:anime: Free/Low-Cost Anime Pick of the Month:: Truly Horrible Anime

There are a lot of anime titles that are available on the ever-growing canvas of digital distribution, and with it, there are many great and beloved titles to be had: Castle of Cagliostro, Last Exile, Code Geass, Now and Then, Here and There, Princess Tutu, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, NANA, TIGER & BUNNY, FLCL, Welcome to the NHK!, Durarara!!, Gankutsuou, Hikaru no Go, noitaminA's Princess Jellyfish (Kuragehime) and House of Five Leaves, The Beast Player Erin, STEINS;GATE, Oscar-winner La Maison en Petits Cubes, Gurren Lagann--I could literally go on, and on, and on listing the sheer amount of good works out there. But like in any entertainment genre and medium, not everything made available is necessarily a good one, much less passable. However the means they got there--by "package deal" via a distributor bundling its streaming rights with better works, producers trying to recoup any costs on failure they financed, or because someone had, and maybe still does, think it is still good--there are titles available at your leisure for free or low-cost (legally, of course) that are, to be blunt, not very good. At all.

Last Halloween, I highlighted a few noteworthy horror anime for the holiday. One of those was listed as "a horror to watch," but not exactly in the "scary" sense, so I thought, "why not list some more horrible anime this time around?" I mean, what better way to celebrate the 2nd anniversary of HardDoor's monthly anime pick segment's than to showcase some of the genre's truly "terrible" titles? Ones so frighteningly hideous, so horrendous, that providing screenshots for them would be considered a Chuthlu/Medusa-level offense! ¡Que horror!

So instead of Trick-or-Treating tonight, try watching these gems, instead…:

Sword for Truth
[Hulu] [YouTube]

--Watching this horribly misogynistic, flaming piece of turd, one would be hard-pressed to believe that Osamu Dezaki, of all people, directed this (yes, the same Dezaki behind shoujo classics such Rose of Versaillies and Ace no Nerae!, and not his Mad Bull 34-directing brother, Satoshi…oh wait, he helped produce this), which also manages to sully longtime collaborator Akio Sugino's always-dependable character designs. Well, at least it has its laughably-awful dub and butchered pronunciations going for it (try not to laugh when one of the many floozied women in the movie pronounces the douchebag "hero" name…).


Ragnarok The Animation
[Hulu] [YouTube]

Almost universally-panned (big time) by critics and a good number of viewers, this adaptation of the manhwa that spawned the popular Korean MMORPG happened to be helmed by its very creator, Lee Myung-jin. Even with current hot commodity Seiji Kishi (Angel Beats!, My Bride is a Mermaid, Persona4 The Animation) handling, one presumes, the actual technical direction, not too many kind words have been paid towards its way.


Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
[FUNimation] [Hulu] [YouTube]

[Oh, um, urr, um, what am I doing? I'm sorry…]


Mouse
[Crunchyroll] [YouTube]

Not one of the most-loved big boob-powered fanservice shows out there, even among aficionados…


SIN The Movie
[The Anime Network]

ADV Films' infamous first foray in financing an anime, particularly for possessing two wildly different scripts on the Japanese and English sides. Not that was great, either way…


Virus Buster Serge
[Hulu] [YouTube]

Director: Masami Obara--and this is '90s Obari stuff, not the slightly better 2000's stuff, and certainly not among his "top tier"-level of titles during that era (if you can even call it that, which should be saying enough). Cruddily-designed, stupendously-complex (a la post-Evangelion anime), and ungracefully-aged--what more could you ask for?!


M.D. Geist
[Hulu] [YouTube]

The crème-de-la-crap of streaming anime, aka "John O'Donnell's Darling Boy". While Koichi Ohata would later redeem (?) himself with the popular Burst Angel and Ikkitousen sequels--and I do like his character detailing and color palette use and, admittedly, M.D. Geist's dub is a lot better than one might suspect--the OVA and its even more-dreadful follow-up is painfully bad. Its continual existence on the other side of license death may be chalked up to a package deal Sentai Filmworks had to handle when it rescued some of the defunct Central Park Media's marquee titles, such as Graveyard of the Fireflies and Now and Then, Here and There (no real surprise, given O'Donnell's company financed it and used the title character as its mascot). Regardless, it is a flat-out turkey, and one of the (low) standard-bearers of truly awful anime.