kind of unfortunate. Honestly I've consumed a lot of stuff abundant in trauma and flashbacks that makes 4 seasons look cute (house at fata Morgana, lady devil, the spark in your eyes, red fox, Ooku, fruits basket,), so it's not even the misery itself that bugs me so much as the fact that all these characters are quite frankly bloody boring aside from the summer sisters. Our main romances are so undercooked because rule of dramatics demands that cannot reunite until the very last episode while the author affords one of the boys a measly one month of baby time as his relationship foundation Vs all the writing she gives to the spring duo. Despite all of said writing, these two are somehow still overwrought and boring because if it's not endless stewing in trauma it's making the motions of romantic interactions before someone reminds Hinagiku that she's in love with Rosei so she can blush about it, if I wanted to read a more engaging romance tinged bond with 2 women that doesn't require undercooking their designated main romance or punctuating it with a "remember your love interest? Also no homo" I would just rewatch Yatagarasu and Kusuriya season 2. The autumn team is just in a state of shrodingers pedophilia, I have no idea what the author intends to do with them. I don't even know where to start with the insurgents so I'm not going to. That said, like I said I did like the summer sisters, enough that I'm down to come back for another season, their mixed love and hate relationship and Ruri's general pep was charming enough that I hope it doesn't get drowned under unnecessary drawn out phone calls, 5 billion never ending bullet fires from 5 billion insurgents or bad present to flashback structuring. |
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jr240483
 Posts: 4871 Location: New York City,New York,USA |
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well, thats the thing. it was never meant to be one in the same levels as those anime. in addition, the political hijinks were mainly in season 3! although. i would neither use the politicial aspect nor how easily rimiru dealth with greed to label season 4 as one of the worst anime of the season. was it wasted potential? yes. especially if you read the web novels on where it was yuuki, not maribel who was the main villain of tensura and if the reviewer thought rimiru being OP was a bad thing. then their not going to like the second cour considering the next arc will have him spoiler[ making the three primordial demoness his servants along with diablo!] the only time when rimuru was truly threatened was during spoiler[ the war with the eastern empire due to the fact that he was against both veldora and his family. so much so that in order to survive, he was forced to evolve into a true dragon god and raphael evolved into ciel] and that arc is a long way from here. i would guess that at the pace the anime is going, it will be at the 6th season before we reach that arc |
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Eilavel
Posts: 543 |
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Yes, I wasn't disagreeing with this; as I said, I watch the show and enjoy it within it's limitations. I wouldn't put it on a best list, but I wouldn't put it on a worst list either. I was just objecting to saying that it's a political show or that it's politics elevates it- manifestly not so! |
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Sunstorm Pax
Posts: 5 |
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Pretty good list overall. I didn't watch Drops of God, Fist of the North Star, Petals of Reincarnation or Slime S4, but they all gave me very bad first impressions so I'm not surprised to see them here.
Rent-a-Girlfriend S5 sucked, but that's nothing new. I appreciated seeing Mami's backstory (though I struggle to see the corrolation with the character she became) and it was nice seeing Chizuru packing away her grandma's house. It felt like a brief return to Season 3, the closest the show ever got to being moderately decent. Plus I'm glad we're finally out of the damn pool. Otherwise though, same RAG we all know and despise. No actual progress, no real consequences and so much runtime wasted on Kazuya's endless internal monologues. The OP also sucked this time. RAG is normally pretty good on that end, but this one just sounded like a jazz band falling down the stairs. Snowball Earth and Agents of the Four Seasons weren't as bad, but they were both way more disappointing. We can rag on Snowball's CG, but the story was also just really padded, with the single worst villain of the season. The scope also felt claustrophobically small. It's set up as a planet-wide disaster, yet the whole thing takes place at one single mall. Agents of the Four Seasons feels like the show that Violet Evergarden haters claim that story is. I rewatched Violet Evergarden a few weeks ago, and was struck by how much better it was. Violet Evergarden may have been mellodramatic, but there was variety to its mellodrama. Every episode focused on a new character and situation. There was always an underlying theme of grief, but it was displayed and handled in different ways, with moments of beauty and joy to balance it out. It also didn't beat you over the head with the main character's tragic backstory. It's left mysterious for a bit, then we see it one single time, and then we move on. Four Seasons has none of that. There's no variety, no levity, no sense of moving forward, just an interminable dirge of restating the exact same tragic backstory over and over with no attempt to move on or grow. It sucks out any of the emotional impact its trying to invoke by episode 5 as it expects us to keep crying our eyes out at the exact same event, not understanding the definition of diminishing returns. My favourite part of the series was the infamous bomb dropping on the automn base as it was the only episode past the first three that inspired any sort of reaction from me. Granted, that reaction was laughing like a maniac, which I doubt was the intention, but it was something in a sea of utter nothingness. As for the other two, I didn't hate Warrior Princess or Liar Game, but I'm also not jumping to defend them. I have nothing to say about Warrior Princess. Its cute. Its stupid. It looks weird and has some weird implications, but ultimately the series isn't worth enough effort to care about. Liar Game had its moments but was dragged down by how collossal of an idiot Nao was. I'm not familar with the source material, so maybe this pays off down the line, but as of now its utterly infuriating watching her make the most obvious blunders over and over while never learning, always needing the smarter, more dependable male character to save her (which feels extremely problematic the more you think about it). And it's not like the rest of the cast make up for it. Honestly, for as problematic as she may be, the trans villain was genuinely the highlight for me. It helps that the anime commits to simply portraying her as a regular woman who just happens to be trans, as opposed to whatever it was the manga did, so the transphobia didn't really come across. Sure, she may be a cartoonishly evil villain, but she was also the only character in the show who had any brains (besides Akiyama) and a distinct personality. Granted, that personality was mostly just being a hater, but with how bland the rest of the cast was, I'd say this attitude was justified. Like, hell yeah, give those boring losers the torture they deserve! Keep doing what your doing queen, you've got this. As for the worst shows I watched that didn't appear, three come to mind, the first being Pardon the intrusion, I'm home. That show had the potential to be a really fun domestic comedy, but immediately shot itself in the foot by focusing on an extremely icky love triangle with extremely uneven power dynamics and very little understanding of the word 'consent'. It felt a bit like the manipulative idol/oshi romance in Tamon's B-side from last season, but without the awareness, self-critique or dark humour that made that show work. It leaves this show with this underlying feeling of ickyness, and doesn't make any of the three leads especially likeable. The funny thing is that it feels like the authour agreed, as the final third of the show drops the romance angle entirely, instead focusing on their platonic relationship as roommates, and this ended up being the best part of the show. I finally started to care about the trio now that the nasty romance angle (that goes unresolved) wasn't a factor, and it made the final moments actually hit. But while I'm glad it eventually hit its stride, I also can't help but wonder why it couldn't have been like that from the beginning. I'll give the show this though: it has my absolute favourite ED of the season, so while I often wasn't enjoying the actual episodes, I was always grinning like a lunatic whenever that amazing little tune played. SOS oh SOS! Then we have the two disaster-pieces of the season, The Detective is Already Dead and Ghost Concert: Missing Songs. These shows are both straight up terrible, but they're terrible in a way that blasts out of the stratosphere, across the universe, past infinity and all the way around to becoming kind of cool. The Detective is Already Dead is the weaker of the two, but it managed to be a consistent source of hilarity with how utterly non-sensical its mysteries were, with no sense of logic, consistency or basic physics. A cruise ship smuggling marihuana uncovered by a cat with a camera on its back? 30 people coordinating a mass suicide because they didn't like a ferris wheel? A baby whale smacking a photographer with its tail so unbelievably hard that he's sent flying all the way to the top of a 20-metre cliff, where he's impaled by a spear sticking out of a wall? None of it makes a lick of sense, but it was extremely entertaining for all the wrong reasons. Then we have Ghost Concert: Missing Songs. To sum it up in a single word: why? Why are there multiple spirit worlds? Why are there multiple evil conglomerations that are brought up only to be immediately dropped? Why does it feel like the show was meant to be 24 episodes, then half the scripts were thrown out at random? (More like Ghost Concert: Missing episodes). Why does the adorable lesbian subplot go unresolved? Why are Julius Caeser, Cleopatra and Florence Nightingale all hanging around in Japan? Why does the animation in the fight scenes go so hard? Why do we spend multiple episodes chilling at Nero's place? Why does one of the main cast betray the team? Why should we care? Why are the song battles objectively the coolest thing ever? Why is the most in-depth, comprehensible explanation of the inciting event saved for the finale, after the final boss has already been beaten? Ghost Concert is an anomaly. It is a true enigma of inexplicable writing decisions that deserves to be preserved as a work of art. It is an utter wreck with a pure charm that the AI it critiques could never hope to replicate. It is simultaneously the worst anime of the season and the greatest masterpiece the world will ever see. I have no idea what Ghost Concert is trying to do, but it is absolutely committed to whatever it is, and I can't help but cheer it on. Terrible show, I love it. No notes. |
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IronWish
Posts: 258 Location: Ukraine |
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There are few factors to it. Firstly, KyoAni could've made watching paint dry into a mildly entertaining anime. Secondly, episodic nature of its plots helps to mitigate issues in the writing, cause we move forward before cracks in the wall become too apparent. And lastly, the most abysmal dogshit writing in the series has been delegated to the movie, which significantly fewer people has watched. But overall yes, AotFS is much worse. I love how people in this thread fall into two categories: ones who didn't watch Ghost Concert, and ones who came here to share bits and pieces of its insanity with uninitiated. Such a pity seemingly no one of the stuff has watched it, and it won't be commemorated properly here. |
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jmckenna15
Posts: 185 |
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I agree with most of the Liar Game review though i plan on finishing it anyway. Nao is too stupid to live and it would be nice to see her reason one of these games out without Akiyama steering the ship for her. It makes it hard to root for her when she keeps making the same dumb mistakes every single time that landed her in the game in the first place. And she looks like her head was squeezed into a cylinder at birth -- very odd design.
The games themselves though are fun, and they thread the needle well in how you think you know how it will be played, a twist occurs, you don't know how they will get out of it, but they do -- and it's done in a manner that isn't a straight Deus Ex Machina or a complete chance. And personally I love our cross-dressing villain. Yugi's the closest thing to a real villain the show has and has a degree of intelligence to back it up. And in a show called Liar Game, it would kind of be weird if there wasn't somebody that came in lying about their gender haha. He is the second-smartest character in the show, with the most unique character design. |
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Antipathy
Posts: 69 |
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They either have not read the LN, or watched the anime. This season (12-13 eps) was never going to battle filled, but here is a "spoiler" for the upcoming season, you get to trade talking about politics for . . . talks about preseving culture, and Luminous Twilight Valentine's partial backstory, and her history with Chloe Aubert, oh and throw in Hinata's future past into the mix.
Oh and if you disliked this saeson you probably not like the upcoming one, since this first 6 eps or so willl be about the 3 demon girls, Luminous wanting Tempest's culture, and the girl we all saw frozen in a coffin-like thing, that even burns a Demon Lord like Luminous. Things pick up in the last 4-5 episodes battle-wise, but even still this is (like I said before) nothing more than a foundation laying LN/anime. We should get some pretty good fights, but this again will be a season of a lot of talking . Personally I just watched season 4 because the 3 demon ladies are coming in the next 3 to 4 weeks. I can't wait to see Deeno's face when he sees Rimuru's new hirers.
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Lord Seth
Posts: 19 |
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I don't know how far you got in Liar Game, but if this is your main problem (that Akiyama is too much smarter than everyone else), I should note that the Contraband game, which starts on episode 11 and will encompass most or maybe all of the second half of this season, should do a lot to solve this issue. A new antagonist is introduced who is a legitimate challenge to Akiyama. Actually, aside from complaints about the way the series looks, I think most of the criticisms I'm seeing here of Liar Game should be solved or at least alleviated in the second half of this season. |
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pauladls
Posts: 200 |
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for me was kill blue
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FireChick
 Subscriber Posts: 2777 Location: United States |
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Okay...while I do agree that Agents of the Four Seasons has problems with its lack of restraint when it comes to drama and restating information it already told the audience multiple times, comparing it to stuff like Redo of Healer and Magical Girl Site seems like a massive overreach. Redo of Healer and Magical Girl Site show the heroes doing objectively horrible things because they want to get away with how depraved they can be and revel in their misery for all its worth. Agents at least tries to be a story about healing and overcoming trauma and hardship, even if it really struggles in doing so in a more subtle manner. Hinagiku doesn't go around subjecting people to the exact same horrible things she herself was made to go through, nor do any of the other heroes. I really can't jive with calling Agents "fetishistic trauma porn" and comparing it to two series that have no interest in being anything other than depraved, overwrought revenge fantasies for lulz.
Honestly, swap Agents out with Yowayowa-sensei. That series, IMHO, is more deserving of Agents' spot here, as its literally nothing but early 2000s fanservice tropes that should have died decades ago. |
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EmeraldSaucer
 Posts: 987 |
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If we were to go over series that deserve to be here way more than "somewhat mediocre show one reviewer specifically hated" because staff didn't scrape the actual bottom of the barrel we'd be here for a while. That's just the nature of these worst of lists, just a few months ago we had Clear Moonlit Dusk lol |
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