Ubu Roi’s Worst of 2010

Well, it’s baaaaaaaaaaaaaack this year! (And, as it happens, delayed by over an ‘endless eight’ months! But that’s ok, I promise not to post it over and over and over!) After skipping 2009 because I wasn’t feeling the snark (and frankly, anime in 09 was so shitty, it was too much work to become interested enough to snark at it), I’ve returned with my crude attempts at humorously mocking the worst shows of 2010. Or at least the worst parts. Which, strangely enough, come mostly from the Fall season. Please bear in mind that this is not a serious critique of the season. It’s just an exercise in humor, or at least something resembling it. So without further ado…

Worst Should Have Been (Was) Hentai: Yosuga no Sora. Ok, let’s face it, they decided to do the Amagami thing and put in a route for each of the girls. Haruka gets to capture them all. Then they waste two minutes every episode having a second ED’ and then burn another five minutes per episode on a short feature with the horny, lonely maid. Instead of giving her an arc, they give her omakes. WTF? I’m giving this one the “worst” award, not just for that, not just for the epic trainwreck ending, and not even for the fact that at times, it was softcore hentai. No, it’s because I seriously expected it to have a nice boat ending as Sora grew increasingly jealous, offed her potential rivals in more and more bloody ways, while poor Haruka was left to cover it all up, until she killed him in a rage fueled by her suspicion that he was falling for her stuffed bunny. it would have been edgy as hell. I was looking forward to that, but no, we can’t turn our porn into a slasher show. So, every two or three episodes, it was reset, until we got to the twisty end. Shades of Higurashi.

Worst Should Have Been (But Wasn’t) Hentai: Kiss X Sis TV tried for this title, but frankly, without the edgy sexiness of the OVA’s, it was just too lame to land even a satirical award. The title has to go to Ore no Imouto ga Konnani Kawaii Wake ga Nai (My Little Sister Can’t Be This Cute) The creepiness factor of this show is just too much. Why am I dinging it for being creepy, when I don’t say that about Yosuga no Sora, and both feature siscon elements? Because the latter is making the siscon elements creepy on purpose. Sora’s obviously twisted, in love with her brother, and can’t express herself. Kirino, on the other hand, has no freaking clue. She is dishonest, in total denial, and she bullies her brother into playing x-rated imouto dating sims. She can’t admit to herself l that she wants her brother; worse, it’s not love, it’s just an infatuation with the idea of being in love. But she knows it’s unacceptable, so she buries it deep down and acts tsundere towards Kyousuke while trying to entice him into making the first move through the games. Any other girl gets near him, she starts acting like a bitch. Thing is, he seems to suspect it, but doesn’t do anything about it. The result is a relationship that’s even more dysfunctional than Yosuga, but is played for laughs It panders with the accidental gropes and otaku in-jokes, and therefore comes across as unintentionally creepy when it’s trying to be funny.

Worst Looking Female Leads: Hotori in Soredemo Machi Wa Mawatteiru. Holy fugly-stick, Batman! And someone shoot Hotori’s seiyuu, please.

Worst Ending: High School of the Dead Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame. ‘Nuff said.

Worst Aerodynamic Breasts: Saeko, from H.O.T.D. Oh. My. God. Those things were absolutely deformed as she turned backflips.

Worst Purchasing Decision: Buying Moon Phase. Look, it was released in 2004, so it doesn’t really belong in a list of fansubs, but I have to ‘fess up here. What the hell was I thinking? The conceit of a self-centered nekomimi loli vampire matched up with a twenty-something ronin / part-time photographer was trying a bit too hard to be cute. But the real problem is that I just didn’t find the story interesting. Or the characters either. Why does she wear cat ears? Because an old perv asked her to. Why does the photographer follow her around as if he were her slave when he’s not? Damifino. After the Kinkle arc was done, so was I — no interest. I gave it a few days, and then tried to force it, but I found myself pausing the playback to do such fascinating things as read Instapundit, look at snippits on Jiltanith, or check Chizumatic for updates. At the end of the 2nd DVD, Hazuki/Luna has a conniption fit and runs away. I’m thinking at the protagonist, “Damn straight! Now go back home and get busy with the busty blonde meganekko vampire that’s old enough to, you know, fuck.”

Worst PedoBear-Approved Anime: A tight race, between Dance in the Vampire Bund and Chu-Bra. Lolivampire dancing naked in the OP vs. junior high girls’ underwear club. In the end, I hand it to the underwear club; Dance had the OP, but Chu-bra had the squikier (squicky-er?) concept. I’ve said enough. I can’t say much more anyway, because I avoided Chu-bra like radioactive poison with high sodium content. And gluten. And Dance just lost me after a couple of episodes — though I liked the season opener.

Worst Manga-to-Anime Adaptation: Well, for my money (a few dollars to Crunchyroll), Omamori Himari. That was intensely disappointing. They took a moderately good male lead, who actually grew a reasonable set of nads in the manga, and turned him into a mush-headed power-of-friendship-spouting nitwit that there was absolutely no reason for five (human and demonic) women to fight over. The source material wasn’t Shakespeare by any means, as two of the harmettes were little better than cardboard cutouts: The Girl Next Door (Rinko) and Goth Loli in a summer dress (Tama, she gets the title in attitude). Rinko got a little better as she struggled with the worry that she wasn’t going to be able to keep up with all the demons and demon fighters. Ageha was hands down the best of the harmettes aside from Himari herself, but she got turned into a caricature of an ojou-sama, but with magical powers. I hand this failure to the director, who does not have a major track record of success.

Worst Title: Well, Legend of the Legendary Heroes tried, it really did. But having watched the first few episodes, I came to realize it was a case of too-literal translation — it should have been more freely translated as “Legend of the Mythical Heroes” or some such. So, the winner is B-Gata H Kei, loosly translated as “B-Cup Sex Fiend.” Ok, for this one, I need to reach back to 2009’s classic and tasteful anime, Maid Guy, for a proper critique:

Application Criteria: “Girls with breasts larger than D-cup. For every centimeter larger than 95cm, 50 yen will be added to your wage. Anything less than D-cup will not be recognized as breasts. B and A-cups with large stupid gaps for cleavage are absolutely out of the question. Are they even really breasts?”

Thankyouthatisall.

Worst Incoherent Plot: What else? Angel Beats. Who the hell asked for Lost to be remade as an anime?

Worst Programming Decision EVER: Endless Eight. Yes, I know it was a 2009 show. It was that bad.

Worst “Get on with it!” Performance: Index II. In a year that saw all the ridiculous time-wasting fluff taken out of DBZ, Index once again shows that it’s talented enough to take all those lengthy staring contests, and fill them with dialogue that’s just as tedious.

Worst Re-Imported Anime: Fortunately, Iron Man and Wolverine are in separate years, which mean that not only will they not have to compete, Marvel Comics has the opportunity to take the title two years running. Can they do it? (And what do I mean by “re-imported anime?”)

Worst Milking of a Mediocre Anime Series: Seikon no Q– OW! Dammit, that hurt! I sprained my punnybone! Alright then…. in that case, let’s give it to Shakugan no Shana-tan. Yeah, that’s all we need, a cutesy chibi version of an already hapless angst-fest.

Worst Customer Service: Crunchyroll. After they announced the end to download-to-own, I bought the last 3 Eve No Jikan episodes before the deadline. Then I couldn’t download them, and CR never responded to my complaints. Only the fact that they massively expanded their lineup after that kept me spending $10 a month with them.