Impossibly powerful gods are fairly commonplace in anime, and they make for great final foes. However, not every anime god is a powerful demon to defeat or an ultimate good who gives the heroes a last minute save.
Take Aqua from KonoSuba, for instance. She may be a powerful water god, but she’s next to useless in every other situation that doesn’t involve combat. Funnily enough, Aqua is far from the most useless anime god around.
10 Saint Young Men – Jesus & Buddha Are On Vacation
Saint Young Men is unique because its gods hail from real world faiths and aren’t artistic interpretations of a higher power. Here, Jesus Christ and Buddha take a much-needed break by sharing an apartment in modern-day Japan. Together, they enjoy creature comforts while discussing religion’s place in modern society.
The only reason why they count as “useless” is because they don’t do anything godly. That, and they’re hilariously clueless about the modern world. In fact, they explicitly avoid using their powers so that they can experience humanity the way it was intended. The few times Jesus and Buddha use their powers are to hide their identities or in silly accidents.
9 Heaven’s Design Team – God Is A Lazy & Confusing Client
Just as he did in the Bible, God created the world in seven days. Heaven’s Design Team expands on this by revealing that after a week’s worth of work, God got tired and lazy. God passed the buck of creation to the Heavenly Creative Agency’s Design Department, leaving them to turn his animal ideas into reality.
Basically, God is a creator’s worst client. God is either vague about what he wants, never shows up and communicates exclusively through his angel Shimoda (center), or is unresponsive entirely. Because of this, the Animal Design Department’s attempts to satisfy God’s odd requests always ends in chaos and hilarity.
8 KonoSuba – Aqua Is God-Tier Dead Weight
As her name implies, Aqua is a water goddess. Problem is, her immature and narcissistic tendencies contradict her lofty heritage. She first meets Kazuma Satou in the afterlife and mocks his pathetic death, only for this to backfire when he picks her to be his Cheat Item. The powers that be immediately approve this, eager to get Aqua out of their sight.
And so begins Aqua’s hilarious journey in KonoSuba as part of Kazuma’s Demon King-killing party. Since she has spoiled habits and angsts to outgrow, Aqua unintentionally impedes the group more than once. Even worse is that she has almost no knowledge of the mortal life, rendering her an incredibly overpowered but totally clueless party member.
7 JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure – Kars Evolved Into The Perfect Lifeform & Lost To A Volcano
Kars isn’t just the leader of the formidable Pillar Men, but the creator of the Stone Masks and vampires as well. Using a Stone Mask and the fabled Red Stone of Aja, Kars’ goal in Battle Tendency was to transform into “The Ultimate Lifeform,” or a physical god. Kars succeeded, but his godly reign was embarrassingly short lived.
Despite being able to transform into anything, biologically adapt to any situation, and live forever, Kars was still outsmarted by Joseph Joestar. Kars fell for Joseph’s feint and got shot into space by a volcano. Kars adapted to space’s conditions, but with no means of moving, he’s stuck there forever as a living statue. Eventually, he stopped thinking.
6 Bleach – Sosuke Aizen Became God & Lost A Few Minutes Later
Why exactly Aizen orchestrated one of anime’s most iconic conspiracies only made sense after the fact. In brief, Aizen betrayed Soul Society and nearly wiped out the human world to usurp the Soul King. Near the Fake Karakura Town arc’s end, Aizen achieved godhood, but was quickly sealed away by Urahara’s Kido.
When he reappears in the final arc, Aizen is stuck in Soul Society’s underground prison, serving a sentence of 20,000 years. Aizen took a break to fight Yhwach, but willingly returned to prison after the Wandenreich’s defeat. While he surpassed his Shinigami limits and is only getting stronger with each passing day, Aizen is busy wasting his godhood strapped to a chair.
5 Sword Art Online – Akihiko Kayaba Became A Digital God, But Forgot Why
In the real world, Akihiko Kayaba is a talented but otherwise unremarkable programmer who designed the VRMMORPG Sword Art Online. In the game, though, he’s god. This isn’t just because of his super-powered alter ego Heathcliff but because he controls the digital reality’s rules – so much so that he effortlessly trapped 10,000 gamers in Aincrad.
What makes Akihiko useless isn’t his lack of godly powers, but how shortsighted he is. Akihiko always dreamt of Aincrad, but when he finally made it a (virtual) reality, he didn’t know what to do with it. Akihiko even forgot why he trapped the gamers in the first place, and was more relieved than anything when Kirito defeated him.
4 Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters – Three Egyptian Gods Got Trapped In Trading Cards
Their specifics may not be known, but it’s safe to assume that the most well-known Egyptian gods in Yu-Gi-Oh! – Obelisk the Tormentor, Slifer the Sky Dragon, and the Winged Dragon of Ra – are three ancient beings of power and might. Despite being older than civilization itself, they’re nothing more than trading cards in the anime’s present.
When Maximillion Pegasus made the eponymous children’s card game, he based some cards on the gods. This angered them, so they cursed the cards, which Pegasus then buried. When finally unearthed, the three gods (now stuck in cards) could only obey their owners. Worse, their godhood is nothing to tournament rules, like the time the Big Five banned them from the Virtual World.
3 Future Diary – Yukiteru Amano Won Godhood, But Did Nothing With It
The death game of Future Diary occurs because Deus Ex Machina, the Lord of Time and Space, is dying. Desperate to appoint a successor before his time is up and in need of some entertainment, Deus chooses thirteen Diary Holders and has them fight each other. Yuki wins and becomes god, but he couldn’t care less.
Yuki’s last gambit was to whittle the competition to himself and Yuno, and let her kill him. Yuno, however, loved Yuki so much that she took her own life instead. Yuki fell into a deep depression and mourned Yuno for the next 10,000 years, abandoning his realm in the process. While his sadness was understandable, Yuki basically left his Earth to rot and did nothing with his godhood.
2 The Saga Of Tanya The Evil – Being X Is A Petulant Child
When a certain Japanese salaryman was almost run over by a train, Being X (basically god) offered to save him. The price, of course, was for him to swear fealty to Being X. The salaryman called out Being X’s egomania, so Being X reincarnated him in The Saga Of Tanya The Evil’s war-torn setting as punishment. Instead of suffering, though, Tanya thrived.
As a result, Being X’s need for faith and prayer from Tanya is almost always thwarted. Rather than smite Tanya to get it over and done with, Being X manipulates people and events to make Tanya’s life a little bit harder. None of these work, and Being X constantly wastes their time trying to get one person to apologize instead of doing literally anything else.
1 Serial Experiments Lain – Masami Eiri Was Just Lain’s Stand-In
Because he created The Wired – basically the internet’s next stage – Masami Eiri saw fit to declare himself “The God of The Wired.” Eiri only revealed himself near Serial Experiments Lain’s end, where he unveiled his plan to unite all human minds through The Wired, effectively making him the god of the digital age.
Not only does he fail to establish his kingdom by merging the physical and virtual worlds, but Eiri gets his godhood brutally deconstructed by Lain. In their last fight, Lain points out that Eiri is a god in The Wired, but outside of it, he’s only a placeholder for the real god (i.e. Lain). Eiri angrily lashes out, but Lain kills him by telekinetically flinging all the hardware in her room at him.