There are good anime, and there are bad anime. The good anime tends to go unnoticed while the bad anime is at the top of millions of recommendation lists. Here is a list of the latter; there may be spoilers, so BEWARE.

If you disagree with anything here, just remember that, like all my opinions, everything expressed in here is 100% objective fact and cannot be argued by anybody, sans God, but God agrees with me, so there.

Crap Anime #1: Dragonball Z

I will never, ever, ever, EVER understand why this is so popular. In an incredibly original plotline, an alien baby is sent to Earth from his home planet just before it’s destroyed. The baby is originally sent to destroy Earth, but since he gets found and raised by a normal family, he becomes attached to Earth. When he becomes aware of his powers, which include flight and superstrength, he protects the Earth from other powerful beings that may wish to destroy it, some of whom are in his own family.

Totally original.

If the only problem with this show was the originality then I’d be fine with it. But the story is such. . .ugh. Every episode begins with the most annoying narrator in history over-dramatizing what we saw the last ten episodes for the first five minutes, then the episode begins and nine episodes out of ten are mindless chitchat combined with a character discovering some hidden power all of a sudden and powering up while screaming. The episodes that actually have something done are pretty cool; too bad the fights don’t last long enough and you don’t particularly care about the outcome until later. Every episode ends with the same god damn narrator recapping the events with a “Can Goku save the planet from that thing that looks like a booger some time between now and Christmas? Find out on the next exciting episode of Dragonball Z!“

This formula proceeds unchanging for about three hundred episodes.

Crap Anime #2: Naruto

For my complaints with Naruto, see the second half of my Dragonball Z rant. Just like Dragonball Z, the show is filled with dozens and dozens of fillers (often in a row). Just like Dragonball Z, entire episodes consist of hidden powers revealing themselves for no reason and the characters shouting stuff.

Naruto is a bit more original than Dragonball Z. Instead of super aliens, we have ninjas that can defy physics with an internal force in their bodies that they cultivate and use in battle. Instead of Superman 2.0, we have a troublemaker orphan who grows up to be something special or something like that.

This would be awesome if the characters weren’t so goddamn annoying.

The show is full of characters that, while pretty nicely developed, are annoying as hell. The main protagonist, Naruto, is at times an idiot and at other times a drama queen, with some of the cheesiest speeches (in the middle of life-or-death battles!) I’ve ever seen. And the flashbacks. . .dear God, the flashbacks. . .flashbacks within flashbacks, flashbacks that have no purpose, flashbacks that are inconsistent with the storyline, flashbacks consisting of entire episodes, flashbacks that we aren’t aware are flashbacks until the character wakes up or something and find out there are flashbacks. . .  . . . . . .

Naruto’s original love interest is the spoiled brat Sakura, a strong-willed pink-haired chick with an obsession over Sasuke (who I’ll get to in a minute) that makes Bella Swan look rational. If I had a quarter for every scene that has Sakura standing alone while leaves slowly blow around and she looks up with a reflection on life somehow sparked by her obsession, Bill Gates would be my footstool. Eventually she realises that Sasuke’s an absolute ass, but then she becomes a self-pitying whiner for the next eighty episodes.

Sasuke is possibly the most annoying bastard in this show. For the beginning of the show he’s just a pretentious cool-dude with a mysterious past (OOOooohhh). Later on we find out his brother killed his entire family and he wants revenge. Interesting.

Then he becomes a depressed psychopath, joining the bad guy to beat the bad guy because that makes perfect sense. Thankfully we cease to see him again until Naruto: Shippuden.

Crap Anime #3: Pokemon

Do I need to explain what Pokemon is? We all grew up with it. If you lived in America at any point during the 90s and were younger than fifteen you watched it, and you loved the hell out of it, just like I did. The difference between then and now is that back then, we had reason to love it.

Sure, the plotline was inconsistent and the first movie sucked. But the first season of Pokemon was just AMAZING. The Pokecritters ranged from mind-meltingly adorable (such as the famous Pikachu or the temperamental Jigglypuff) to holy-balls-on-the-wall-awesome (such as the legendaries or Charizard, my personal favorite to this day). The characters were entertaining and well-voiced. We all laughed at Brock’s womanizing at some point or another. There’s not a damn person in the world that doesn’t know the entire Team Rocket theme song. The opening was just. . .orgasmic.

And then came season 2.

Things started to go downhill. The story began to feel drawn out. Every episode felt filler-ish. The main point of the series up to that point, to see Ash go through the Pokemon League, was gone. Charizard was gone. The new Pokemon were less awesome. It wasn’t a terrible season, but it dropped in quality.

Then season 3 came, and Pokemon went the way of Power Rangers.

By this time, there was no story. The jokes were old. Brock’s womanizing wasn’t funny any more (when we saw him; Brock was no longer a main character at this point). Team Rocket could die in a ditch. The Pokemon were either unoriginal in their designs or just plain ugly. By now, most of the show’s original audience had simply outgrown it.

And yet, Pokemon is still going.

The original voice actors are all gone, replaced by annoying people who don’t seem to give a damn. The characters are uninteresting, I don’t even know what the hell Ash’s goal is anymore, and not even Pikachu is as awesome as before. And Ash is still, what, eleven years old?

Crap Anime #4: Yu Yu Hakusho

When Yu Yu Hakusho started, I was in Heaven. It was so awesome and original and funny and everything. The brat died, but because he did it altruistically, he got employed by the otherworld to destroy demons and crap. It was awesome.

Then ten episodes passed, and it was like Pokemon met Dragonball Z.

The characters were cool and all, but the story was lost. When one disaster was prevented, turns out it was just the overshadowing of a BIGGER and MORE DISASTROUS disaster in the works. When the super evil bad guy that wanted to destroy the world was finally out of the way, we discover that he was actually just a pawn in the grand scheme of the REAL bad guy. It was annoying, to say the least. While Yu Yu is the only anime on this list that I’d be willing to watch again, I’m not going to rush to it.

Now, a lot of people would agree with me for these last four animes. These are juvenile animes that come on Cartoon Network and everybody knows about and is watered-down for a simple audience. But this next anime is not, and I know I’m going to get some hate for this, because the fans for this next one are many and LOUD. So prepare yourself. . . .3. . .2. . .1. . .

Crap Anime #5: Elfen Lied

Yes. I despise this anime. I do not have one single positive thing to say about it.

This is the most violent anime ever created. The story (or whatever semblance we get of one) revolves around a girl with cat-like horns on her head that give her invisible arms that can cut through anything.

In the first ten minutes of the first episode of this gore-fest, she is escaping a lab, completely naked (oh yes, there will be boobs) and she is using her invisible arms to slice up every single person and thing that gets in her way. People are cut in half. Beheaded. Libs are torn off. Joints are sent flying. It’s not pretty.

Then she gets shot, survives, and wakes up in a different personality.

Then it gets weird.

The anime is only thirteen episodes long. There is a stupid-ass love interest that makes no sense at all. The guy is messed up because the girl murdered half his family when she was little (this is also graphically detailed). This is why he’s got a few mental issues, even though he can’t remember the event.

The main character alternates between her cute and friendly personality and her psychotic “KILL KILL KILL” personality all throughout the series. When she is in the latter state of mind, somebody somewhere will die very soon in a very bloody fashion. Sometimes for no reason.

All throughout this story, we find out why all the characters are messed up. And it’s always someone else’s fault. Oh, she a psychotic raving murderess? That’s because she was abused when she was little. He’s an anti-social dumbass? That’s because his parents were killed by the woman he loves right in front of him. Nothing is their fault, everything they do is justified with BS pseudo-Freudian excuses (Multiple Personality Disorder from a gunshot wound? Seriously?) caused by the fact that they were persecuted against. The moral of the story? Don’t persecute people or you’ll be cut in half in front of your kids.

The anime ends with an incredibly stupid cliffhanger.

Elfen Lied is the worst anime I have ever seen, and it is the most frequently recommended to me. I hate it.

You may not list all the reasons why I am an obviously wrong elitist who has no idea what he’s talking about.