Welcome to part 2 of our mini-series on good songs from bad shows. This time, we’ll be ending the decade with ending themes! While the music is the best part of many bad shows, it’s extra powerful on an ending theme because of how relieved you feel when whatever trash you’re watching is finally done, at least for this week.




Like with our last entry, we followed Stan’s example and used MAL ratings (below 7.5) as our primary determination for a ‘bad’ show in this list, except when one or more of us had personally seen a higher-rated show and knew it was actually garbage.

We’re still sorting by air date, so let’s start at the top again:

Samurai Girls



Season: Fall 2010 | MAL Rating: 6.90 | Title: Koi ni Sesse Tooryanse | Artist: Basically the entire primary female cast


A lot of these shows’ endings are sung by the main heroines, if not the entire female cast, especially on harem trash like this. That’s not to say it’s exclusive to harem trash, but this show definitely is that.

Star Driver



Season: Fall 2010 | MAL Rating: 7.28 | Title: Pride | Artist: Scandal

The second ending of Star Driver is brought to you today by the magic of Spanish fansubs, because with all the nonsensical Engrish, Flench, and/or made-up chuunibyou words in this show, it might as well be a foreign language anyway.


Infinite Stratos



Season: Winter 2011 | MAL Rating: 6.94 | Title: Super☆Stream | Artist: Basically the entire harem


While season 2 was definitely worse, it simply carried over the ending theme. We’re putting it here because it was still trash and this is where it started.

Guilty Crown



Season: Fall 2011 | MAL Rating: 7.66 | Title: Departures: Anata no Okuru Ai no Uta | Artist: Egoist


Good lord, what a tremendous waste of not just a good song, but Sony Music in general, from the budget on down. Guilty Crown is not only the poster child of the “good songs from bad shows” concepts, it’s actually the inspiration. We all immediately thought of Guilty Crown first when coming up with our lists.

Accel World



Season: Spring 2012 | MAL Rating: 7.45 | Title: Unfinished | Artist: Kotoko

This show started off dumb and got actually painful to watch later on. We’d have preferred the show itself went unfinished, as the second cour was horrible. (It should surprise nobody that the light novel is written by the same author as SAO, which also had a godawful second cour in the Fairy Dance arc.)


Sankarea



Season: Spring 2012 | MAL Rating: 7.45 | Title: Above Your Hand | Artist: Annabel


This show can just stay buried. It didn’t have anywhere near as much bite as any of its topics should’ve carried.

Unbreakable Machine-Doll



Season: Fall 2013 | MAL Rating: 7.26 | Title: Maware! Setsugetsuka | Artist: All three main heroines


An amazing, upbeat, poppy song attached to harem trash with a yandere robot girl slobbering over an uninterested OP protagonist. NEXT.

Strike the Blood



Season: Fall 2013 | MAL Rating: 7.28 | Title: Signal | Artist: Kanon Wakeshima

The second ending is a poignant, beautiful song that doesn’t belong anywhere near the garbage fire this show became at the end.


Magical Warfare



Season: Winter 2014 | MAL Rating: 6.13 | Title: Born to Be | Artist: nano

Fuck Magical Warfare. We feel bad for nano for being stuck to this show, and there’s more ‘tragedy’ for her coming up. This is also notable for having one of the worst endings (not ending themes, how the plot finished) in anime history...


Blade & Soul



Season: Spring 2014 | MAL Rating: 6.16 | Title: Rainbow | Artist: Lego Big Morl

This one is kind of the reverse of Magical Warfare in a contradictory way. The plot improved toward the end, but the budget got drastically cut. The animation here is probably the best in the series, which isn’t especially unusual for anime, but it’s very exacerbated in this case.


The Irregular at Magic High School



Season: Spring 2014 | MAL Rating: 7.68 | Title: Mirror | Artist: Rei Yasuda

This show had absolutely amazing songs. Two great openings, two great endings (this is the 2nd). It also fucked up the pacing, emphasized the bullshit technobabble, and made everything even creepier than the light novel. And yet, somehow, Japanese Magical Batman is getting a second season in 2020...


M3: The Dark Metal



Season: Spring 2014 | MAL Rating: 6.66 | Title: Sable | Artist: nano

Aaaaand here’s the other nano entry for this list. This was actually a tough show to choose an ending from, because it was terrible and four songs (2 openings, 2 endings) were great. But nano was responsible for the second ending, and we wanted to show the wide range of crap she gets picked for.


Rail Wars!



Season: Summer 2014 | MAL Rating: 6.45 | Title: OVERDRIVER | Artist: ZAQ

Ah yes, the war of women trying to rail a trainsexual. What a crock of shit. ZAQ gets a lot of shit shows, but some of them (Trinity Seven) are enjoyable. This one really, really wasn’t.


Aldnoah.Zero 2



Season: Winter 2015 | MAL Rating: 7.07 | Title: aLIEz | Artist: Mizuki

Zero is definitely the right word for this show. We’re surprised that’s not its MAL score.


Fuck Slaine.

Rokka: Braves of Six Flowers



Season: Summer 2015 | MAL Rating: 7.46 | Title: Secret Sky | Artist: Michi

This show makes us want to puke worse than the swamp girl. Another show with multiple good songs trapped in it, this one had 3 great endings.


Weakest Undefeated Bahamut



Season: Winter 2016 | MAL Rating: 6.80 | Title: Lime Tree | Artist: nano.ripe

Not to be confused with nano, nano.ripe is a very different artist with a COMPLETELY different voice. Kinda like how this shitshow is not to be confused with the much better Rage of Bahamut.


The Asterisk War II



Season: Spring 2016 | MAL Rating: 7.24 | Title: Ai no Uta: Words of Love | Artist: Haruka Chisuga


We desperately needed this song to heal our ears after Flora made them bleed every episode.

Mayoiga



Season: Spring 2016 | MAL Rating: 5.61 | Title: Ketsuro | Artist: Rina Katahira

Get lost, Mayoiga. All the trolls claiming this show was some sort of elaborate trolling attempt in itself can also get fucked.


Akashic Records of Bastard Magical Instructor



Season: Spring 2017 | MAL Rating: 7.31 | Title: Precious You☆ | Artist: Basically the entire female cast


This is another one where we had to find a version with a static image. As bad as that thumbnail already is, the actual animation is so, so much worse.

Armed Girl’s Machiavellianism



Season: Spring 2017 | MAL Rating: 7.08 | Title: Decide | Artist: Basically the entire female cast


Harem trash for masochists. (Not animasochists like us. The normal kind. The ones that like it when girls beat the shit out of them.)

Dances with the Dragons



Season: Spring 2018 | MAL Rating: 5.89 | Title: Decadence | Artist: Maon Kurosaki


If the show was actually about dancing, it would’ve been way better, especially with music like this.

Island



Season: Summer 2018 | MAL Rating: 6.49 | Title: Eternal Star | Artist: Asaka

Uggghhhh. This show needs to be marooned and forgotten about forever.

Yu-No: A Girl Who Chants Love at the Bound of This World



Season: Spring 2019 | MAL Rating: 6.72 | Title: Shinri no Kagami, Tsurugi no You ni | Artist: Konomi Suzuki


Yu no it’s bad when this is the level of pun we have to stoop to in order to talk about a show.

Wise Man’s Grandchild



Season: Spring 2019 | MAL Rating: 6.74 | Title: Attouteki Vivid Days | Artist: Nanami Yoshi


A new low for harem trash LN adaptations. (Yes, it still totally counts as harem trash. Fuck off.)

Sarazanmai



Season: Spring 2019 | MAL Rating: 7.67 | Title: Stand By Me | Artist: The Peggles


This may not be the worst show, butt even at the tail end of the decade, we’re not going to give it a pass.

Once again, several (most) of these shows have featured in the Golden Slaine Awards. It’s still a safe bet that the shows listed here from years we haven’t hit yet are gonna get Slained, so you can consider this another mini-preview of things to come from us. We’ll see you in part 3, whenever it’s done.




Love,

—The Animasochists