5 Worst Anime of the 21st Century That Have Aged Horribly, Ranked

When it comes to anime, the medium has always been up for debate on the standards of animation and narrative. But would you believe us if we said that there are anime titles from the 21st century worse than Studio A-Cat’s The Beginning After the End? Yes, some titles are that bad; at least Tbate had a beautifully constructed story to back it.

Without further ado, here are the worst anime from the 21st century that aged horribly and might as well be forgotten, in our opinion. We’ve also ranked them based on how exactly bad they are.

5 The Asterisk War – 2015

The Asterisk War | Credits: A-1 Pictures

The Asterisk War aired the same season as Chivalry of a Failed Knight – a nearly identical light novel adaptation – and lost every comparison. Both feature a special academy setting, a male protagonist with a secret power, and a tsundere princess partner.

Asterisk offers nothing to differentiate itself: the action is forgettable, the harem dynamics are tired, and the first scene literally has the protagonist accidentally walking in on the female lead undressing. Two cours of story fail to produce a satisfying arc or a single genuinely surprising moment. While the genre has grown and matured, Asterisk stands as a monument to what it looked like at its most cynical.

4 Diabolik Lovers – 2013

Diabolik Lovers | Credits: Zexcs

Adapted from a PlayStation Portable game, this 12-episode series follows 17-year-old Yui, forced to live with six sadistic vampire brothers who assault, drain, and demean her relentlessly – all framed as dark romance. The Diabolik Lovers anime strips out the game’s branching routes and character backstory, leaving only a procession of coercion presented as seductive.

In a post-#MeToo movement cultural landscape, the show’s central conceit – that abuse is tantamount to courtship – has aged from controversial to indefensible. Ranks 4th because its retrograde framing of consent and abuse isn’t a byproduct of the story – it is the story.

3 Pupa – 2014

Pupa | Credits: Studio Deen

Pupa was delayed from its original October 2013 premiere, condensed from a full-length series into 12 episodes of roughly four minutes each, and arrived heavily censored – with black bars and light blasts obscuring scenes so thoroughly that the screen was sometimes entirely dark.

What could have been a disturbing meditation on trauma and protection is instead a parade of shock imagery attached to nothing. Plot threads are introduced and abandoned mid-series. We ranked it 3rd because it fails on every level simultaneously – structurally, visually, thematically – and does so in only 48 minutes of total runtime.

2 Berserk – 2016

Berserk | Credits: Gemba

Berserk has become a benchmark of how not to ruin anime with 3D-CG, and even raised discussions as being compared to a bad outcome of The One Piece series. Kentaro Miura’s legendary dark fantasy manga deserved a masterpiece; it got a cautionary tale. Produced under catastrophic conditions – character models were scrapped and rebuilt from scratch in January 2016, just four months before the July premiere.

You know what makes it worse? Director Shin Itagaki had never worked with 3D animation before. The show also skipped the Black Swordsman Arc and Lost Children Arc entirely, gutting crucial character context. Battles, which define Berserk’s soul, were slow and unreadable.

1 Ex-Arm – 2021

Ex-Arm | Credits: Visual Flight

It even hurts us to say this; perhaps the most technically catastrophic anime ever produced, Ex-Arm‘s production committee deliberately hired a live-action director, Yoshikatsu Kimura, who had never worked in animation. Studio Visual Flight, also a first-timer in anime, used full-body CGI rendered so stiffly that character models resembled malfunctioning mannequins – mouths barely moved, fight scenes were incoherent, and a pervasive dust filter was draped over everything.

Despite a cyberpunk premise with genuine potential, the execution was so universally ridiculed that even Crunchyroll stopped promoting it mid-run. It justifiably ranks 1st because it isn’t just bad – it’s a case study in institutional failure, where every layer of the production was broken simultaneously.

What are your thoughts on our picks of the worst 21st-century anime titles? We’d love to hear your picks and opinions in the comments below.