Anime is now a prominent part of global pop culture, entrancing audiences with its unique storytelling, great animation, and compelling characters. However, not every anime can maintain its initial momentum; some start strong but falter as they progress. These anime often suffer from issues like rushed story arcs or an overreliance on filler episodes, leading to dissatisfied fans.
In this article, we will explore several anime that began with promise and excitement, only to disappoint viewers as the stories progressed, analyzing the factors that contributed to their decline and examining how these missteps impacted their overall legacy in the anime community.
10Higehiro: I Shaved and Took in a High School Runaway
Higehiro is a pretty controversial anime from 2021 for pretty obvious reasons. The anime is about a 26-year-old man, Yoshida, who picks up a homeless high school girl named Sayu when she asks for help. According to Japanese laws, it is illegal for any teenager/child to live with a person who isn’t their parent or a registered guardian. This made the anime blow up when it was initially released.
One redeeming quality of this anime was the fact that people considered Yoshida to be a “chad” for declining Sayu’s offer to offer indecent services in exchange for her stay at his place. Due to lack of a good plot, Higehiro ended up amassing very less ratings and stays forgotten.
9TONIKAWA: Over The Moon For You
Tonikaku Kawaii is popular for two things: its super-cute, heart-warming romance scenes and its banger opening theme, “Koi no Uta”. The anime is about a science prodigy, Nasa, whose entire life changed before him when he was struck by a truck, and miraculously saved by Tsukasa, to whom he immediately proposed.
Following this, we got to see one of the fastest marriages in anime history. Between the awkward newly wedded couple, we got to see many cute scenes where they managed to close the gap between them and find their love. However, after this, even with subsequent seasons, this anime hasn’t managed to gain any progress.
To anyone who is looking for raw romance scenes, this may be a perfect choice, but as far as the plot is concerned, Tonikaku Kawaii does not have much promise.
8The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
Suzumiya Haruhi is one of the most classic anime that a certain older generation of otakus hold in high regard. The story is about a wild and disruptive high school girl, Suzumiya, with a special ability to alter the universe.
The entirety of the anime includes Suzumiya getting the people around her involved in her mess. While Suzumiya Haruhi does provide an amazing story with amazing music and jokes, the overall toxicity of the character Suzumiya cannot be overlooked as she is quite self-centered and never considers others when she causes trouble.
In usual instances, it is apparent that any abrasive or “tsundere” characters from other anime have their alternate sides that redeems them. However, Suzumiya shows none of this, almost making people think they had to like the anime for the sake of the plot.
7The Promised Neverland
Promised Neverland is a story about a certain orphanage where children till the age of 11 are grown in order to be shipped off for monsters to eat. In one such plantation, the children, Ray, Emma, and Norman, who realize the secret behind their orphanage, devise a plan to escape with all the children in the orphanage.
While the first season of Promised Neverland is absolutely great in terms of animation, story, pacing, and even music, the second season failed to live up to the first season’s expectations for a multitude of reasons. The primary reason for this is that the second season was simply not interesting enough to keep users engaged.
Besides this, the second season also neglected several plot points, thereby doing a huge injustice to the manga. Ultimately, the Promised Neverland season 2 ratings never lived up to those of season 1, and fans are still disappointed to this day.
6Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions
Although opinions may be subjective about this anime, this is a pretty sub-par anime about a girl who has chunibyo or 8th Grader Syndrome (Delusions of grandeur), Rikka, and a boy, Yuuta, who is trying to put his chunibyo past behind him. The story revolves around Yuuta being with Rikka and attempting to fix her problems.
One of the huge drawbacks of this anime is its heavy dependence on overly cutesy scenes to the point that it becomes suffocating. While this may be pretty acceptable for some fans, it is pretty apparent that the subsequent seasons of this anime used these “moe” scenes and flashy animation to mask up an overall lack of an intriguing plot.
5Future Diary: Mirai Nikki
This story revolves around Yukiteru Amano, a 14-year-old introverted loner who likes observing his surroundings by jotting down the details on his mobile phone. His life gets thrown into a state of disarray when he gets nominated as one of the 11 participants partaking in a survival game where the winner gets to succeed the god, Deus, and assume his position.
Yukiteru’s phone transforms into a device capable of predicting the future for up to ninety days, and he is protected by a psychopathic Yandere girl named Yuno Gasai.
Although this anime has a creative plot, it wasn’t executed properly, and the overwhelming violence and psychological themes overshadowed the plot progression. This took the enjoyment away from the series. Toward the end of the series, the story was poorly executed and did not leave the fans satisfied as it didn’t meet their expectations.
4The Rising of The Shield Hero
Naofumi Iwatani, a calm and easygoing individual, was suddenly summoned to another universe along with three others. Each of them was given their legendary weapon: a sword, a spear, a bow, and a shield. Naofumi was mocked and looked down upon when he received a shield, which was meant purely for defense and had no attack stats.
Later, he builds his party and goes on adventures, becoming surprisingly powerful and exceeding everyone’s expectations.
This anime fell out mostly because it had immense competition from other anime. Moreover, even though the animation was pretty decent in some parts of the anime, it fell short in other areas. This impacted the anime reviews negatively and resulted in fans dropping the anime after season one.
3Boruto: Naruto next generations
The Naruto series and movies are popular among fans and were very hyped back in the day. Even though Naruto and Naruto Shippuden have around 750+ episodes, people find it hard to drop because of how engaging it is.
Compared to Naruto and Naruto Shippuden, Boruto didn’t meet the expectations. The characters didn’t feel as endearing, and the plot felt rushed. The power scaling was so off the charts it almost felt like the whole series was rushed. Moreover, Boruto was constantly being compared to its prequel, Naruto, as it was popular and had a very huge fandom despite its numerous filler episodes.
2Wonder Egg Priority
This series revolves around Ai Ohto, who is staying home after her closest friend, Koito Nagase, commits suicide. One night she is guided into an arcade when she follows a mysterious voice and then later, she is transported into a mysterious world when she cracks open a “Wonder Egg” that she got from a Gachapon Machine that was in the abandoned arcade.
Ai is tasked with protecting a girl that appeared from the Wonder Egg from monsters called “Seeno Evils”, and she meets three other girls who got teleported just like she did.
Wonder Egg Priority was one of the most anticipated anime of 2021, however, multiple factors made fans lose interest in the anime. The ending left viewers unsatisfied, and multiple plot holes were unresolved throughout the series. Not only that, but multiple sophisticated themes were introduced that didn’t quite make sense to a lot of viewers.
1Sword Art Online
Sword Art Online, popularly known as SAO, was initially popular among the fans because of its engaging plot and thrilling fight scenes.
The first season depicted how Kirito, the main protagonist, got trapped in an MMORPG, which he thought was a harmless VR game. It was later revealed that if a player dies in the game, they also die in real life, which throws everyone into panic. As Kirito knows his way around the game world, he becomes overpowered and later meets Asuna, his lover.
The story of SAO kept fans entertained till the end of season one, as it had elements of mystery and very good storytelling.
There was even a sense of accomplishment when Kirito and Asuna escaped from the game world. That should’ve been the end of the first season, but the show went downhill when they created an entire series with no real plot progression. It didn’t meet the fans’ standards and was simply not up to the mark, as the plot felt rushed and had no real essence.
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