I’ve been waiting to tackle this topic for a while now, and I’m excited to bring it to light. Hopefully it will be an uplifting little insight into the world of anime and we’ll end on a positive note. Bad anime. What are they? Well, anime that aren’t good. And also anime that aren’t mediocre. If you’ve been an anime fan for a while, you will have no doubt seen that huge, popular anime are often attacked and called “bad”. Naruto, Bleach, Dragonball, and even some lesser known but similarly “shounen” like RWBY (just replace the premise of a young boy going to fight monsters with a young girl going to fight monsters). Why does this happen? For starters popular media simply receive more attention and thus are more likely to stumble across people who watch those anime and go “nah this is shit”. However, another big reason I believe that fewer people talk about exists. I shall call it the reverse hype effect.

Most people watch their first anime as a shounen. In this generation I’d say Demon Slayer, alongside My Hero Academia, is taking the place of Naruto as that gateway anime that opens people up to the hobby. And when people begin a new hobby, everything is magical. I mean come on, do you remember the first time you found out what anime was? I was watching Zatch Bell! where humans could use spellbooks to assist these humanoid creatures in battle. It was fucking awesome. While other anime like Pokemon grabbed my attention from time to time, Zatch Bell! was one of the first anime I finished to completion, even using subtitles (a big step for little Snooze). At the time, I thought that show was the best anime ever made. In the same way that when I got my first pair of big boi headphones, I thought they were the best audio product ever made. When you’re new to a hobby your brain is so blinded by the amazement of something new and interesting that it’s often difficult to form an informed opinion. I mean how could you, you’re literally new to the hobby. My point is this makes a ton of people think OH MY GOD Naruto is the best anime ever! It has kunai, and chakra, and ninjas, and HOT GIRLS!!! When in reality it’s merely their first encounter with the anime genre in general. This causes a lot of veterans to pipe up and fire back with “Listen you dumb bitch, Naruto is trash, it will never be a real anime like Monster/Death Note/Stein’s;Gate. Learn how to understand a MAN’s story and then watch anime”. This has happened with several anime, and recently I saw it happen again with Demon Slayer.  A ton of new people started claiming it was the best anime ever of all time after joining in on the hobby recently, and thus that provoked the veterans to call Demon Slayer shit for its generic premise and somewhat stereotypical character archetypes. Keep these ideas in your head as we transition to my next point.

Anime Wars: Where the loudest fanbase wins.

So I’m a weeb, right? And weebs not only fap to doujins, they also watch anime from time to time. Now since I do mini-reviews for seasonal anime here on the blog, that means I watch a good bit of anime. Like a fucking lot compared to the average citizen. I’ve seen anime that most people will have never even heard of such as Uramichi Oniisan, Project Skard, Hand Shakers, Pet, and Adachi and Shimamura, among other atrocities. I don’t say this to brag, I say this to indicate I’ve been through the fucking shitter my guys. I’ve been in the trenches suffering time and time again when I unfortunately end up watching a bad anime by mistake. I’m talking about anime that aren’t interesting, the characters aren’t engaging, there is no lesson or moral, the dialogue and personalities are generic and predictable. Hell I’m talking about anime where every minute that you spend watching them makes you reevaluate your stake in this hobby. THOSE are truly bad anime. Compared to trash like Hand Shakers, Naruto is a damn masterpiece. However, who else knows this? Most anime fans don’t go out of their way to watch shit, and why would they? There are very few people, such as my dumbass, who have watched these backwater failures to completion and can give them an honest review. 

So why do I say all this? My point is as someone who’s watched countless anime, I’ve seen some truly uninspired, awful, lazy, and simply “empty” anime devoid of any redeeming qualities. Most of these anime are, rightfully so, unknown to the general populace and even most anime fans. But they are bad. They are truly bad. To say Bleach or RWBY are on the same level as Adachi and Shimamura in terms of writing is simply not true. For good to exist, bad must exist to compare it to, and thus a middleground serves as home for the mediocre. I’m here today to conclude that most people don’t know which anime are actually “bad” because they haven’t seen just how bad anime can get, and I want this to be an uplifting perspective in a way.

Not saying either is a masterpiece, but one of these ain't like the other.

The next time someone calls one of your favorite anime bad, take solace in knowing that objectively speaking, that’s very likely untrue. Maybe it’s just a popular anime right now and it’s “cool” to hate on it. Maybe the veterans are rampaging because all the new kids are proclaiming it to be amazing and they’re calling it bad. Whatever the reason, at worst it’s most likely mediocre. And hell there are plenty of mediocre anime that I still enjoyed. Not to mention that if you truly enjoy a show, what other people are saying about it doesn’t really matter. Keep on having a good time. What anime have you seen people refer to as bad? Do you think most people know which anime are technically awful? Share your experiences and leave a comment below!