What is your greatest disappointment in Anime?

[KafkaOffTheBeach]

I, honestly, don't have many.
...
Elfen Lied was disappointing because it ended so...obtusely. No real subtlety whatsoever, masked by the fact that it didn't explain shit - so it must be deep and thought provoking, right? I mean - ***** all you want about NGE's original ending, but at least that had a reason behind it...at least that had some sort of foreshadowing to give context to what happened. Elfen Lied just shounen'd me out of an interesting series by introducing what basically amounts to 'power leveling' in the enemies while fucking the interesting plot strands into background oblivion.
The first episode will always be one of my favourite episodes ever, though.
Who expected that shit to go down?
Honestly?

Also - both FMA and FMA: Bruthas in da hood were disappointing on different levels....which created this weird situation for me, having not read the manga.
FMA, I felt, completely shat itself when it introduced Hohenheim into the equation. It was like it didn't have a fucking clue what to do with this interesting and potentially revealing character, so instead of doing anything with him it just quietly shuffled him off to the side. Personally, I like it when anime, film, shows, books etc. make me think on possibly unanswered questions - but this isn't a case of it being to deep for me or too thought provoking. This was just lazy writing.
And I was disappointed with FMA: Bruthas because of how badly its characterisations came off compared to the first one - with the incredibly notable exceptions of Mustang, Hawkeye, Wrath and Hohenheim. Although, as I found out later, it did stick to the manga more, it suddenly became this comparatively immature foray into the power of good and understanding. It...well, despite the added violence content, felt like it had lost its morally ambiguous fangs.
Everything became just a wee bit too fluffy and nice - once again comparatively...
Its not that I didn't enjoy them - christ - I've watched both twice, subbed and dubbed, its just that those aspects really, really disappointed me.

Just putting this out there though - I did actually enjoy both the Endless 8 AND the ending of Death Note.
Particularly the ending of Death Note...such a poetic move, so elegantly executed that turned the overwhelming ego of Light in on itself in the most suitable setting, his grandeur, his mystique stripped away leaving him alone but for the blood on his hands and a fanatical, cracked sense of righteousness. Brilliant stuff...

 

[Tautology]

For me, it was Birdy the Mighty: Decode. So much left unresolved. So many questions. Too few answers.

To this day, I still can't decide whether to curse the irony or applaud it.

 

[airrazor7]

Can't stand whiny, arm-flailing "protagonists" who are always screaming the name of their love interest. Watanuki nearly ruined xxxHolic for me and I couldn't get into Birdy the Mighty because of the guy.

I hate action anime that is soft core porn in disguise; a very weak disguise might I add.

Anime (like Naruto) that breaks its own rules/parameters. Those familiar with Sasuke's antics around the time of the Kage Summit meeting know what I'm talking about.

Any action anime that has a good story and well done action to end with the protagonist defeating the strongest and last villain by simply declaring they have courage and love or something similar. You can't go from awesome beat downs to "Hey I'm courageous and I have love in my heart along with inner peace, I win by default."

Spoiler: Looking at you-

Soul Eater

Can't stand annoying little girls who always get their way over a male protagonist. Patty in Devil May Cry is an example of this. On a similar note, I don't like it a cute, silly character is just tacked on to show that at first appears to take its action or drama seriously. I know it's always a nice tool to use comedy to take a break from the seriousness but all I can say is WTF about Kiko and her guy-on-elephant obsession.

 

[natster43]

I think realizing how bad the english voices for G Gundam for me. Oh being 10. Also Strike Witches.

 

[ZiggyE]

The biggest disappointment I have ever experienced in anime is Welcome to the N.H.K.

Not because Welcome to the N.H.K. is bad, but because it comes so close to being a masterpiece and barely falls short of the mark. If only it had pulled through.

 

[Lord Merik]

Boogiepop phantom I heard it was good. Then i watched it was confused. What was that? It made no scene and ended with even less scene.

 

[SenorNemo]

I try not to go into a series with strong expectations one way or the other, so lessee...

- Starship Operators: The concept of a good, fairly hard sci-fi show with a challenge-of-the-week structure and strategizing appeals to me. In this regard, Starship Operators at least partially succeeds. However, it fails horribly in that none of the characters are really all that interesting or well written. The fact that everybody has the same bishoujo hair and flat facial animation doesn't help. Even after twelve episodes, I still occasionally had to think a few times to try to remember exactly who certain characters were. Starship Operators may have its moments, but in the end, it was just so ingenuine that there wasn't much of a reason to care about what happened.

- Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou: A nice introspective OVA about an immortal robot in a dying world? With lots of pretty scenery? Sign me up! I was expecting a nice slice of life show with lots of philosophical underpinnings, interesting characters and interactions, and art. What I got was a nice slice of life show. The YKK OVA takes a great premise and does nothing with it. It did, however, make me want to read the manga, which is actually pretty nice so far (even if it's not going anywhere yet either). Even the art, which was pretty for the first two OVAs, seemed to fall off in quality by the end.

- Axis Powers Hetalia: I'm a bit of a history geek, so the idea of a show based on personified nations sounded pretty cool to me, and for what it's worth, when APH does do historical humor, or even just stereotype jokes, it usually works. However, in actuality, for most of the show's jokes, you could replace the nations with any standard wacky comedy anime characters and have it fail just as hard. Hetalia seems to aim for one fandom, but serve another, and I guess I'm not in the fandom it's serving. Interestingly enough, there's a webcomic called Scandinavia and the World that was directly inspired by Hetalia that does deliver on the political and historical humor (albeit on a smaller scale). It probably goes to show something, but I'm too tired to figure out what.

 

[Wintermoot]

Angel Beats:
the ending it felt extremely rushed.
I was genuinely interested in seeing how the other characters died but they only showed 1 or 3 character,s death,s also what they had to do to pass on.

and I guess Pokemon for not following the Manga (which I find more interesting and closer to the games).

 

[Racecarlock]

Toyetic anime. Jesus Christ am I tired. In pokemon I swear to god every episode ends on some variation of the phrase "I am going to work hard on getting stronger" "Me too!". And it's gotten ridiculously long. He's been on the road for eleven god damn years, just have him win the masters championship already or whatever it's called! It never ends, and the characters have way too much mutual respect. I swear to god I'd rather watch paul, because even though he's a cliche, he's still more interesting than ash "I am going to get stronger too!" ketchem.

Then there's bakugan. Seriously, it's also getting way too long. First there was the new vestroia thing, then there was the vexos, then there was the gundalians, and now there's chaos bakugan, which is finally wrapping up, not that it'll matter, as I'm sure that immediately when they finish and try to get something up for friendly competition again, they'll be invaded by some wizards or something. Oh, and "Ability Activate!" is really starting to get on my nerves. Do they really have to say that every time they attack? There's no point.

And finally, beyblade metal fusion. Again, every episode has repeated bullshit about "Blader spirit". And again, they also have to repeat bullshit about getting stronger about every episode. There are a few interesting plot threads, but they get put on hold so the show can focus on the generic "I am unbeatable except by the big villian once" hero. And the villain's top has the lamest excuse for having apparently unbeatable (that is probably until the second battle with the hero) dark power. What's the big secret? It spins to the left. I am not kidding, that's the damn power! It sounds like any idiot could do that, but the big villain rival guy (Ryuga, as if you give a fuck) is apparently the only one on the entire damn planet who could make his top spin in reverse. All I gotta say is, I hope chinga doesn't end up battling a bunch of australians. Oh, there's also another big villain guy, but he's just the "Shady businessman" cliche and doesn't really do anything except scheme and spoil the plots of future episodes. The only cool things are the battles, this can be said for the other two I talked about. But the plots are horrible and the characters are the worst cliches imaginable. And the shows last forever, seriously, I don't see any ends in sight. No final seasons or episodes except for bakugan, which I'm pretty sure is already making up its next big bullshit alien invasion.

 

[Vankraken]

Im not a fan of anime in the slightest so whatever.

Blue Gender - You have an amazing concept of soldiers with mechs battling giant armored bugs in ruined cities. And they go ahead and fill the entire middle of the series with lame character development (when up to this point characters died off like flies), then things take a turn at WTF insane boulevard, goes down the old "im a special person so i can do what squads of soldiers can't", and end with a curve ball ending that just feels preachy and pulled from a dark and smelly place.

I guess its a cultural thing (reason why I dislike anime in general) but it felt like the beginning and the ending were made by different people. Also animation quality seemed like it took a dive mid way through.

 

[Rpground]

4kids, nuff said

 

[Mallefunction]

Death note.

Spoiler

L dying wasn't the deal breaker. That was shocking, but I kind of liked that. Completely unexpected. No, what put me off is they had no fucking clue what to do after. The two fill in detectives both sucked, and Light's defeat was disappointing, as he lost by sheer luck. Mikami was the one who made a mistake, not Light explicitly. I would have bought if Light fell by his own Hubris after defeating L, getting too cocky and not expecting this L wannabe to actually be smart at all. That would have had Near being a little dweeb make sense. But no, it was just Mikami acting outside of L's orders, and ruining it for both of them. It kinda shows Light couldn't control everything, but it wasn't satisfying at all, nowhere near as much as if Light had made an oversight himself say, or if Near had actually shown some really genius in figuring out his plans, instead of getting a lucky break. So they wanted to bring Light down, have him break down as a child as he couldn't accept losing. That could have worked, but they just handled the whole thing really poorly. The entire last episode just sucked, in every respect.

/rant.

Pretty much this.

Also, I honestly HATE how almost every anime tries to have young characters. I get that it's a cartoon and younger people watch them, but I'd rather see NON-teen protagonists and the like.

The character designs are pretty annoying too. Men look like twiggy women and women look...well, I'm not even gonna go there.

Just....cut the high school drama and the pantyshots. I MIGHT get back into anime if that happens.

 

[TheDrunkNinja]

Spoiler: Death Note Spoiler

L dying. I lost all interest after that.

Yep. That's pretty much it.

 

[Tarkinor]

For me, it's the constant cliches. There are a lot of amazing animes that still come out, but I see so many interesting plots that get bogged down by cliche anime actions, conversations, etc.

H20 Footprints in the Sand is a good case of this. The cliches become less and less as time goes on, and by the end it's fixed itself (If you ask me) but the beginning has a lot of problems due to the cliches that bog it down.

 

[Drakmeire]

Toriko sucking as much as it did, or does.
Premise: Overly buff dude goes around the world and murders giant monsters with his fists to eat them and create the best foods ever.
How you screw up that awesome premise: Ignoring interesting characters, focusing on the most Generic villain of all time, and taking 3 F*CKING Episodes to walk to the bottom of a tunnel and then taking 3 more to break up a monster fight (All one fight in one room, NOTHING HAPPENS)
Meanwhile in 26 episodes, Tengen Toppa Gurrenn Lagann went from People living in an underground village to people in space piloting million light-year tall giant robots.
Progression is a good thing people. I don't want a 50+ episode series that could have been completed in 10 well made episodes.

 

[Rack]

The last half of Evangelion. The premise was so awesome and the plot threads they laid in those episodes were incredible. Then it just went crazy and they kept making movies that "This time would make actual sense honest" but were still just trash.