The Worst Anime of 2025

There's the worst anime of a respective season, and there's "The Worst" of the entire year. Below are series that weren't just disposable and annoying; they failed so spectacularly that we couldn't stop thinking about them.

ANN critics' choices are based on loose criteria for "worst;" below are series our writers found wholly disappointing despite initial first impressions, marred by production collapse, tearfully boring, or containing noxious story elements that left them cold.

Since joining This Week in Anime last fall, I've found myself wading into a genre I'd rarely, if ever, touch on my own—Isekai. To the genre's credit, I've enjoyed my time with series like Overlord, DanMachi, and ZENSHU. However, I've found most recent series to fall into one of three categories: “Hey, that wasn't half bad!”, “I guess this is television, and “Seriously, what are we even doing here?” Uglymug, Epicfighter is at the top (or bottom, technically) of that last category. It's been a while since a cartoon has annoyed me on such an intrinsic level.

Doesn't help either that the initial thrust of the series is centered around a false sexual assault allegation plot. To those who say, “Oh, that's just a genre trope. Why are you getting so heated over it?”, come on now. The implementation of this beat is haphazardly handled when it deserves to be handled with proper care and weight given the subject matter. It's an element that can easily be twisted to malicious ends—both in fiction and real life.

But setting that choice aside, there's something deeper at the core of Uglymug that just pissed me off. Shigeru was introduced to the audience as a guy who got caught up in something at the wrong time, in the wrong place, and he has an unappealing face. His life becomes a nightmare as a result, but he gives up instead of trying to move forward in any meaningful way. Shigeru throws in the towel by leaving his life behind and becoming this all-powerful “epicfighter” based on others' preconceptions of him. Really?

I don't know about you, but 2025 has been a horrific gut-punch of a year for most people I know. There isn't some magical way for us to escape all of our troubles—we have to work hard at making things better for ourselves and those around us. Doing that work can be scary and even painful at times, but fully giving into escapism is deeply unhealthy. Uglymug is a series about giving up, and there's no way in hell I'm doing that anytime soon. To quote a close friend, “The only way out is through.”

—Coop Bicknell

Oh, how I wish that this show could have been wiped from my memory. Not content with having me suffer the weekly trauma of reviewing every episode of terrible dark fantasy manga adaptation Übel Blatt, from naively hopeful beginning to hopelessly undignified end, our Dark and Terrible Executive Editor Who Must Be Obeyed has decreed that I must once more descend into the slimy pits of dank misery to dredge up the vestiges of my torment once more. Like protagonist Köinzell, I am doomed to follow a path of madness and blood until my soul is irrevocably stained by crawling darkness.

Like the above paragraph, Übel Blatt skirts ridiculous edginess and tumbles over the edge into almost comedic incompetence. It so desperately wants to be a serious, dark fantasy drama like Berserk, but instead, it fails at almost everything it attempts. By choosing to excise the all-important context of the manga's volume 0, Übel Blatt's unbelievably flawed production leaves anime-only viewers utterly bemused by seemingly random character interactions and a complete lack of background regarding both protagonists' and enemies' relationships and motivations.

Köinzell is a young elf-like lad on a road to revenge against the “Seven Heroes”, and begins to hunt them down for violent retribution. Why is he so angry, and how exactly is he related to former Hero Ascheriit? Don't expect coherent answers; you'd need to read the manga for that. It's not only the baffling plot excisions that make this one of the worst fantasy anime to ever exist – the animation is garbage, the character designs far too cutesy and clean for what should be a filthy medieval-esque world, plus the direction and structure are generally abysmal. Why are all of the female characters (including children) forced to wear hilariously impractical and skimpy battle-wear? Why do the bad guys have stupid names like “Batterygrave Barestar”?

Potentially interesting themes and plot twists, that could have sustained a more competently produced series, are buried beneath rushed, incoherent storytelling, embarrassingly lame antagonists, and nonsensical plot twists. At least the music is consistently excellent, even if sometimes tonally inappropriate for the scenes in which it is used. Maybe the manga is better. My fellow AniTAY podcaster (and host) Requiem swears blind it's one of the best manga he's ever read, and his enthusiastic recommendation for this offensively awful tripe led me to volunteer for the purgatorial task of reviewing its adaptation weekly. He still wonders if I'll ever forgive him; I suspect he'll be waiting a long time.

—Kevin Cormack

Baban Baban Ban Vampire normalizes the stereotype of predatory gay men in 2025, and that alone makes it one of the worst anime of the year. This anime follows a centuries-old vampire, Ranmaru Mori, who wants to drink the blood of the teenager who saved him from near-death a few years before the start of the show, Rihito. While this framing device already plays into some reductive “stranger danger” mentalities, the anime ratchets up from problematic to downright gross with the reveal of Ranmaru wanting to drink Rihito's virgin blood once he's eighteen. This means that Ranmaru's primary motivation in the show is to cockblock a fifteen-year-old for the next three years, and the show fully leans into this being an obvious metaphor for Ranmaru wanting to have sex with Rihito once he's of a legal age.

Unsurprisingly, watching an adult man groom and be constantly aroused by a fifteen-year-old boy isn't entertaining, and virtually all of Baban Baban Ban Vampire's “jokes” fall flat. This is such a strange, overtly uncomfortable show, with every episode featuring lurid, varied descriptions of how much Ranmaru is turned on by this child, that I struggle to understand how this anime was ever greenlit. A bit of research, though, reveals that this work was likely produced under fraught circumstances. Baban Baban Ban Vampire is the last anime produced by Gaina under that name before it was sold to the AI animation company Creator's X, which changed its name to Benten Film. Previously, Gaina was known as Fukushima Gainax; it was originally a Fukushima-based studio under Gainax's umbrella in 2015, but became its own company before the end of that year. Anyone who pays attention to the anime industry knows that Gainax has been a whirlpool of financial mismanagement and corporate malfeasance for decades now, and based on this connection, I can only assume that Baban Baban Ban Vampire is the product of sketchy and/or ignorant decision-making processes.

This background might also explain why Baban Baban Ban Vampire looks downright uncanny. While the characters have a simplicity to their designs that would seem to make them well-suited to animation, they're stiff and blocky, as if they're never really moving on screen. It's almost like the animators prioritized keeping the characters on-model in every frame over actually animating the anime. The result of Baban Baban Ban Vampire is a work that offends every one of my personal values and creative sensibilities, and I hope to never think about it again as soon as I'm done cementing it as one of the worst anime of 2025, if not the entire history of the medium.

—Lucas DeRuyter

While I would never say that the fourth season of The Rising of the Shield Hero is the worst the series has ever been, that doesn't change the fact that it's the epitome of treading water. While big events happen as Naofumi and crew basically topple and reestablish not one but two countries' governments, these feel like sidequests our heroes are forced to go on more than anything else.

Even the central characters in both parts of the season, Fohl and Raphtalia, respectively, don't seem to develop much as characters. Sure, Fohl now has an adult body, and Raphtalia has become a literal Empress, but even as the final episode closes, they're still just following Naofumi around like normal. They're the same static characters they were at the start of the season, despite all that happened.

And as for Naofumi himself, calling him static would be an understatement. He continues to be the largely unsympathetic asshole he's been ever since clearing his name. He's thoroughly unlikable, with his only redeeming feature (and the only reason this season's two arcs happen at all) being that he does care about the well-being of his friends and the territory he's responsible for. That doesn't stop him from being curt at best and downright rude at worst toward everyone he encounters. Honestly, it's exhausting to watch, and one would hope that after four seasons, he'd at least start to work on the detrimental parts of his personality.

The best thing I can say about this season is that, now, with it done, we may finally get to the phoenix battle that's been looming over the story for two seasons now. But whether that will be any improvement over Naofumi's recent adventures or not remains to be seen.

—Richard Eisenbeis

I won't lie, I barely remember watching Beheneko: The Elf-Girl's Cat is Secretly an S-Ranked Monster! since I dropped it in just three episodes. It's probably better that way. Do I really want to re-experience this fantasy anime that lacks anything magical at all? A show that naively assumes its audiences would somehow be smitten by its idiotic taboo? The premise of Beheneko plays out more like a cruel joke than anything else, expecting us to just go along with it before a punchline is dropped. But unlike an episode of South Park, there isn't a wink of irony here, and definitely not a chuckle, a smile, or anything at all I can take away from it. I mean, what more can be said about it? Is it even possible? I dare not go into the depths of its premise further, lest I accidentally dignify it. Totalitarian laughter is a thing after all.

Outside of, you know, that thing, what else do I remember? Not much, since this anime banks so hard on its premise that it ignores the other aspects surrounding it. There's just nothing else memorable about it. It dons the look of the same bland fantasy anime you're bound to run into seven, eight, maybe even nine times a season: a generic magical world with a generic color scheme, generic animation, generic designs, and generic everything else. In a way, Beheneko suffers from the Goblin Slayer problem, in that it confuses the shocking for actual substance, all while crossing its fingers in the hopes that nobody watching realizes how everything else is just so dreadfully boring.

In the world of anime, 2025 has been the best of times, as well as the worst of times. We've been blessed with great sequel seasons to DAN DA DAN, 100 Girlfriends, Panty & Stocking, Grand Blue Dreaming, as well as the start of the otherworldly The Summer Hikaru Died, and underrated gems like mono and Food for the Soul. But even as shlockbuster anime like Solo Leveling's second season and Watari-kun's ***** is About to Collapse two(!!!) cours came ever so eagerly to serve as the yang to 2025's yin, it's crazy to think that something like Beneheko could still rise to the top and become the creme de la creme of anime horribleness. Not even Momentary Lily was that bad, and yes, that is a hill I'm willing to die on.

Beheneko? More like, How About No!

—Jeremy Tauber

It's really a pity to see Go! Go! Loser Ranger! on this list; it is an even greater pity to be the one to write it. The first half of the season was fine, even good. Fighter D, being assigned to the Green Squad, wasn't just narratively satisfying as he worked toward his goal and was a welcome change of pace after what felt like an eternity in a featureless parking garage. It also brought us a passel of new colorful characters who were fun to spend time with, including the Green Ranger, Hisui, and her collaborator, Chidori.

I don't really blame the show or anyone involved for the quality dropping off a cliff, because the problems speak to larger, systemic issues in how anime is made today. Because of the cour structure, even anime with multiple seasons are built around the expectation that they'll need to reach a satisfying stopping point right at twelve episodes. However, that created an issue for Go! Go! Loser Ranger!: Twelve episodes is too long for a single arc, but it's also awfully short for two. Especially since Loser Ranger excels when it has time to gradually build suspense, getting all the pieces and players into place for everything to explode into a high-octane, action-driven climax.

There just wasn't enough time for everything happening in the second arc to work right. Instead, I constantly felt like I had missed something and had to routinely check with people who had read the manga. It wasn't so much propulsive as it was racing down a hill with its brake cables cut, blasting through stop signs where the story really just needed a second to breathe. But what choice did they have? They had to get the entirety of the two arcs into the season. In another era, they would have had 26 or more episodes, which would have given them much more wiggle room to decide the right amount of story content for the length.

I suspect that making changes to the story to streamline or rearrange events to suit their allotted time wasn't an option due to another major systemic issue that plagues the industry: everything must adhere strictly to the source material. You can't let a moment breathe before moving on to the next one, or rearrange events to better fit within the amount of time you have, because you have to cram in as many manga panels as you can. Nothing had the proper weight or impact: Fighter D's victory, Angel's backstory and betrayals, Yumeko's origins, and so many other elements of the story that could have bowled me over just whizzed by, because they had to be done like they were in the manga without regard for translating them over to a different medium that needed a different pace.

And it can't be so-bad-it's-good, because there's always that nagging sensation that it should be so much better than it is. Everything they needed for a good story is there. Everything except time and flexibility.

—Caitlin Moore

Ironically, Momentary Lily is anything but momentary. Unremarkably bad anime come and go by the dozens every year. A few of them might even be on this list. Remarkably bad anime, however, are a precious resource. Think about the canon of cinematic failures. Audiences don't remember the disappointing legacy sequel that failed to recoup its budget. We flock to films like The Room, Neil Breen's oeuvre, and kitschy MST3K fodder. As a social species, we unconsciously seek out artistic articulations of our shared humanity. We yearn for a temporary surcease of our anxieties, quieting our busy brains with the reassurance, crystallized in light and sound, that none of us are truly alone. And what experience is more universal than that of utter, abject, and mortifying failure?

As I reflect on the past year, Momentary Lily stands out because it is exactly what it wants to be. The fine folks at GoHands poured their authentic selves into it. It is a genuine product. Yes, of course, as a product, the series apes a kaleidoscope of influences and tropes in an ultimately futile appeal to a set of discrete and, at times, contradictory audiences. A holistic analysis of the work reveals it to be fatally overengineered. I will also admit that those flaws were abrasive to me at the beginning of the year, and the festering wounds they left behind poisoned my acerbic take nine months ago. I am only human. So, too, is Momentary Lily.

The big third-act twist and resolution may tempt you to conclude that Momentary Lily has something important to say about being a person. However, you cannot decode the text into a legible theme, let alone a poignant or resonant one. Momentary Lily adopts the theater of the apocalyptic alongside the theater of short-form video content, and it mashes them together with all the finesse of a high school student who spent her entire home economics period thinking about making out with her girlfriend. She has more pressing matters on her plate than chopping vegetables, and so does Momentary Lily. We must instead look at this anime within the context of all that surrounds it. It did not fall out of a coconut tree.

Momentary Lily is a challenge. It is a dueling glove cast violently onto the floor, where it still sits, collecting dust and grime. It is a gamble that you can be everything, everywhere, all at once, and for everybody, and it will work out no matter how much you have to squeeze and compress and contort to make this freak chimera fit into the constraints of a single-cour anime. The gamble failed, of course, but the entire world now runs on misplaced bets, with high rollers edging their investments while the house cleans out the accounts of the little folk like you and me. GoHands' failure, by contrast, is antiquated and quaint. Their wings of wax melted almost immediately into a profane pattern of tentacular hair, bouncing bosoms, and oily textures, but they didn't crash the world economy. They inspired my colleague James to publish a piece of serialized short fiction on an anime news website. What other atrocities from 2025 could claim such a benevolent legacy? Momentary Lily rallies against the ravages of time and falls with spectacular aplomb into this spot on our yearly retrospective. I hope it is proud.

—Sylvia Jones

This came up as my pick for one of the worst shows of the spring season, and while I've been more disappointed in how hard Lazarus fell off and the empty void that was the 4th season of Mr. Osomatsu, this still stands as one of the year's weakest offerings. As you can no doubt tell from the title, the story here follows a guy named Hinata, who, after traveling to another world and becoming a hero, returns to Earth only to be followed by his dark elf companion Mariabell, who's hopelessly obsessed with him, and tries to pounce on him at nearly any opportunity. However, while that title and description might imply you'd be in for a raunchy comedy or some shameless smut, in execution it's just kind of boring.

While she's certainly a bit pushy, the titular yandere elf just comes off more like a slightly possessive girlfriend than someone who would kill you, and her pursuit of Hinata is largely consensual, as his only real complaint about her behavior is that she comes on too strong. Although that makes for a less problematic setup than the premise would suggest, it also results in a fairly forgettable show, as all we're left with is an otherwise bland romance with a few spicy bits.

Even if that spice is the only thing you're here for, the fanservice feels more like a disservice, as the show looks stilted pretty much across the board and is constantly on the verge of melting. On top of all that, the only version of the show available on HIDIVE is the censored version, which not only results in the usual black bars for any of the show's raunchier moments but also omits a few bits of dialogue, which just results in making these scenes feel awkward more than anything else. Sure, this show might be smut, but even smut has to be entertaining, and Yandere Dark Elf fails at that pretty spectacularly. There have certainly been more aggressively bad shows to come out over the course of the year, but this is easily one of its blandest offerings, and given the amount of similar shows out there with better execution, there's just no real reason to waste time on this one.

—Jairus Taylor

Lazarus is probably not the worst anime of 2025, but it is certainly the worst anime of 2025 that I still watched every single episode of. I'm a fan of most Shinichirō Watanabe series, and Lazarus demonstrated enough of the director's strengths for me to keep giving it a chance week after week. His aesthetic and musical taste are still on point. In a year when American culture hurtled in such noxious directions, I was happy to watch anime's biggest Ameriboo continue to affirm such righteous values as "diversity rocks” and “AI sucks.” In the early half of Lazarus, I was even willing to make excuses for the show's discordant pacing: perhaps treating a tight countdown to save the world as an excuse for episodic screwing around was supposed to be a statement on our own blasé attitudes towards solving global crises?

Then I finished the final episode and went, “Welp, that kind of sucked.”

Lazarus had almost everything going for it except for good writing. Cowboy Bebop scribe Keiko Nobumoto was going to be the series' head writer but died in 2021, and her loss is felt everywhere in a show that can't decide if it wants to be “the next Cowboy Bebop” or something completely different. The characters are pale echoes of the Bebop crew at best, as are several of the episodic stories (the cult episode is just a worse “Brain Scratch”). In brief moments of its parkour action scenes and pop culture references, Lazarus can recapture a fraction of Bebop's fun. The show as a whole is not free to work on pure vibes the way much of Bebop could because of the burden of its ongoing mystery. That mystery, by the way, turns out to be incredibly stupid — and not even in a fun way. By the end, it completely lost me.

If I had a nickel for every time Adult Swim premiered a new Watanabe anime on Toonami just a couple months after launching a homegrown original series coincidentally dealing with the same themes and concepts, I'd have two nickels (insert the Phineas & Ferb Doofenshmirtz meme). The first time that happened, Watanabe made Space Dandy, my favorite anime, and I'm still bitter the superior multiverse sci-fi comedy got overshadowed by Rick and Morty. In the second round, however, the American cartoon wins. If you want an exciting, thought-provoking thriller about prescription drugs and corporate conspiracies, skip Lazarus and just watch Common Side Effects.

—Reuben Baron

How the mighty have fallen! Once upon a time, One Punch Man was one of my 5 top shows of 2015. Ten years later, production struggles have transformed it into one of the worst of the year. What the heck happened? Check out Jerome's Answerman column, The Woes That Befall One Punch Man Season 3, for a high-level account of the production issues that caused a drop off in the anime's quality. But I think the poor animation is just half of it. After all, we didn't fall in love with ONE's source comic because of the art. There's also the secondary problem that this season sidelines Saitama and attempts to present Garou as an equally engaging foil.

But first, let's talk about the show's art and animation, because boy, does it stink. By now, everyone has seen the much-memed gif from One Punch Man Season 3 that features clown-haired Garou sliding down a hill. You might assume that its virality derives from it being the absolute bottom of the barrel in the show's animation crimes, and you would be wrong. It's a quick shorthand for the budget woes that have plagued this season, but it's far from the worst example. Some of my least-favorite scenes include:

Garou's fight with King the Ripper, which recycles multiple animation sequences, including one that is recycled four times. Saitama's tasty hot pot dinner, which the characters devour down to the last bite, before the untouched bowl full of beef and veggies reappears on the table again. A scribbly, chibi version of Tornado that is supposed to be played for laughs, but she is so low-quality in the first place that it's hard to tell the difference. Way too many single-frame scenes of characters sitting around at conference tables trying to figure out what to do when what they need to do is start punching people!

It might seem unfair to critique the anime for its look when it's based on a comic with extremely average-looking art. But one thing One Punch Man has always had was style, and it's clear that J.C. Staff has been so stretched throughout this production that the art has lost even that.

Another problem with this season is that the story is based on a whole lot of nothing. There's so much talking and waiting and not enough action. When the action scenes do occur, there's so much repetitive, recycled footage that it's hard to parse the choreography. And most importantly: where is Saitama? Caped Baldy has undergone some distinct Flanderization this season, reduced to stinginess, laziness, and, very occasionally, that singular punch of the title.

While Saitama hangs around, the focus shifts to Garou, and the problem is that Garou isn't half as engaging. He's a tough guy looking to join the Monster Association, and you'll never see this coming, but he secretly has a hero's heart of gold. One Punch Man is best when it's parodying hero stories, but Garou's arc appears to be playing the trope straight. As for the rest of our beloved hero cast? Most of them spend the first two-thirds of the season still recovering from Season 2 or sitting around talking instead of kicking butt. Even after the invasion of the Monster Association begins slowly revving up, it's clear that J.C. Staff does not have the time or the resources to do this story justice. They're not to blame here, and each time I see the occasional flicker of nice sakuga or a well-timed joke, it's clear this team still hasn't given up. The real villain, as Answerman wrote, is the punishing churn of the anime-industrial-complex.

—Lauren Orsini

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