Hottest Trash Anime of Winter 2022

Trash Rating art by Aaron Schmit - twitter.com/theaaronschmit

"Ex-Arm could've learned a thing or two from this show" Bro Ex-Arm could've learned a thing or two about animation from still pictures...

So as far as I can tell, Geoff's "dumpster fire rating system" works along 3 axes: total bin volume, salaciousness of the items being burned, and intensity of the flames. I couldn't tell you what any of those axes correspond to though. Probably shouldn't think about it too hard.

"Strongest Kirito with the Weakest Tat" just feels like a worse "Misfit of Demon Academy". She says not knowing that the YouTuber will literally point that out 1 minute later

It’s genuinely wild that the writer of Sage Pupil even arrived at “small bladder” as a major character trait for his protagonist let alone the idea that seemingly it’s a trait that’s supposed to be either endearing or “sexy” rather that flat-out vomit inducing.

Not gonna lie tho, after dealing with COVID and getting newfound insomnia from it, these anime really came in clutch for me. Made me fall asleep in a matter of minutes, and it was the best.

The fact I don't watch anime that much anymore and still watch mothers basement trash animes every season is a testament to how funny it is

Watching these videos with my mom is a delight. In order, her responses to the anime listed: "Date the mom!" "Look, his heart is in the right place. He's dumb but he means well, like a golden retriever." "Devillis is my new band name." (I pointed out she plays the harp and she just repeated, louder, "It's my band name.") Also from that same segment of the video: "The plot is dumb but I like the chandeliers." "I feel like I've seen this show before. I know I only started watching anime last year but I swear I've seen this before." "Are we sure it was supposed to look like that? Maybe they shipped it early." "Who is this for? No, really, who is this for? Who is into this? Is anyone?"

Is anyone else gonna acknowledge how that bit about magic systems being more for character development and not fight choreography is genuinely great writing advice?

I remember reading the synopsis for Orient and thinking "Man, this really sounds like nationalist propaganda for 'traditional japanese culture need to expel foreign outsiders corrupting our culture'"

always blows me away how much the protagonists look exactly like kirito. This has to be an intentional grift at this point

That description of that dialogue-free montage in pupil is giving me weird vibes to a nightmare I had where Promised Neverland's sequel was shit and ended on an out of context powerpoint presentation. Whether or not Pupil's creators somehow has access to my unconscious mind, that bodes badly.

I feel like one of the most disappointing things I've encountered in the Hottest Trash series thus far is hearing the phrase "Alternate history Japan that was conquered by Spanish Conquistadors" and then learning that the result was the bad kind of garbage and that they did literally nothing with that particular Man in that particular High Castle.

What I find so funny about the shitty worldbuilding of Strongest Sage is that there was already an explanation for why the common view of crests is so mistaken in the future, the MC himself. Given that the MC was the strongest being on the planet despite having the crest least suited for combat, it is understandable that many people would think that the crest he had was actually the strongest due to some hidden potential it had that only the MC managed to unlock. Many people with the same crest as the MC would be inspired by him, causing them to try to reach the level he did. This would artificially inflate the average strength of the people with the crest in comparison to the others, making it seem more powerful. Tactics that used the strengths of that crest would be expanded upon, leaving the others underdeveloped. This creates an feedback loop, where even after the records of the MC have been lost to time everyone is now so used to this new status quo that this misconception grows larger and larger. Granted, this explanation still doesn't really make much sense and the magic system still needs to have some balancing issues fixed, but it's still better than what the author wrote. If you want to keep the demons in, just have them exploit this in an effort to weaken the humans.

The basic idea of "Strongest Sage with the Weakest Crest" feels so bland and stupid. So there are four magic crests someone can be born with that determines their magical aptitude. The main character is a powerful sage, however he has the weakest of the four crests. So he just reincarnates as someone with the strongest crest right at the story's start and...that's it. It's the namesake of the story and yet almost all of it's depth(which is basically none) is fully explored in a single episode. Oh but apparently people in his new time period now view that particular crest as the new weakest crest. But they're wrong. That's it. It is still in fact the objective strongest crest, and the people of this time period aren't wrong for categorizing people's worth based on their crest, they're just wrong about which one is in fact the objective best. The main character is constantly "surprising" people with how strong he is, even though we as the audience already know that he is a legendary reincarnated mage from thousands of years ago who now possesses the objective best magic crest. This makes his constant shows of power to other characters completely meaningless and hollow to the audience, because we know that in reality he doesn't really have anything to prove and nothing to strive for.

The decision to completely skip the inciting incident and have an unexplained, dialogue free segment of wandering the world last so long was truly baffling to me when I experienced it.

I saw four episodes of World End Harem, it's like a Hentai, but if nothing ever happens. What a strange circumstance of events that made this show possible.

I'm giving your rating system a "chubby housecat basking in a sunbeam, waving it's paws lazily in the air to entice you to bury your face in it's belly." This is the highest rating conceivable.

Orient being boring actually hurts my soul. Magi is in my top 3 favorite anime of all time, so I had some really high hopes for this one. Sure, I wasn't expecting it to be on quite the same level in terms of overall quality, but... this? I mean, if the show by some miracle does get substantially better down the road, then I'm all for it. But for now it pains me to say that its just a massive letdown.

If Wise Man hadn't been another damn "Trapped in a VR MMO" story and had committed to the Sage succumbing to a mysterious transformation that also stripped his powers and memories...that might have been an interesting premise.