anime that didn't live up to your expectations

[Bramblewild]

This is inspired by a bit of a discussion about Fairy Gone in another thread.

Have you watched an anime series that was disappointing? You thought it would be better than it was after seeing all or part of it? Or it started out well but by the end it was a wreck?

Requiem for the Phantom was like that for me. I though it was good in the first season. Second season was ok, but had some strange and even off-putting stuff in it. Third season was just bad all around.

I'll mention Darker Than Black, too. Really enjoyed the first season or two. Even the OVA was ok, until the very end. The short season after the OVA was nonsense.

 

[IceJad]

Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters trilogy. The story and CGI just didn't work for me.

 

[muichimotsu]

This is inspired by a bit of a discussion about Fairy Gone in another thread.

Have you watched an anime series that was disappointing? You thought it would be better than it was after seeing all or part of it? Or it started out well but by the end it was a wreck?

Requiem for the Phantom was like that for me. I though it was good in the first season. Second season was ok, but had some strange and even off-putting stuff in it. Third season was just bad all around.

I'll mention Darker Than Black, too. Really enjoyed the first season or two. Even the OVA was ok, until the very end. The short season after the OVA was nonsense.

Sonny Boy recently was something that fell flat, though it feels like they didn't have a lot of budget, suffering in terms of that, plus it likely wasn't able to be promoted as much as other series in that season. The concept of moving between worlds and powers weren't both emphasized as much, the former turning out to be more important overall

Looking at my anime completed from oldest to newest, I remember Psychic Academy was a manga I enjoyed (though yeah, definitely a weird fixation on female bodies, likely written by a guy), but the anime didn't even finish the first major plot and broke it up into segments that didn't work well as a format (early short form attempts)

Another one like that where the premise sounds interesting, sci fi crime action, but so much focus on the female form and sexualizing it that even me, who is fairly asexual (which is to my advantage at times), it felt almost absurd. And only 10 episodes, wasn't even able to reconcile a lot in the plot and teased more than it brought up for the story, as I recall (it's been 5-6 years since I saw it)

Legend of the 6 Braves or Rokka no Yuusha (I forget the localized title precisely) ends in a way that overall barely gives hints and the true traitor is more complicated in the source material, afaik, so it really was a missed opportunity taking a gamble on something where the best you can hope for is people will buy the light novel after the anime never gets renewed for another season

One more, Concrete Revolutio, which even in 24 episodes, felt like my brain was melting with how much it wanted to shift around in time and also take on a monumental task of merging so many genres (no joke easily 5-6 genres all interconnected). I think it's an original concept (getting a short manga omnibus later on, ala other stuff, though it's rare you have a short lived manga like Outlaw Star and then it gets a fully fledged 26 episode series.

 

[Bramblewild]

--Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters trilogy. The story and CGI just didn't work for me.

I've been a big Godzilla fan since I was a kid, but, yeah, have to agree. That one was just strange, especially towards the end.

 

[Bramblewild]

I was a bit bummed by Legend of the Galactic Heroes. The story was good, maybe even very good, but watching the space ships fight each other was almost as of someone took the trope of "A-Team bullets" and allied it to space armada battles, with both sides shootings sheets of lasers at each other and neither side hitting anything.

--Another one like that where the premise sounds interesting, sci fi crime action, but so much focus on the female form and sexualizing it that even me, who is fairly asexual (which is to my advantage at times), it felt almost absurd.

That kind of stuff will make me stop watching a series, too. I'm a guy, and I don't want that kind of stuff playing on my emotions.

 

[muichimotsu]

--Another one like that where the premise sounds interesting, sci fi crime action, but so much focus on the female form and sexualizing it that even me, who is fairly asexual (which is to my advantage at times), it felt almost absurd.

That kind of stuff will make me stop watching a series, too. I'm a guy, and I don't want that kind of stuff playing on my emotions.

A series can do it well and actually give depth to the characters rather than just playing into male gaze and objectifying women, though it's a difficult balance to strike. And in some cases, there may just be nostalgia, like if I watch through To-LOVE-Ru, probably will see it for the flaws it has, but it's not like the artist was the only one involved in that series, unlike his prior work Black Cat and his present one, Ayakashi Triangle, the latter likely inspired strongly by TLR, but written on YAbuki-sensei's own terms now.

 

[Yttrium]

Asterisk War - Very flashy, but they never made any real progress on the main plot. They had a long tournament, switched to something else, and then the show ended. I kept expecting a second season to turn up, but it never did.

The Promised Neverland - The first season was good, but the second season really fell apart.

Kado - It had some intriguing stuff, but the plot was resolved with a deus ex machina.

 

[muichimotsu]

Asterisk War - Very flashy, but they never made any real progress on the main plot. They had a long tournament, switched to something else, and then the show ended. I kept expecting a second season to turn up, but it never did.

The Promised Neverland - The first season was good, but the second season really fell apart.

Kado - It had some intriguing stuff, but the plot was resolved with a deus ex machina.

It's sad that they set up Promised Neverland for a 3rd season perfectly, just happening to switch around some events or cut out others, but nonetheless could've accomplished it in a 3rd season after what happened with Emma at the end of S2. But nope, Powerpoint presentation!

 

[Bramblewild]

The first season of The Promised Neverland was great, I enjoyed it a lot. I didn't watch season 2, and when I started hearing about it I was hearing how bad it was, how some important events from the manga were cut out, and it rushed through the whole rest of the story to try to fit it all into that second season. I have almost no desire now to see that second season.

 

[muichimotsu]

The first season of The Promised Neverland was great, I enjoyed it a lot. I didn't watch season 2, and when I started hearing about it I was hearing how bad it was, how some important events from the manga were cut out, and it rushed through the whole rest of the story to try to fit it all into that second season. I have almost no desire now to see that second season.

It's decent in that it actually presents the story in a way that still gets the essence across, albeit it had to remove various characters to move the narrative along.

I swear some stuff is anime original or at least happened in a different way, even if the idea is the same with a certain group's way they plan to defeat the demons and how Emma's group confronts it, while also confirming something that too a LOT longer in the manga to be confirmed as such with regards to a character that was very popular in S1

 

[TruthInLight]

One I can think of is the second season for The Rising Shield of the Hero. The direction it went was disappointing. It didn't feel the same.