This is just a quick blog I wanted to make detailing what I think are some of the worst installements from some of my favorite franchises. The worst series contained within them. I'm making this mostly to show that a series can have something bad without taining everything about it.
(Dis-Honorable Mentions):
Magicka 2:
Magicka 2 is by far the best thing in this blog that said it was also the most disappointing for me. The story I didn't like at the time of release although since have come around on it, and the comedy is as good as ever. But the gameplay is so neutered; it used to really be skill based where if you were bad at the game your entire party would comedically wipe itself out hilariously and then when you got good at it you became an arcane god, the embodiment of what a wizard realistically and interestingly would be. Now Single-player is tediously hard and multiplayer it's a chore to lose.
Yes Pre Cure 5 Gogo:
My least favorite season of Pretty Cure. It's not bad though, it's just kinda bland like all the worst Pretty Cure Seasons are. It's the sequel season that killed off sequel seasons. When you have characters that already completed their character arcs what do you do in the sequel. You'd think a good writer would give them a new character arc that is a logical progression from the last one, an average writer would give one that is a different arc, and a bad one would give them the same arc. The writers for this season decided to go completely different path and just have it so no one progressed this season. Except for Milk, Milk's a lot better.
Freedom Force Comics:
I'm not a sense-based person, I'm an intuition based person. I don't often recognize whether something looks good or not. So if I can recognize the problem here it must be massive. The art of the FF comics is awful, that pic above is one of the least egregious examples. That said outside that the story is just fine...it's mostly just the cutscenes from the first game minus the fun parts where you actually play the game with your own Hero Squad, not sure what the point is unless you want to get the story faster then you would from playing the game.
Pyramid of Light movie:
Yeah this movie is pretty dumb and reads like a bad fanfiction. That said it's worst qualities are the flaws Yu-Gi-Oh! as a series already had just magnified so if you're already a Yu-Gi-Oh! fan you probably have at least some tolerance for this dumb stuff in this film. Plus I just really like the Yu-Gi-Oh! cast
Xiaolin Chronicles:
I've heard it's awful that said I disqualified on the simple basis that I haven't seen any of it.
Saint Seiya Netflix Series:
Same as above, I've heard it's terrible but I haven't seen any of it.
Onto the actual picks
5: Metroid: Other M:
Yes. Other M is only 5 on this list.
Metroid is probably overhated, there's obviously massively worse games out there. But it's so against the tone of Metroid for me and everything Metroid stands for. The gameplay is fine, pretty mediocre all things considered, but the story is really bad and for a series that has had such continuity until now, this felt bizarre and so out of place.
I'm not at all against the idea of Metroid wanting to explore Samus' character more or even her connection to her femininity. That said it's somehow both shallow and contradictory to the other games in execution.
4: Princess Tutu Manga
Imagine Princess Tutu but without the parts people liked about Princess Tutu. No Drosselmeyer, no symbolic or moral complexity, no metafictional storyline. It's like somebody was trying to make as general an mg series as they could. Every other bad series on this list I've seen I can at least sorta understand what they were going for. I have no idea what the appeal of this was supposed to be.
And the real kicker is they kept the dancing in, one of the more iconic elements of Princess Tutu. But if you're not seeing the problem yet....this is a manga. The dancing was impressive in Tutu because of it's graceful animation. In manga panels, you need to be an amazing artist to capture the flow and beauty of dance in manga panels...this does not do that.
3: PPG 2016:
Full disclosure, have only seen part of the series. I went back and forth on where to put this series from #5 and #2 so figured it belonged in the middle. It does have some surprisingly good episodes as well as some absolute terrible episodes so it average out at pretty bad. The characters have lost all agency and often it doesn't seem like it wants to be a superhero series; the characters are quite unlikeable especially the professor, the comedy is often childish gross-out. Episodes like Bubbles the Blue maybe surprisingly emotional, but exceptions don't disprove trends.
2: Cutie Honey-Tennyo Densetsu
I mostly made this blog to comment on this series because I had it to research. I love Cutie Honey but mostly for series outside the original manga, and certainly not for the sequels to the original manga. This series repeatedly plays sexual harrasment and assault towards males as a joke. There's one point where they legit discuss whether males can be raped, and it's not treated like definitely yes and it's just as bad. Honey says males can be raped, but it's treated as her being sweet and nice instead of you know, doing something what should be the normal decent thing. In case you're like "they didn't know any better, it was the 70s", this came out in 2003. I can understand the confusion given it looks like it came out in the 70s.
If that was one unfortunate thing in an otherwise good manga that would be one thing but it's not like the stories are amazing, it's just sort of middle of the road most of the time, even with a comedic style that normally would match what I like (outside the obvious.)
1: JLA Created Equal
I know there's worse DC comics out there, but this is the worst I've read. It's sad because the premise is a premise I usually tend to like. I like when stories focus on an artificial subset of the normal cast so you get to see character dynamics and interactions you normally wouldn't so a two-parter about what if there was only the women of the DC Earth, sounds like a cool idea. That said it's completely awful to read. We all have different positive values, things we look for in fiction but we also all have different negative values, things we value avoiding in fiction. For me "annoying political tract" is right up there in negative values, second only to gross-out. This is primarily the former with a bit of the latter for flavor I guess.
This is a heavily political story but funny enough I get the feeling it doesn't matter what side you're on, as you'll probably find something to be insulted by. The plot is a cosmic plague comes and kills everyone with an XY chromosome, except Superman because of his powers and Lex Luthor who sealed himself in a vault, and there's this subplot of Superman's seed being used to create a new race of superchildren that kill people with their temper tantrums....it's really stupid.
Oh and apparently with no men around women will make some kind of socialist pseudo-utopia beacuse women are apparently all socialist-leaning and also pure paragons apparently. And then Lex Luthor recruits the male children to rise up against their female oppressors with male stereotypes and...and we're just getting further away from anything cool you can do with this concept. Beyond that, men are treated like violent brutes and women as peaceful incompent damsals without them. Just watch the Justice League episode "Fury." Same type of premise, but done 1,000,000 times better.
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