2009 will never be known as a good year in anime. Instead it'll be seen as the year the anime world went down the toilet. Here are five series that prove my point.
5. Zan Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei
The first two seasons of Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei were some of my guilty pleasures, with its hilarious dialogue, insane characters and clever plays-on-words. Unfortunately they quickly ran out of ideas by the time they got to Season Three. The jokes were weak, and the background humor went by so fast that it was nearly impossible to catch them. Granted a quick chuckle would come along in each episode, but it's not enough to save what was once a hugely funny program. I would say to not expect a Season Four, but with the way 2009 was with crappy anime there's no way to know for sure. (I will admit, though, that it has one of the best opening theme songs of the year. It at least has that going for them.)
4. K-On!
Imagine you're a really big fan of music-based anime (i.e.: Beck, Nerima Daikon Brothers), and you heard that Kyoto Animation -- the studio responsible for some of the best series of the past decade -- would be making a show about an all-girl rock band. You'd be pretty excited, right? Well...that excitement turned to huge disappointment with K-On!, a series that instead of showcasing -- as Brandon Flowers put it -- glamorous indie rock 'n' roll went on to focus on the music club members eating sweets and trying to act all cute for the loli-moé crowd. Setokai no Ichizon put it best in one of their early episodes: why focus on the dynamics of a rock band when you can just have cute girls doing cute things in order to sell a shitload of character albums and crappy merchandise. Thanks, but no thanks, and I sure as hell won't be tuning in to the just-announced second season.
3. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya: Season Two
Haruhists had a long wait ahead of them for new episodes (three years, to be exact), and what was their patience rewarded with? Eight episodes of the same fucking thing over and over and over again! The infamous "Endless Eight" arc practically killed the entire Haruhi Suzumiya franchise. Fans hated it, critics hated it, the original Haruhi director who was fired from Kyoto Animation hated it, and even Haruhi's voice actress Aya Hirano went so far as to apologize to her entire fanbase for putting up with it all. Rumor is Bandai Entertainment will be releasing it sometime in 2010, but I bet they had to do it in order to get their hands on the upcoming movie The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya (which if it fails to succeed will put to end to Haruhi Suzumiya).
2. Queen's Blade
One of the most sexist cartoons to ever be made. Scantly-clad women fight one another to the death (or until one of them pisses themselves so the whole world can see). Take out all the "fan-service" (if that's what it really is), and they would've had something of a decent plot on their hands. Alas that was not the case, and both seasons (which I still can't figure out how or why it survived the first) pushed the Women's Rights Movement back another 100 years. (Yep, Queen's Blade took away women's suffrage. It's their fault.) How the series managed to score such big voice actresses as Rie Tanaka, Aya Hirano, and Yuko Goto baffles my brain. (Perhaps the paycheck was too big to refuse). It's vulgar, disgusting and will offend any woman who watches it (even more so than the Ikki Tousen saga).
1. Akikan!
The first anime I reviewed in 2009, and the worst show I have ever seen! Soda cans that transform into magical girls?! Is that the best the writers can come up with?! The characters were annoying as fuck, the pathetic male lead was so perverted that the word "sympathy" never crossed my mind, and the fan-service in the show made series like Rosario + Vampire and Ikki Tousen look like Matthew Barney's The Cremaster Cycle (Google it). Not to mention the semi-villain Hidehiko, who always tries to put the moves on the main male lead. It would've made Sacha Baron Cohen's Brüno cry foul, and the GLBT community rally up to beat the shit out of the creator of this atrocity. It was a sign of things to come in the anime world of 2009: a sign to expect the worst shows to come out of Japan since the invention of loli-con!
5. Zan Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei
The first two seasons of Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei were some of my guilty pleasures, with its hilarious dialogue, insane characters and clever plays-on-words. Unfortunately they quickly ran out of ideas by the time they got to Season Three. The jokes were weak, and the background humor went by so fast that it was nearly impossible to catch them. Granted a quick chuckle would come along in each episode, but it's not enough to save what was once a hugely funny program. I would say to not expect a Season Four, but with the way 2009 was with crappy anime there's no way to know for sure. (I will admit, though, that it has one of the best opening theme songs of the year. It at least has that going for them.)
4. K-On!
Imagine you're a really big fan of music-based anime (i.e.: Beck, Nerima Daikon Brothers), and you heard that Kyoto Animation -- the studio responsible for some of the best series of the past decade -- would be making a show about an all-girl rock band. You'd be pretty excited, right? Well...that excitement turned to huge disappointment with K-On!, a series that instead of showcasing -- as Brandon Flowers put it -- glamorous indie rock 'n' roll went on to focus on the music club members eating sweets and trying to act all cute for the loli-moé crowd. Setokai no Ichizon put it best in one of their early episodes: why focus on the dynamics of a rock band when you can just have cute girls doing cute things in order to sell a shitload of character albums and crappy merchandise. Thanks, but no thanks, and I sure as hell won't be tuning in to the just-announced second season.
3. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya: Season Two
Haruhists had a long wait ahead of them for new episodes (three years, to be exact), and what was their patience rewarded with? Eight episodes of the same fucking thing over and over and over again! The infamous "Endless Eight" arc practically killed the entire Haruhi Suzumiya franchise. Fans hated it, critics hated it, the original Haruhi director who was fired from Kyoto Animation hated it, and even Haruhi's voice actress Aya Hirano went so far as to apologize to her entire fanbase for putting up with it all. Rumor is Bandai Entertainment will be releasing it sometime in 2010, but I bet they had to do it in order to get their hands on the upcoming movie The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya (which if it fails to succeed will put to end to Haruhi Suzumiya).
2. Queen's Blade
One of the most sexist cartoons to ever be made. Scantly-clad women fight one another to the death (or until one of them pisses themselves so the whole world can see). Take out all the "fan-service" (if that's what it really is), and they would've had something of a decent plot on their hands. Alas that was not the case, and both seasons (which I still can't figure out how or why it survived the first) pushed the Women's Rights Movement back another 100 years. (Yep, Queen's Blade took away women's suffrage. It's their fault.) How the series managed to score such big voice actresses as Rie Tanaka, Aya Hirano, and Yuko Goto baffles my brain. (Perhaps the paycheck was too big to refuse). It's vulgar, disgusting and will offend any woman who watches it (even more so than the Ikki Tousen saga).
1. Akikan!
The first anime I reviewed in 2009, and the worst show I have ever seen! Soda cans that transform into magical girls?! Is that the best the writers can come up with?! The characters were annoying as fuck, the pathetic male lead was so perverted that the word "sympathy" never crossed my mind, and the fan-service in the show made series like Rosario + Vampire and Ikki Tousen look like Matthew Barney's The Cremaster Cycle (Google it). Not to mention the semi-villain Hidehiko, who always tries to put the moves on the main male lead. It would've made Sacha Baron Cohen's Brüno cry foul, and the GLBT community rally up to beat the shit out of the creator of this atrocity. It was a sign of things to come in the anime world of 2009: a sign to expect the worst shows to come out of Japan since the invention of loli-con!
Labels: Akikan, Anime, Haruhi Suzumiya, K-On, King Baby Duck, Queen's Blade, Zetsubou-Sensei
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