The world of anime overflows with unique experiences and stories. With the sheer quantity of anime made and aired every day, it's a given that some will be far from brilliant. This is a hard yet somewhat hilarious reality that anime fans aren't just aware of, but one that fans embraced. These anime aren't just guilty pleasures; they're beloved failures.

In many ways, these anime represent the metaphorical bottom of the barrel. Not only did these legendarily bad anime score low on aggregators like MyAnimeList, but they set the standards for what truly defined a "bad" anime. How they managed to be green-lit in the first place is a mystery that will confound fans for eons to come.

Updated on January 30th by Sage Ashford: This list has been updated to add more information about some of the worst anime ever made.

31 The Dark Myth Has Too Many Exposition Dumps

The Dark Myth was a two-part OVA that should've worked. The Dark Myth had a generic but serviceable story about a young hero who fought an ancient evil. Instead, the anime's execution was terrible. The Dark Myth had more exposition dumps than anything else. The animation simply looked and sounded dreadful. The Dark Myth's only redeeming factor was its excessive gore, but even this novelty lost its charm after a few minutes. However, it's just too forgettable to rank any higher as an awful anime.

30 Garzey's Wing Makes Absolutely No Sense

Garzey's Wing is a 3-part OVA that was campy beyond belief and completely nonsensical. It was exactly for these reasons that the silly isekai Garzey's Wing became one of the guiltiest of guilty pleasures in history. Garzey's Wing is only most famous bad anime. Its reputation is greatly exaggerated. Even if it was fun to laugh at, Garzey's Wing's animation and writing at least hit the bare minimum. The same can't be said for much worse anime.

29 Psychic Wars Is Both Terribly Animated And Overly Violent

To this day, Psychic Wars is considered to be one of the premier anime guilty pleasures. The OVA followed a doctor who literally fought his patient's cancer when it was revealed to be a demonic harbinger. Psychic Wars was one of the best summaries of everything that went wrong in the OVAs that dominated the '80s and '90s. It was excessively edgy and violent, poorly animated, and all around unintentionally hilarious.

28 Dracula: Sovereign Of The Damned Is The Worst Marvel Anime Adaptation

Dracula: Sovereign of the Damned had the distinction of being the worst anime to have been based on a Marvel comic. To date, it's one of Marvel Comics' worst and most obscure adaptions.

The anime was already poorly animated and laughably written, but its English dub elevated it to glorious schlock. Dracula: Sovereign of the Damned is a true so-bad-it's-good classic anime.

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26 Gibiate Is Ugly And Insensitive

Gibiate was a mess from start to finish, but it had problems bigger than its bad animation. In Gibiate, a pandemic transformed people into monsters based on their race and ethnicity. This was as tone-deaf as it sounded.

Gibiate was overhyped thanks to the prominent creators attached to its production. Unfortunately, their combined talents created an unfeeling debacle. Even without its uncomfortable subtext, Gibiate was just ugly.

25 The Generation Of Chaos Trilogy Is One Of The Worst Gaming Adaptations

Generation of Chaos is best remembered as a series of forgotten games that were adapted into some of the worst OVAs in history. The anime wasn't offensive, but it was incredibly boring and ugly to look at.

Bad anime adaptation of video games are shockingly common (especially in the 2000s), but Generation of Chaos deserves special mention. It's best to hunt down the underrated games, and ignore any supplementary anime.

24 Mahou Shoujo? Naria☆Girls Has Weak And Inconsistent Dialogue

The best way to describe Mahou Shoujo? Naria☆Girls was that it felt phoned in. This bad anime's plot about magical girls was simple and derivative. It was also executed so poorly that it fell apart right away.

Mahou Shoujo? Naria☆Girls' dialogue was so inconsistent that it seemed as if the voice actors improvised what they were saying. The case could be made for it being the worst magical girl anime ever made.

23 Forest Fairy Five Has Abysmal Animation And Deals With Having No Plot

The unfortunate thing about children's anime, or kodomomuke anime, is that their production and quality are almost always bad. However, Forest Fairy Five was so bad even by the already low standards of kids' anime.

Forest Fairy Five's plot was too saccharine to matter. Meanwhile, the animation was atrocious. The art direction and overall look were garish and hard to endure for even just a few minutes. Its only redeeming factor was the cute opening song.

22 Hanoka's Experimental Animation Choices Led To A Weaker Anime

Releasing a 12-episode anime made in Adobe Flash was a novel and brave idea in 2006. Hanoka, unfortunately, failed and fell short even by the standards of rudimentary digital anime from the early 2000s.

Hanoka emphasized its fights, but Adobe Flash's inherent restrictions made these scenes look more amateurish than intended. Hanako aged poorly almost immediately in 2006, and its quality only worsened with time.

21 Ninja Collection Is Completely Misleading On Top Of Being Terrible

2020 was a generally good year for anime, but Ninja Collection was an exception. Ninja Collection was a poorly animated and convoluted ninja anime that somehow didn't even have any ninjas in it, so it's actually quite misleading.

Ninja Collection was really more of an action-horror anime about generic ghost hunters who fought evil smoke. Not helping matters was how every 4-minute episode showcased a fight with no context or story.

20 Rusted Armors Merges Classic and 3D Animation Terribly

Digital anime have come a long way, but Rusted Armors didn't do this progress justice. Rusted Armors' composition of 2D and 3D assets was so awkward and janky that it could literally hurt a viewer's eyes.

Beyond its ugly animation, Rusted Armors was a generic alternate-history samurai anime set in Japan's feudal past. If not for its lackluster CGI, Rusted Armors would be yet another unremarkably bad anime and disposable fantasy.

19 Vampire Holmes Is A Weak Adaptation Of A Bad Mobile Game

Vampire Holmes is arguably one of (if not) the worst comedies of all time. More noteworthy was how it doubled as one of the worst detective anime and reinterpretations of Sherlock Holmes to date.

As was the case with most bad anime adaptations, Vampire Holmes was based on a shallow mobile game. None of Vampire Holmes' jokes landed, the vampire mythos was poorly executed, and the animation was horrible.

18 Wonder Momo Is The Epitome Of Cheap Video Game Animations

Wonder Momo was ostensibly about an aspiring idol who somehow ended up fighting evil aliens instead. Wonder Momo felt outdated even in 2014 because it was based on an obscure arcade fighting game from 1987.

Even ignoring the game's age and how formulaic the story was, Wonder Momo was difficult to watch because of its cheap and lifeless animation. It was slightly redeemed by how amusing its sheer randomness was.

17 Ladyspo Is Barely Animated At All

Ladyspo was the rare bad anime that seemed as if no effort was put into its creation. The entire series felt like a surreal slideshow. Characters barely moved, and the "animation" was mostly composed of still frames.

Ladyspo was a generic spin on classic sports anime with a comedic and intergalactic twist. However, whatever redeeming qualities this premise could've had were overshadowed by some of the most non-existent animations in history.

16 Twinkle Nora Rock Me! Hits The So Bad Its Good Level

Twinkle Nora Rock Me! was a forgotten OVA from the '80s that became one of the all-time worst anime when it was recently mocked online. This was because it had some of the stiffest animation ever seen.

It was clear Twinkle Nora Rock Me! either didn't have enough budget to hire in-between animators, or Filmlink International ran out of both by the end. MyAnimeList users deemed it a legendarily bad anime that must be seen at least once.

15 Gundress Did So Poorly It Ruined Its Animation Studio

If not for its incomplete animation and chaotic development cycle, Gundress would've been just another Ghost in the Shell knock-off. Instead, it became one of the worst-made anime in history.

Gundress was so behind schedule that it was rushed into theaters with incomplete scenes. Viewers who demanded refunds were promised a VHS release instead. Almost no one bought the tape, and Gundress' failure killed its fledging studio.

14 Offside Girl Has Almost No Dialogue Or Story

Adult-oriented anime tend to be made on low budgets and effort, but Offside Girl was one of the cheapest-looking OVAs of its kind. The 2-episode OVA was more of a slideshow than an animated adult movie. Worse, Offside Girl's story and dialogue had almost no thought put into it. Offside Girl was the kind of lowbrow adult anime that only existed to fulfill fleeting erotic desires and little else.

13 Super Kid Is A Bad Dragon Ball Clone

Dragon Ball rip-offs are common, but Super Kid was the most infamous. Super Kid was South Korea's shameless Dragon Ball clone. It gained infamy for being an obvious bootleg, and for its terrible quality.

Super Kid's video and audio were so poor that it was literally unwatchable. It's unclear if this was the video transfer's fault, or if the movie was just that ineptly made to begin with.

12 Mars Of Destruction Is A Knock Off Of A Far Better Anime

In a vacuum, Mars of Destruction was just another derivative sci-fi OVA from the 2000s. However, its needlessly convoluted story and legendarily bad animation turned it into a legend in the field of bad media.

Mars of Destruction desperately tried to plagiarize all of Neon Genesis Evangelion in a meager 19-minute run. To no one's surprise, the OVA failed. For the longest time, anime fans dubbed it as the worst anime in history.