So, it’s the end of the year of Luigi plus eight. I have watched 26 anime (films, series, OVAs) to completion all year. That might not sound a lot, but I have also watched *some* of a further 28, of which 10 I have completely dropped with no intention of returning to.

Now, I have sung my praises regarding the anime I enjoyed this year, such as Shadows House, ODDTAXI, Vivy, etc, but the shows I didn’t enjoy, or actively hated, or otherwise didn’t really have much to say about should get their moment in the spotlight, garbage or otherwise. So that’s the challenge I give myself: say something nice thing about every show I started and dropped this year.

Combatants Will Be Dispatched!

This show had some solid jokes in it, but after six episodes the solid jokes weren’t enough to deal with the awful protagonists.

Dragon Goes House-Hunting

This show is kinda cute, and on paper the concept sounds like it’ll be good fun, but it took itself way too seriously and dragged after only two episodes.

Drug Store in Another World – The Slow Life of a Cheat Pharmacist

A bad isekai with the usual child slave but it’s a pharmacy. Oh wait, I need to say something good. Uhhhhh the character designs are nice and it’s decently animated for a slow life show. Will that do?

Girlfriend, Girlfriend

This show is visually stylish as hell, the characters are super cute, the opening theme by Necry Talkie is a banger, there’s lots to love about this show, it’s a shame this show’s male protagonist is the worst or I would’ve watched more than two episodes.

GLOOMY THE NAUGHTY GRIZZLY

Yeah I know, I wasn’t expecting this to be anything special, but I watched half of it. Another conceptually interesting show with a slice of life setting but with an actual bear being a pet and associated violence that comes with having an actual bear, except the show doesn’t really go all-in on that, and any violence is cartoonish and cute, although seeing blood in a show that looks like this might make you do a double take. It’s a very cute and unique art style though.

Heaven’s Design Team

Such a promising start this one, and a fantastic concept. I must be honest, it was not super clear to me what the target audience was for this one. On the one hand, it’s teaching children about animals with segments that seem to go full non-fiction for a while. On the other hand, ongoing horniness and a level of satire that likely won’t make sense to children make it seem more for adults. AniList has it down as “seinen” (adult males) so I guess it’s meant to be the latter, but it didn’t gel super hard with me and I fell off after a few episodes. However, I can safely say that I enjoyed the overall setting, and the animation of these hypothetical animals was spot on too.

Horimiya

It’s just a romance where both sides don’t show their true selves at school, and they become kinda polar opposites and then the same at the same time. Maybe the fact that Izumi has hella tattoos and piercings gives him a bigger impact in Japan, particularly with their views on tattoos, but I certainly didn’t think much of it, and honestly neither of the main characters made me want to see how their lives continue. Oh, need a good thing. Uhhhh…well it looks nice? Izumi is cute without the face piercings.

KAGINADO

This is a KEY crossover show, and I have only watched Rewrite and Angel Beats. The brief moment where Kagari shows up in episode 1 was great, but uhhh this show wasn’t meant for me as someone with zero interest in Clannad or Little Busters. However, they did a good job of getting everyone together for some crossover shenanigans and I recognised a lot of them any way, so good job?

Mieruko-chan

Much like GLOOMY, I’m sure there’s a concept around this show that’s pretty good, but this show boils down to “slice of life with random monsters in the background that one girl can see, and we see the girls in their underwear a lot for no reason”. The monsters they do have are pretty well drawn and animated making them genuinely unpleasant to look at, so the horror side they’ve probably got down well? It didn’t seem to have any real substance outside of one joke. They didn’t even call the protagonist “Mieruko-chan”, come on now.

The Detective Is Already Dead

The first episode was actually pretty great. Sets up that the protagonist and the detective “Siesta” worked together for several years, they have a bit of a relationship going on, it’s altogether quite reasonable. Of course, this is all leading up to the title of the series where Siesta dies, and so does the competent narrative of the show. But that first episode though, great.

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There we go. Ten shows I didn’t like enough to watch the whole thing, but they all have their positives (ish). Here’s to 2022 where we get to be positive about…uhhh…staying inside and waiting for the latest version of the plague to go away for the third year running.