There surely lies a downside to every success story. Remember what 2008 Dark Knight’s Harvey Dent quoted, “You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain”. This is what happened with the anime listed below, they had a great premise but ultimately failed.
#1 Bleach
Bleach used to be among the shonen Big three (Naruto, One Piece, and Bleach). It presented a unique and never seen before shonen built. The first two arcs were refreshing with a good amount of action, humor, character development, and several heartfelt moments. The downfall began with uncomprehending and repetitive material, plot holes began to accumulate and was eventually canceled in its initial run.
#2 Erased
The Erased anime had several scenes that resonated with the audience on a deep emotional level, some brilliant moments of tension scenes that can be considered among the best-directed scenes in anime history. In the psychological thriller, the villains’ motives have the utmost importance and erased totally fails to deliver on that end. It has earned critical acclaim but the ending impairs some of its calibers.
#3 Charlotte
Charlotte is the original story from the creator of Angel Beats, Jun Maeda. The synopsis is quite appealing: super-powered teens, incredible abilities, and the price they have to pay for these abilities. Hence, it started how an anticipated Maeda’s work would do but eventually wasted its potential with the forced ending. The story didn’t get proper development. Charlotte appears as a tank full of ideas that went in vain didn’t get the required time to flesh its true potential. The rushed last few episodes and a bad ending left an otherwise great anime under the shadows.
#4 Fullmetal Alchemist
The 2003 version of Fullmetal Alchemist had a lot wrong with it, compared to 2009’s more manga faithful Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood. The conclusion undermines several of the things that made the original series so great. Fortunately, the bad ending was rectified due to FMA Brotherhood. The studio avoided an easy way to end, made useless sacrifices. The manga had a genius ending, where Ed thinks of a way to bring back Al’s body without any worthless sacrifice.
#5 Future Diary
Future Dairy a blend of action, horror, sci-fi, and romance managed to gather a lot of acclaims but the ending is anything but meaningful. It made no contextual sense. The bonus scene backfired, left the viewers confused and annoyed. The OVA came out two years after when series ended, leaving many die fans in the dark for far too long.
#6 Tokyo Ghoul
Tokyo ghoul had exhilarating source material to pull from but the anime met with divisive dismay and animosity. For a story governed by painstaking detail and heart-wrenching tragedy, its anime adaptation left much to be desired. Actually, the anime started pretty decently but soon it started deviating and losing its faithfulness towards the manga. They downplayed the deaths, suffered from densely packed and bad animation. The poor pace and lack of detail tossed out everything that made season 1 work.
#7 The Gantz
The Gantz manga never fails to appear in the recommendation list of best seinen manga out there. The anime adaptation for the same ended up being made too fast, it surpassed the manga and chose to change paths and went in its own direction. The rushed ending shouldn’t have been a thing.
