10 Anime With the Worst CGI
Glorious hand-drawn intensity can unravel the second rough 3D models hit the frame. A single stiff walk cycle, an expressionless face, a texture that shines like wet plastic, each mistake whispers “budget crunch” louder than any soundtrack could drown.
Viewers tune in expecting immersion, only to discover a puppet show instead, and then trade screenshots of the carnage. Poorly matched lighting, chopped frame rates , missing weight physics (take your pick) yank the story off its rails and park it in meme territory.
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The titles ahead collected angry forums, puzzled reviewers, and a legacy of YouTube compilations. Their CGI anime failures live on, a catalogue of caution for every studio tempted to shortcut the craft.
10 SD Gundam Force 2004
Tiny Mechs, Big Visual Gap
Sunrise shrank mobile suits into super-deformed heroes, then rendered them with early 2000s polygons that aged in real time. Background plates sat empty , city streets plain gray, mouths snapping open like toy hinges.
Action relied on reused flips, weightless blaster effects, and camera shakes to fake impact. Older fans recoiled, younger targets found flashier alternatives.
The experiment faded, leaving SD Gundam Force a historical footnote in how brand leverage cannot override tech limits. Nostalgia now files it under charming relic, yet the CGI never charms.
9 Golden Kamuy (Season 1 Bear Scene) 2018
Meme Made of Fur
Episode 3 introduced a hulking brown bear, textured like damp upholstery and lit alien to Hokkaido snow. Asirpa’s hand-drawn scream met a stiff zoological model , comedy eclipsing threat.
Seconds of poor integration undid hours of period detail, spawning GIFs that outlived spoiler grace. Studio Geno tightened 2D beasts later, but the damage clawed deep.
Golden Kamuy remains beloved, yet every recommendation still arrives with a warning about “the bear.” One unfinished asset can haunt an otherwise solid production.
8 Knights of Sidonia 2014-2015
Mannequins in Melancholy Space
Polygon Pictures pioneered full 3D television anime, yet the tech still shackled emotion. Nihei’s horror tone demanded terror, but blank plastic faces blinked without subtle muscle shifts.
Mecha dogfights carried tension, though cockpit shots returned to waxen pilots reciting fear in monotone eyes. The disconnect pulled audiences out precisely when the narrative needed empathy.
Later 3D projects solved much of this, yet Sidonia’s pioneers remain cautionary. Great worldbuilding falters when facial rigs refuse to care.
7 Hand Shakers 2017
Chains, Color Clashes, Chaos
GoHands chased spectacle, packed every inch of screen with swirling gears and neon reflections. Depth-of-field filters slid over low-poly objects , turning action into a kaleidoscope of mismatched resolutions.
The CGI chains meant to anchor fight choreography whipped so fast they smeared into stripes, while character composites floated against city streets that spun like carnival rides.
Compression on streaming sites choked further, leaving viewers dizzy before plot stakes surfaced. Hand Shakers proved that more layers do not equal more impact when none of them align.
6 Mahou Shoujo? Naria☆Girls 2016
Idol Parody, Idle Animation
Three middle-schoolers chatted inside static cafés, limbs looping on four-frame cycles. Backgrounds resembled early VR chat rooms , avatars barely synced to voices.
Dance numbers, normally where idol series flex budget, moved less than karaoke subtitling. Jokes about magical-girl clichés drowned beneath visual monotony viewers tagged as “lazy” rather than satirical.
Potential charm evaporated because the show’s very punchline (pathetic effort) felt unintentional. Naria Girls forgot that parody still needs polish to land.
5 Forest Fairy Five 2017
Mushroom Mayhem, Budget Nil
Short episodes promised whimsical fungi sprites, delivered PowerPoint nightmares. Characters hovered above grass, shadows forgot to attach, and live-capture puppetry created jerky spasms that neutralized any cute intentions.
Textures looked sliced from free clip-art packs, while the palette flickered between scenes like someone toggling monitor presets.
The show’s cult status grew from disbelief; viewers gathered merely to witness the valley where production values hit bedrock. Forest Fairy Five became accidental performance art, celebrating how deeply one project can misunderstand animation.
4 Fist of the Blue Sky: Re:Genesis 2018
Neck Like a Barrel, Punch Like a Pillow
Reviving Kenshiro’s predecessor sounded electrifying, then the trailer revealed a hero whose collar was thicker than rival torsos. Motion capture struggled to bend those exaggerated bones , making every hit glance off as if physics mis-fired.
Street lights glared on rubber skin, background thugs jittered, and signature pressure-point carnage resolved into disconnected sparks.
Fans prayed for the return of hand-drawn grit; instead they received gym-mannequin brawls. Re:Genesis stalled franchise momentum by proving bulk means nothing when movement refuses to cooperate.
3 Kingdom Seasons 1-2 (2012-2014)
Armies of Wax Soldiers
Yasuhisa Hara’s sweeping war epic opened with rank upon rank of uncanny fighters, torsos pivoting on invisible hinges. Crowd scenes felt like outdated strategy games , frame rates dipping whenever cavalry charged.
Individual heroes received sharper line art, yet the massed troops near them looked air-dropped from a different software package, breaking depth cues the moment blades crossed.
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Season 3’s shift to almost full 2D felt like public apology. Many newcomers still slog through the first arcs whispering patience, proof that weak CGI can gatekeep great stories.
2 Ex-Arm 2021
Screensaver Masquerading as Anime
Trailers raised eyebrows, the premiere dropped jaws. Characters floated through Tokyo traffic like exported OBJ files, mouths sliding instead of talking. Camera pans crawled at a slideshow pace , letting viewers count polygons one by one.
Studio Visual Flight admitted minimal anime experience, a confession that echoed through every unfinished explosion and cardboard car chase.
Critics nicknamed Ex-Arm “the lowest bar on MyAnimeList,” while clips went viral for backgrounds that loaded after the dialogue finished. Bad CGI here was not a blemish, it was the entire production.
1 Berserk 2016-2017
Heavy Metal, Hollow Impact
Kentaro Miura’s intricate nightmare deserved reverence, yet GEMBA plastered crude 3D Guts onto painterly backdrops , every swing arriving late, every clang ringing like empty pipe.
Combat relied on looping motions that stripped the weight from the Dragonslayer sword, while close-ups exposed rubbery mouths unable to match the raw screams pouring from the cast.
The manga’s grim splendor vanished inside plasticky shadows; entire threads argued that still panels carried more motion than the televised fights. Berserk’s reboot became, for many fans, a lesson in how ambition without technique turns awe into ridicule.