Anime & Manga / So Bad Its Good

This page is for anime and manga you wouldn't admit watching to like-minded friends, but you just can't look away.

Sometimes a show can do good or bad, but the dub job falls into that rare niche of, while still listenable, being impossible to hear with a straight face.

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General

A.D. Police: To Protect and Serve, a bastard offshoot of Bubblegum Crisis, which focused on a super-cliched team of police who specialize in combating berserk Boomers (or Voomers, depending on the dub/sub). It has some... interesting... animation lapses, and is accidentally hilarious from beginning to end. Given that it is both a cheesy action movie, cheesy police procedural, and a cheesy anime, it becomes a veritable trope goldmine.
- Not to be confused with A.D. Police Files, an OVA prequel from the early 90s, which was actually fairly decent, as was the A.D. Police: Dead End City tie-in manga. Although some point out how the third OVA episode is almost a direct ripoff of RoboCop and how extreme/over-the-top the violence/sex was throughout. There's a jarring scene with a sexy female scientist basically using her cyborg creation like a giant stripper pole.
Angel Cop: Even when not taking into account its ridiculous and over-the-top profanity-ridden dub, the series as a whole isn't much better. It's filled with buckets of blood, and a stupid plot that shows what could happen if the Jews take over America, and the newly Communist America attempts to take over the world. It's up to Japan to stop them with their awesome technology! Also, the main sexpot villain looks more like a man in drag than anything else. The show is stupid and weird in every way, but that's what makes it such a blast to watch!
Blood-C is so rife with Narm, Idiot Balls, and ridiculously over-the-top violence that shatters the Willing Suspension of Disbelief that most viewers consider the anime better as a comedy than any sort of serious drama or suspense series.
The studio Knack Productions produced many of these (although some of their shows, such as the The Little Prince anime, were successful). The most infamous example by far is Chargeman Ken!, which really must be seen to be believed. It would have been long forgotten had it not been for one person uploading the DVD re-release of it on Nico Nico Douga, and the nonsensical narm has undergone extreme memetic mutation since. Two episodes in particular are infamous: one where Ken's sister obsesses over a football-star whose every line has become a Catchphrase/meme who begs Ken to show him his "Charging-Go" (episode 4), and another where Ken uses a kidnapped scientist as a human bomb to get rid of some aliens (episode 35). When Discotek Media licensed it, they used its awfulness as a selling point
Dennou Boukenki Webdiver. It's basically Transformers in cyberspace and with thinly-disguised expies as the cast, though the plots are totally different. It features gems like terribly hammy acting, poor CGI with little to no movement, excessive reuse of stock footage, a Big Bad sentient computer virus called "Deletloss" (and later it's revealed that it's a formless Eldritch Abomination alien that took over a race of computerized Plant Aliens a million years before the story, without any explanation of why it would target a "kids' playground" cyberspace), and an even more poorly written Darker and Edgier Trapped in Another World second season that throws many of the established plotlines of the first season out the window while introducing a stock shonen villain and unmemorable Monster of the Week (instead of freeing the other guardians from Deletloss's control, which already completed in the first season). Yet it was considered memorable for those who watched it, thanks to its catchy opening and ending themes and the fact that it was one of the first roles of Tomokazu Sugita, where he voiced the Optimus Prime Expy called Gladion. Also for the fact that it's conceptually similar to the later Code Lyoko.
Diatron-5 (a.k.a. Space Transformers), a Korea-produced anime, has Off-Model animation, a hero who sounds like both a 25-and-8-year-old (if you're going to leave his grunts undubbed, it might help if his original voice matches the dub voice...), the grandest case of Artistic License – Biology (Ivy, the "world's most talented girl", has a goddamn galaxy in her body, which is what the heroes have to be injected into... and no blood either, since they didn't drown after injection), a plot that starts off incoherent and gets worse from there... Gods. The clincher is the voice acting—not only does everyone sound bored out of their minds, half of the cast don't sound like native English speakers (the other half are British). And that's not counting the DVD cover, which has artwork (and character designs) ripped straight from Gundam and possibly AKIRA. Despite all this, it still manages to be entertaining—after all, what other anime claims that the immune system of a cybernetically-enhanced girl is comprised of tribal, bumbling "White Soldiers"?
Dragonaut: The Resonance was often affectionately dubbed the feel-good comedy of the year thanks to its bizarre writing, copious amounts of Narm, and an absurd plot held together by a metric ton of Fanservice. You know you're in for something good when the show begins a tragic, horrifying space shuttle accident... followed by the main character launching out of the falling debris towards the ground like missile with a blank, nonchalant expression.
Fourteen is a horror manga about the mad mutated chicken professor Chicken George. It's probably the narmiest work of fiction ever. And you won't be able to stop reading.
- Strangely, it's considered a genre classic without any irony in Japan. Compare The Filth, which is no doubt as ridiculous from a non-Western perspective but is pretty highly regarded by the culture that spawned it.
The Gundam offshoot Doozy Bots would more than likely have been So Bad, It's Good had it aired. See the promo video here.
Mobile Fighter G Gundam moves hard away from the Real Robot Genre and straight into the Super Robot Genre. The entire setting is turned into a World of Ham, complete with a Tournament Arc and a Hot-Blooded shonen protagonist. The attacks are laughably over-the-top, the acting is Ham and Cheese top to bottom, and the animation is often stiff. Yet altogether, the show wouldn't even be half as entertaining as it is if it weren't so completely ridiculous.
Some fans feel like this is the best way to view Gundam: Reconguista in G. While the show has a small vocal group of hardcore defenders as well as a lot of people who can't stomach the show at all, the rest can only watch the show with a twisted sense of fascination at just how much of a beautiful trainwreck it is, with all the nonsensical plot-lines, inexplicable character actions, and Non Sequiturs out the wazoo.
Hoshi no Ko Poron (Star Child Poron), like Chargeman Ken! above, has also gone through (albeit minor) Memetic Mutation on Nico Nico Douga. In addition to its horrid animation and nonsensical storyline (if there's any "story" at all) are the constant use of stock music composed by Jean-Jacques Perrey.
Dinosaur War Izenborg, a mix of anime and Tokusatsu from the late 70's. First, the villain is a talking T-Rex, which tries to take over the world. Add to that the no budget animation, laughably bad live SFX, backgrounds made from photographs that never match the perspective the characters are drawn and ridiculous storylines with cringe inducing dialogue. To top it off, each Monster of the Week will meet a gruesome end, usually getting some limbs hacked off by the eponymous mecha's saw blades. In short, it's hilarious!
In Another World with My Smartphone has gained notoriety within the isekai community and legions of detractors, in no small part due to its flawless main protagonist, being entirely devoid of conflict, and filled with the maximum number of cliches in the genre. That said, the cheap animation and simple art style of its anime adaptation has been likened to that of anime from the late '90s, giving it a charmingly retro feel in comparison to the slick vector, digital and CGI animation used in many other shows.
Mad Bull 34 is either one of the most terrible anime ever made...or one of the most awesome. Sure, it's sleazy as hell, but it's also rendered unintentionally hilarious thanks to a combination of the English voice acting, some animation errors, and the fact a good chunk of what happens onscreen could only be described as sheer insanity. Among some of the crazier moments: the main character tying grenades to his pubes during a stakeout, that same character flipping an APC, and quite possibly the biggest over-reaction to a grocery store robbery EVER.
A Manga With Too Many Premises is a Cliché Storm chock full of twists and turns. Two Childhood Friends reuniting by chance isn't too eyebrow-raising, but then they just happen to realize that they're half-sisters, fall in love in spite of that, and discover their Telepathy and body-swapping abilities in the space of four pages. Given how over-the-top and cliched it is, this had to be intentional.
Mars of Destruction, a short tie in to an obscure dating game, universally has some of the lowest ratings on almost any major anime site (My Anime List, etc). Despite this, many will deem it to be "so bad it's good" with its obvious shout outs to Neon Genesis Evangelion, horribly stiff animation, virtually no conceivable plot, and bad dialogue. People have given it Perfect Scores and written reviews of how much they enjoyed it. A similar case has occurred with another Idea Factory anime, Tenkuu Danzai Skelter+Heaven.
Musashi Gundoh must be the epitome of this trope for anime. It is so unintentionally hilarious in how badly it was executed that the DVD version with improved quality animation is actually less popular than the original broadcast version (with just plain QUALITY animation). It's never been translated, but it's been reported that it becomes even funnier if you actually understand what the characters are saying, because entire scenes that were crucial to the story never made it into the show itself due to budget constraints or animators claiming they were too difficult to draw, resulting in the show making almost no sense whatsoever.
- That and it has the most ear-shattering theme in any anime.
Ninja Slayer. Based on a novel written by an Occidental Otaku couple, released on the web, and featuring cardboard-cutout animation. The saving graces are how over-the-top and delightfully hammy it is.
Popee the Performer is certainly this, due to the combination of the poor animation, nonsensical plots, and a heavy dose of What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?. Though considering all the Black Comedy and gore present in the series, some would argue that it was intentional and that it adds to the charm.
Super Atragon, especially in the English dub, gets the nod here for:
- Bad translations such as referring to naval gun shells as "missiles" and "Engage" instead of "Fire".
- Truck-loads of ham thoroughly baked and served up by:
  - The Captain, who has No Indoor Voice and managed to develop his own catch-phrase in the 1.5hrs of total runtime! "Undersea Battleship Ra, ENGAGE!"
  - Anette, who has a gratuitous British accent
  - Avatar, with a shrill and grossly overused Evil Laugh.
  - The Scientist, who has an inexplicable German-ish accent.
- An overload of New Powers as the Plot Demands that included a self-leveling bridge, rocket-powered anchors, and the inexplicable ability to fly. Each of these abilities is shown exactly once with the exception of flight, which is used twice but is never relevant to the plot.
- But it delivers all this with gritty Dieselpunk designs, good animation, and an epic soundtrack.
Transformers: Armada 's dub: "Stairs? This keeps getting weirder and weirder!", the fight scenes where nobody seems to move, the long pauses between responses from characters, the lack of movement in non-fight scenes... the failure to keep track of which character has which name...
- Of course, the dub inherited several problems from the already terrible Japanese version. Sure, the dialogue wasn't as bad, but the plot was almost as incomprehensible.
If you have a Tumblr account, you've surely seen this infamous post. It's from a hentai anime called Darling, about a man named Jun Kitano who just married the love of his life, Miyuki, but when Soyoko Mifuni, a publishing agent, tasks him to draw the greatest pornographic manga of all time in the span of 30 days, Jun resorts to his secret power, Hyper Erection Mode, to fuel his writing. Yes.
Transformers: Energon. The original Japanese version, Transformers Superlink, was already weird, slow, and confusing, but merely mediocre. The dub took it right off the rails by constantly mixing up characters, lines, and voices, and seemingly being unable to decide whether or not they'd edit Primus out of the dub (some episodes he's there, in others his lines are edited out and mention of him is replaced with "the core"). This is on top of the fact that the dub often got incomplete animation, leading to such awkward moments as characters' outlines not moving along with them. Even when the animation was finished, the terrible CGI often limited itself to two facial expressions (it would usually switch back to traditional animation if something more impressive needed to be rendered), and "running" consisted of robots sliding across the floor while clumsily swinging their arms. Add to this some of the most bizarre toy shoe-horning in history (there was often no reason for the Transformers to actually transform, so they'd end up transforming to fly through space, sometimes creating situations with cars driving in space.) and you've got an anime that was terrible to sit through on the air, but makes awesome lampoon fodder provided you've got some friends and popcorn with you.
Valvrave the Liberator, a show about angsty teenage vampire mecha pilots in space high school. The plot goes Off the Rails by the second episode. Barely anybody in the cast can think logically. It's overloaded with anime cliches as well as twists on the same, Camp, Narm and Narm Charm...and it's a laugh riot, whether intentionally (as some have argued) or unintentionally. Gloriously so.
The anime adaptation of The Violinist of Hameln was an attempt to make the the plot of the manga, a comedy that parodied similar shounen series (albeit with a dark and serious overarching plot, resulting in strong Mood Whiplash every time something important happened), Darker and Edgier by removing almost all of the comedy. Unfortunately, they had almost no budget to work with (rumor has it that they spent most of it on the rights to Hamel and Raiel's classical music), meaning that the writing was incredibly shoddy and they didn't have enough money to actually animate most of it, making 90% of the anime a sort of slide show of pastel chalked freeze frames with endless whining voice acting on top. In the end, it was cut off at 26 episodes (as opposed to a planned 31) due to poor ratings and ended up with an incredibly unsatisfying Downer Gecko Ending. The anime still manages to be popular today because it's so Narmtastic that it's almost funnier than the manga.
The Anime of the Game Voltage Fighter Gowcaizer is overall pretty bad, having an almost incomprehensible plot, downright weird character designs, and with the most bizarre breast bounce ever. There are only two things that make it worth watching (if you don't count the loads of fanservice); the well animated fight scenes, and the hilariously stupid English dub.
Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie: Pyramid of Light could be considered one of the worst anime movies ever pumped out by 4Kids, for taking the bad plots, dialog, voice acting, and Product Placement leaps and bounds farther than even Yu-Gi-Oh! GX has managed to do. There are reasons, though, that some find the movie so hilariously bad that it was entertaining: the entire lack of explanation as to why anything was happening, or why Yami was suddenly able to summon a gigantic glowy dragon, plus the random kung fu fights with mummies led to much inappropriately-timed laughter. The Abridged version sums it up: "I can't help but feel as if it was some sort of cheap cash-in made to promote a bunch of cards." Japan got a novelization and some extra scenes that explained more of the plot (which helped little to none at all.)
The sexual content in the Zeorymer manga is so random and clumsy that one can't help but laugh. Notable examples include the title robot's IUD power source, the icicle rape scene, and an abrupt shot of female lead Miku's elderly adopted father giving her oral sex. To make things even funnier, despite Miku having a teenage body while clothed, she often suddenly has a little girl's body while nude.
Anything produced by Joseph Lai. This is a super-cheesy, Narmtastic, production full of ridiculous shots, overused gestures, and even MELODRAMATIC camera shots of characters' faces when they announce something stupid. The pronunciation sounds odd, too, to the point where even saying "You married a human being" sounds more like a human bean!
- Thunder Prince (sample here) is yet another one of his abominations. The actors sound like a bunch of high schoolers not taking the entire thing seriously, the screams sound unnatural.....the kid has an Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping moment when he stops talking like a little kid and talks like a 40-year old British Woman! He even has a weird psychedelic nightmare/dream.
Swirl Fighters: Cheap Chinese Beyblade knockoff? Check. Piss-poor "anime"-styled animation? Check. Badly-integrated CGI? Check. A story that makes no goddamn sense? Check. Horrible English dub? Check. Narm? Double Check. The result is quite possibly The Room of anime.
School Days at first looks like the usual, trivial triangle love story, already watched 320202 times, with nothing new or interesting. Then it becomes a sadomasochistic harem anime filled with plot twists so absurd, nonsense and after all unsurprising, that the series results hilariously bad, and self-trolling. In the end you can't help but laugh and hope that the cherry on the cake will be the male protagonist getting curbstomped as a due payment for his behavior. Well, the last episodes are supposedly tragic in tones, but they are actually tragicomic.

Animation

In both Chargeman Ken! and MD Geist, characters walking are often represented by sliding the cel up and down.
Played for Laughs in Gintama, the opening of episode 183 is literally done in MS Paint.
Hellsing had its fair share of hilariously bad animation problems, but this took the cake, big time.
This is about half of why Kemono Friends got so popular. The animation consists of very low-quality CG, to the point where the wheels on the Japari Bus don't even move. A lot of people watched it just to make fun of how bad it looked, but they stayed because it had genuinely good writing.
The animation in Lost Universe in episode 4 before it was revised for home video. The animation for the first few episodes had been lost in a fire and had to be quickly reconstructed before broadcast. The results are about as bad as you'd expect.
The terrible animation from the first two seasons of Sailor Moon Crystal can sometimes fall into this, especially certain shots◊ with◊ Rei◊. Fortunately, many of the problems were fixed for the DVD and Blu-ray releases.
The low quality of the animation from Polyphonica is so bad it has to be seen to be believed. MST'd here in the infamous "QUALITY Van" chase scene. Said MST-ing is in the form of text balloons that pop up to describe every individual flaw with the animation. There are so many of them, and they come at you so fast, it's impossible to keep track, meaning it's still just as funny on the replay, as you see things you missed before. The scene was Enhanced on DVD to fix Off-Model animation and consistency issues, but the physics of the scene don't change at all.
The Skelter+Heaven OVA gives us a ludicrously failed attempt to mix cel animation with CGI. It's... impressive, really. Here's a sample.
Twinkle Nora Rock Me! has very poor animation — if you can even consider it animated at all. The whole 30-minute OVA, as this clip demonstrates, looks like a slideshow made entirely out of keyframes with no in-betweens, with some back-and-forth loops of minor movements. There are a few dance scenes with smoother animation than the rest of the OVA, but only barely — the "dancing" tends to comprise of stiff movement between different poses over a sliding background.

Music

The English dubbed songs for Bubblegum Crisis are surprisingly good, if a little lackluster, for an early-90s anime dub, but Hey Mr. Dandy is very much an exception. It sounds like it's being sung by a bad Elvis impersonator and also misses the point of the original song by sounding light and cheery instead of somber and tragic (the lyrics being mostly ironic). Still, there's a certain awesomeness about it that's hard to hate too much, and it's clear the singer is at least trying his hardest to belt out those lyrics!
The dub opening for Cardcaptors. "The secrets of the Clow - were all a mystery~! But when this mighty book was opened, the powers were set free! CARDCAPTORS - a mystic adventure! CARDCAPTORS - a quest for all time!" It's just so damn catchy! Made especially funny by the fact that it's not that bad a theme song - it's just incredibly unfitting for the show.
Doraemon had a rare Asian English CD featuring an English version of the classic theme song. This rendition of the song makes Doraemon fans laugh due to the MIDI music and hard-to-decipher lyrics. "This is nice, paradise..."
The first Dragon Ball series has examples of this:
- The European Spanish opening can be seen as an example of this. The performer really has a great voice, but the lyrics are full of rather off-kilter phrases and inconsistent timing. Oh, and how not to forget the mythical "LA BOLA DE DRÁGON SERA AL FIN NUESTRAAAAAAAAAAA".^note
- The original German opening is a So Okay, It's Average, but its music video.....judge for yourselves.
- The English opening theme of the Harmony Gold dub is also this. Remember kids, Zero is our hero.
The original English theme for Dragon Ball Z, "Rock the Dragon", isn't a better choice then the original song. Dragon Dragon, Rock the Dragon, Dragon Ball Z *roar*
- The notorious Welcome to the Grand Tour rap is this for Dragon Ball GT.
Bleach: Ichigo's theme "Number One" at least in the first few story arcs. It's sung in perfectly good English, and is on its own not a bad song. It just gets overused in the show to the point of hilarity.
Intentionally "so bad it's awesome", Lucky Star's Konata's karaoke of the Dragon Ball Z theme.
The version of Yuzurenai Negai used in the Latin American dub of Magic Knight Rayearth has this quality. The original song is pretty, but for the dub they inexplicably choose male singers with deep voices, and that's before we talk of the changes on the lyrics. It's known among the fans as "the mariachi version'', and you can see why.
- Sandy Fox's terrible English version is this too, especially when ever her squeaky voice fails to reach certain high notes. It routinely shows up on many "worst English anime songs" lists and was even written off by Media Blasters, who refused to include it on their DVD re-release.
The first version of the Brazilian opening of Monster Rancher, that is based on the American opening, has a somewhat hilarious interpretation of the narration present in the beginning of the song. One of the late broadcasters of this anime probably disliked this opening so they made their own version.
The German opening theme for Naruto. "SA-SOO-KE IS REALLY COOL! SAKURA THE BEAUTIFUL."
Niea_7's OP, mostly because the singer's scratchy voice is hard to take seriously.
The opening theme to the 4Kids English dub of One Piece. "HE'S MADE OF RUBBER! How did that happen? Yo ho ho, he took a bite of Gum Gum!"
- The Latin Spanish version has its own merit. Some people even say that this version makes the English version look like a masterpiece.
Some of the original songs for Pocket Monsters (the original Japanese version of Pokemon) have an endearing sort of awfulness. For an epitomizing example, look no further than "Pokemon ieru kana?" ("Can you say the Pokemon['s names]?") – the basis for the "Pokerap" – which starts with a sample of the Beatles' "I am the Walrus" and a hyper-enthusiastic American accented MC, and keeps getting weirder.
The French opening of Saint Seiya sung by Bernard Minet is a cult classic because of how bizarre it is. If the lyrics don't sound hilarious to you, surely seeing Bernard self-inserted in the opening dancing and doing strange steps will. Still not bizarre enough for you? Surely this music video of the French opening of the Asgard saga will do it.
- The original Spanish opening (based on the French opening). The lyrics are mangled so it can fit with the music. But it's just part of the childhood of so many people that no one cares.
"Calling all Spider Riders! Let's Ride!" preformed by the somewhat obscure Canadian rapper Clip.
The English theme song for Sonic X is a cheesy, over-the-top pop-rock song that takes the phrase "Gotta Go Fast" and runs it into the ground: Gotta go FAST! Gotta go FAST! Gotta go FASTER FASTER FASTER FASTER FASTER... (though cheesy over-the-top pop-rock songs have been a staple of the games since Sonic Adventure, so it's fitting).
- This is not the worst one. The theme song used by both the German and Russian dubs is some cheesy techno tune with various voices chanting "SONIC X, SONIC-SONIC X...". For the Russian version of two latter seasons, there's also a voiceover actor saying the name of the show each time it is onscreen.
Most of the music for the Saban Entertainment produced English dub of Digimon is surprisingly good, but the opening theme is a major exception. The lyrics are repetitive (DIGIMON: DIGITAL MONSTERS, DIGIMON ARE THE CHAMPIONS!), it has a weird, hard to place sound, and it doesn't fit the tone of the either the Adventure series or Tamers (especially given the added humor in the dub). However, it has a certain level of awesomeness that makes it hard not to like, and it's clear that composer Paul Gordon actually put some effort into it.
- The Brazilian opening of Digimon Adventure (that is a pitched-up version of the Saban's opening) isn't bad itself (if you ignore the adapted redundant chorus "digimon digitais"), but when it aired for the first time on television, the broadcaster decided to create a "music video" where the singer suddenly appears on the opening through a poorly made Chroma Key and does some hilarious choreography with cloned versions of herself (skip to 0:53).
In Italy, Lupin III had a song about BDSM porn as its opening. See for yourself.

Voice Acting

The 80s English dub of AKIRA provides a ton of nostalgia from those who listened to it when it came out, but by today's standards it's very hard to take seriously, especially with the 2001 redub, which isn't perfect, but is technically superior on pretty much every level. The 80s dub was filled with over-the-top overacting from some characters (especially Tetsuo) and robotic under-acting from others with laughable uses of slang like "That PEA brain!" and very poor line readings like "Fight like a MAAAAAAN!!!!" This dub also had many cases of Acting for Two, and the whole thing sounded like it was recorded into tin cans. The script was also very confusing (making an already-confusing movie into an outright incomprehensible one), and in one case, accidentally gave Kaneda one of Kei's lines. Almost every character's name was pronounced wrong, notoriously poor Kaneda, whose name came out sounding really close to "Canada." This was especially laughable when Tetsuo's voice actor screamed that name at the top of his lungs in the most bizarre way possible.
Bubblegum Crisis's English dub fits here pretty well. It was one of the earliest serious attempts to straight-dub an anime uncut, but the results? Not too good. Actually, the dub is pretty laughable to listen to now with all the monotone performances and voices that sound way too old for most of the characters. The Knight Sabers' voices almost sound like they're from Designing Women (which makes sense considering the dub was made in North Carolina), and Leon sounds like an aged Tim Allen. Fortunately, the Tokyo 2040 reboot got a much better treatment, as it was made years later by ADV Films, and its quality is more in-line with modern English anime dubs.
The illegal "Islamic" Arabic dub of Case Closed, made by Basma Channel (a fundamentalist channel from Saudi Arabia) is something you have to see to believe.
The 80s English dub of Castle in the Sky has similar problems to the one of Akira above. Lots of flat acting and choppy sounding (and poorly written) dialogue, despite making the leads sound younger and not being as loosely adapted as Disney's version was. Muska in particular sounded like he was sleepwalking through the whole movie, saddled with lines like "Now say bye bye!" (which only succeeds in killing the moment with unintentional humor) as he aims at Sheeta in the finale. It's really no wonder the late Carl Macek felt it was not up to his standards. Disney's version, despite Dawson Casting the leads (literally in Pazu's case) and featuring a more chatty script (which was eventually toned down for a rerelease), is superior to this older dub on every level.
The Swedish dub of Cyborg 009 made in the 80's (notice a theme?) deserves some accolades here. All the voices are done by a single, uncredited guy - all the women too, which goes over as well as you would expect - and there's lots of inappropriate swearing that was never there in the first place. But what makes the dub truly interesting in its low quality is the "Blind Idiot" Translation. For over a decade, rumours circulated Swedish forums that the dubbing/translation actually was made by a Danish guy, affectionally given the nickname "Karsten", judging by quirks such as Jet saying "Today me wins". In a podcast interview published in late 2018^note, this rumour was confirmed. The guy in question is Timm Mehrens, and explained in the interview that he was given the script in Danish and had to translate it to Swedish himself as he was dubbing it, even though he had no formal education in the language back then (having absorbed the language from relatives). The result manages to sound like a Google Translate translation made before Google Translate existed. Example:
Girl: Lever den, eller hur, farfar? (Does it live, isn't that right, grandpa?)
Granddad: Veh? ... Ja, varför inte? Jag är väl ändå din farfar... (Huh? ... Sure, why not? I'm your grandpa, aren't I...)
Girl: Ja! Det gör du! (Yes! You do!)
That said, not all of Macek's dubs turned out well. Vampire Hunter D was one of his weakest ones, with a lot of soundtrack tinkering, miscast voices (particularly D and especially Dan), acting ranging from monotone to uneven to laughable. Matters were not helped by a cheesy sounding script and fake Transylvanian accents. Sentai's newer version dials all that back and offers generally better performances (although ironically, fans of the Streamline version are now suddenly saying the new dub is bad… despite the fact that the Streamline dub was given similarly bad reviews by the anime community at the time of its release!)
The Demon City Shinjuku's dub by Manga UK has plenty of problems such as various accents embarrassingly slapped onto every character for no particular reason whatsoever.
The 1987 OVA's English dub of Devilman is full of Cluster F-Bomb, even in the places where the original dialogue didn't have such foul language. For example, in one scene where a thug is demanding Akira to give him the rabbit he is holding, while he just says "No, I won't" in the Japanese version, it's changed into "Fuck you!" in the dub. However, most fans find this dub completely hilarious and some even declare this one of the best dubs in anime history.
Akira: Is it okay for me to wear my shoes in here?
Asuka: I don't give a shit.
In Finland, Digimon was originally translated and dubbed by a group called Agapio Racing Team. Their dubbing was so bad it was even lampooned on newspapers, and they got replaced by a more professional team. Even though Agapio's dubs have been off-air for years now, online videos of their weirdest moments as well as parodies are still popular.
AB Groupe's Dragon Ball Z movie dubs (made for European markets – unlike the TV series, these do not use the Canadian cast, and instead use English-speaking expats in France, some of whom worked on Code Lyoko), also known as the Big Green Dub^note (named for Piccolo, who they call "Big Green" for some reason) are so hilariously awful, they have to be heard to be believed. For example, most of the characters, particularly villains, are voiced by some old guy who sounds like an unholy combination of Adam West and Orson Welles. It also led to such memetic quotes such as "Come, magic cloud"^note Ever wondered where Dragon Ball Z Abridged got that joke from? and "Let that child alone". Here's an excerpt from the end of Lord Slug. (Yes, Goku did just yell Kamehameha when using a Spirit Bomb.)
- From Malaysia, we also have the rare "Speedy" dub, named after the company that produced it. Not only is the voice acting extremely corny, but the translations, sourced from the Cantonese dub, are incredibly ludicrous, with lines such as "Like human beings dislike the sound of rubbing glass probably the soundwave of the whistle, which a human being blows might echo suddenly irritating the ears of the Namek people, their nerves can't endure any of the pain."^note And almost all of them (including the aforementioned one) are delivered like the voice actors were high on caffeine, with accents so thick that the dialogue is almost incomprehensible at times. As an added bonus, the music distorts from time to time because of the dub's incredibly poor audio transferring methods, giving the impression that the soundtrack itself pretty much gave up on this dub. On paper, it sounds horrible. When you listen to it, however, it's one gigantic riot-fest. Here are a few samples for your viewing pleasure.
- The European Portuguese dub is the source of unlimited jokes in Brazil. Even Team Four Star got in on the joke in one of their outtake videos.
- Many of these odd translations are the result of these dubs being sourced from the French dub. Not only is the French dub considered this in its own right, but the Polish "dub" adds another layer to this by consisting of a Polish Voiceover Translation read over the French audio, with the voiceover taking the French script's inconsistencies and odd terminology even further.
- What about the original Funimation/Saban/Ocean Studios dub?
  Nappa: Vegeta! What does the scouter say about his power-level?
  Vegeta: IT'S OVER 9000!!!!!!
- The Westwood Media dub of Dragon Ball GT ranges from this to Horrible depending on who you ask. A lot of it had to do with the relative inexperience of Blue Water Studios, this was their first major production.
Also from the AB Groupe, the French dubs of animes broadcast in the show Club Dorothée in the late 1980s and early 1990s were quite infamous. When the voices didn't sound hilariously inappropriate, the original dialogues were just brushed over or outright ignored, if not censored. Notorious victims included the likes of Saint Seiya, Fist of the North Star, City Hunter (where the simple fact that the villains had now average French names was hilarious, plus the comically inappropriate voice of Maurice Sarfati for most of them) and Dragon Ball Z (the twangy voice of Éric Legrand for Vegeta particularly stood out). The French opening songs, which often had a tendency to be inappropriately upbeat, also pack tons of Narm Charm.
- About Fist of the North Star in particular – The voice actors hated anime in general, and the series' violent nature especially, so they decided not to work until they were given free reign to dub the characters however they felt like, leading to an absolutely ridiculous and hilarious Gag Dub. "Hokuto de cuisine" and "nanto de vison" remain some of the best puns ever.
  Ken: Décidément, les temps comme les oeufs sont durs. ^Translation
Iga No Kabamaru is a ninja-themed rom-com anime. It received a Greek dub in the 1980s, which was so awful that even Wikipedia can't resist knocking on it.
Despite that in Japan there was low popularity, it acquired immense popularity in Greece. One main reason for this was the low quality of English-based dubbing often called "so bad that it's actually good", but it nevertheless impacted the growth of anime in the country.
On its own, Garzey's Wing is generally considered to be horrible (in fact it earned an entry on the Horrible version of this page). A stunningly inept English dub, however, elevates it straight into this category.
The weird Guin Saga English dub, produced by Sentai Filmworks (not exactly known for their quality work; not surprising when you consider it is just a slice of ADV), and directed by one of the most controversial ADR directors ever, Steven Foster, is so full of this. Taking advantage of it being a Cliché Storm, the characters either overreact or underreact in the non-action scenes.
- It could possibly go into Gag Dub territory, as there's even a man who suspiciously sounds like Droopy.
- It should be noted that this mostly applies to the second half of the show. The first half had decent voice acting. The second half ended up getting a rushed hack job with many examples of The Other Darrin.
The 1980s dub of Macross: Do You Remember Love? is chock full of shoddy translation, strange word choices ("Major Focker", anyone?), and bizarre and/or robotic line delivery by a small pool of Australians and Hong Kong residents, and haphazardly cuts out large portions of the original film. On paper, it sounds like a recipe for disaster. In practice, it's downright hilarious. Here are some highlights.
The dub of the Mobile Suit Gundam movie trilogy. There's a good reason DVD re-releases of the trilogy do not include the dub: the only reason people watch it is to make fun of it.
- The cast and crew of that dub acknowledge its questionable quality and blame its issues mostly on Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino, who supervised its production and made a lot of weird requests and demands.
The Singaporean dub of One Piece from Odex. There's a particular moment you can hear the Japanese voice track (around 1:44 in the video), but with the volume turned down.
- The 4Kids dub probably counts now, due to its unbelievably hokey scripts and stereotypical voices. But when it was the only dub available at the time, it was just "So Bad, It's TRAGIC".
- The original Latin Spanish dub (based on the 4Kids dub) has plenty of Woolseyism, but most of it feels so out of place that fans don't know whether to laugh or pity.
  Crocodile: Piensa un poco sombrero de paja, si tuvieras cerebro te mantendrias lejos de mi, te voy a convertir en un taco de carne! ^Translation
The terrible English dubs from Odex in Singapore are usually this.
- Karin is an infamous example, containing performances from a mix of American actors that happened to be living in Singapore (Chelsea Curto, who played Karin, is a US expat), and other "actors" that barely spoke English. It was full of weird dialogue, awkward line readings, lots of characters sharing actors, and miscasts galore... and it's considered one of the better Odex dubs.
- Fantastic Children is usually considered to be the worst (at least of what Americans saw). Both it and Karin are actually quite entertaining if you don't take them seriously. Their Yu-Gi-Oh! dub gets extra points for being uncut (although it still used the US localized names) and every bit as weird as the 4Kids dub. They actually got a woman to voice Marik, and the results were... interesting.
German dubs are often of questionable quality. The dub for Paranoia Agent is so bad, stiff and overly serious it gives the rather grim show an unintended humourous side. Even Hatomura, who's a lighter character than the rest. Disappointing because there's some real talent cast in the dub.
Normally Pilot Candidate would be unwatchably dull, but the English dub makes it highly entertaining. The Hero sounds like Woody Allen, The Smart Guy has a stereotypical Canadian accent, The Rival sounds like he's voiced by someone who doesn't normally act, and if the credits are to be believed, most of the women were voiced by Michael McConnohie doing his best Lois Griffin impression.
The original English dub of Rurouni Kenshin, called "Samurai X" – produced by Animax, recorded in LA, but aired everywhere except North America – certainly counts. While many of the voice actors are very well-known within the industry (some even came back for the superior BangZoom dub made for North America), this was not their finest hour. Here's a clip.
- The English dubs of the movie and OVAs done by Monster Island Studio veer between this and Horrible depending on who you ask. The poor quality is due mostly to Monster Island being pretty new to the game at the time – before this, they had only recorded one or two other dubs. That doesn't excuse scripts that were way too liberal (to the point that some lines had the exact opposite meaning of whatever the subtitles said), a few bad line-reads that were not corrected, and the fact that the well-received BangZoom dub had come out in the US first, making Monster Island's effort seem like a knock-off. Of the cast, only J.Shanon Weaver, who played Kenshin, seemed to be really trying.
  - Worth noting that the dub of Reflections, recorded years later once Monster Island had established itself, sounds much better. Unfortunately, that OVA's is considered terrible due solely to its storyline.
- The Colombian Spanish dub of Rurouni Kenshin also counts, due to the thicker accents of many of the characters and the inability (due of how Colombian Spanish works) of pronouncing correctly many of the Japanese names and techniques.
Sailor Moon's original English dub is this in the S and SuperS seasons. Linda Ballantyne's painfully bad imitation of original SM voice Terri Hawkes's performance has to be heard to be believed. While she was told to imitate Hawkes, and put forth a decent effort, and got slightly better after a few episodes, she will never be able to live down her loopy delivery and crazy shouting in addition to sounding a couple decades older than the character should. In addition, nearly every other voice actor turned in an awkward, wooden-sounding performance, regardless of their talent (the dub was directed by a French-speaker relying on an interpreter, recording each line only twice and using the better take). Sailor Mercury's replacement voice was especially bad, sounding laughably wooden, with an intense robotic delivery and lots of narm. Another bad voice was Zirconia, sounding eerily like Kermit the Frog (despite being a woman in Japanese), while Dr. Tomoe and Queen Nehelenia were both Ham and Cheese.

Also, the voice actors no longer made much attempt to hide their Canadian accents, so we're cursed with lots of "soarry"s "a-boat"s, and "Sailor Scoat"s. The written dialogue wasn't much better, as the scripts were extremely rushed and inconsistent with attack names changing by the episode, along with really laughable lines that included awkward (and outdated) slang and dialogue completely out-of-character ("You're the BOMB Serena!" "He's so PHAT!" "WICKED cool!"). Of course, Sailors Uranus and Neptune became "cousins" to hide their lesbianism. A website called "Sailor Moon Uncensored" had a field day mocking this dub, and has never been well-received or remembered by any part of the Sailor Moon fandom other than to mock it. At least, that was the case for a good while, until the more professionally done Viz Media re-dub of the series was released, which created its own can of worms, among many other factors too numerous to mention.
- The DiC dub for the first two seasons (Classic and R) was in many respects worse due to its heavy editing and censorship. But as "Sailor Moon Uncensored" pointed out, at least it was professionally butchered, meaning the people in charge at least knew what they were doing; and while the voice actors were far from great, they weren't quite laughably bad... except for one guest character named "Laurie", a animator who gets possessed by a Youma (or... the Negaverse), who was cursed with a bizarre Southern accent that sounds like a really bad actor in a Tennessee Williams play (because that's totally how we expect a shy geeky animator to sound – as you can imagine, Sailor Moon Abridged had a field day with this episode). Sometimes Molly's Brooklyn accent fell into this as well, especially during dramatic scenes. The dub also had its share of laughable dialogue.
- The European Portuguese dub is this, with overacted and hilarious voice acting at best, making many of the serious moments end up causing involuntary laughter. Usagi (or Bunny in the dub) voice in particular is extremely raspy and feels out of place for her character, and his yelling is extremely shrill. As if that wasn't enough, Luna changed her gender to male and gave her the voice of an old man with a throat problem^note, while Artemis became a woman. And that's not to mention questionable translations and massive Dub Name Change. We are not kidding when we say that it looks more like a parody than a real dub.
Corrine Orr and Peter Fernandez... normally, very talented with a wide range. But in Speed Racer? Oh, it's the best Ham and Cheese.
- In the English dub, the Motor Mouth exposition for any given scene ending in a sudden exclamation (OOOH!) became iconic not just of the series, but Anime dubs in general to the point where many a Gag Dub and parody invoked this distinct, peculiar dubbing style.
The Colombian dub of Super Doll★Licca-chan is hilarious, if only because of the dubbers desperately trying to imitate the very high pitch of Japanese female voices, and then overdoing it so.
The RTM 1 dub of Transformers: ★Headmasters has become infamous for its... unique translation decisions and bizarre voice acting.
Scorponok: Fortress Maximus has come himself! Okay! Then I shall get Fortress Maximus to fight me! Heh heh huh!
- Not to mention the odd name changes: Spike became Sparkle, Blaster was renamed Billy, and Soundblaster, the black version of Soundwave was called... New Soundwave.
- "THIS IS UNICORN!" It was already Narm-tastic, but the mistranslated name just makes it insane.
To those who didn't grow up with it, the Philippines English dub of Voltes V almost sounds like a Gag Dub. The actors sound like they're reading their scripts for the first time in their lives and their accents render some sentences incomprehensible. They also changed Kenichi's name to the inherently funny Steve and Daijiro's to the Sesame Street-esque "Big Bert".
- Do not forget the Big Bad: he was given the dub name Price Zardoz, which leads to a lot of narm.
The 4Kids dub of Yu-Gi-Oh! sometimes has the dialogue of a cheesy 80's movie.
- Then try the Singapore dub on for size. Yami Yugi suddenly sounds and talks like a California surfer. Naturally lampshaded in Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series - They Saved Tristan's Brain, and it's worrying how little LK was exaggerating.
- Mad Dog, in the English dub of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX. One of the most notorious cases of bad voice-acting in 4Kids history ever; contrary to his appearance, he has a very high and childish voice that was intended to be a parody of Mike Tyson. Whenever he opens his mouth, it's hard not to laugh at him.
- The Crystal Beasts in the dub had the gimmick of sounding like various movie stars despite hailing from ancient Rome. Most of the sound-alikes were unimpressive, but the crowner of the bunch is Amber Mammoth whose voice actor's impersonation of Arnold Schwarzenegger consists mostly of slurred growls and forced Terminator references. Watch it in all of its glory here.
Almost everything that Animax Asia touches, when they're not just plain bad (or occasionally good). Their voice casts are often made up of English-speaking expats wanting to earn some extra money, as well as locals from the country where the dub is made (usually Hong Kong, Singapore, or the Phillipines) who sometimes have very thick accents. The scripts are often literally translated from Japanese, which can lead to some odd turns of phrase. There is also lots of cases of characters sharing voice actors,^note justifying the need for Accent Adaptation to distinguish between character voices. For example, their dub of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood gave Major Armstrong a Russian (maybe German) accent, and gave Father Cornello an unfittingly comedic Italian accent (second video in thread).
Most of the 1970s dubs of most any anime can easily fall under this. From the old dub of Speed Racer, to the Getter Robo G dub known as Starvengers. Even the utterly horrid dubbed form of the Tekkaman Blade precursor known as Space Knight Tekkaman makes it here because the dubbers decided to explain everything.
- If one of the comments in genuine, it appears William Winckler, one of the writers for the Tekkaman dub, even thinks it's crazy and loves that people still find it entertaining.
The infamous Cluster F-Bomb ridden English dubs of such 90s anime as Cyber City Oedo 808, Mad Bull 34 and Angel Cop combined with the over the top sex and violence to make them fit squarely in here.
The vast majority of Hentai anime that receives an English (or German) dub will fall into this, by virtue of the fact that most professional voice actors don't want to have what is essentially porn on their resume. This means that the only people available to do the voices are either amateur voice actors, actual porn stars, or in at least one case, the Japanese dub's actors. The most infamous examples are Bible Black, Temptation (featuring DAN GREEN), A Time to Screw, and Sextra Credit. (links are NSFW, but not explicit)
Opinions are divided on the overall quality of the 1993 JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders OVAs, but the English dub contains so many flat deliveries, just plain strange lines, Accidental Innuendo/Ho Yay, the most unfitting voice for DIO imaginable, and awkward pauses that it becomes unintentionally hilarious. Oh, and Charles Martinet voices the senator whom DIO torments, sounding disturbingly like Mario at times. Watch highlights here, with increasingly humorous spins.
"How is a DOG supposed to serve as a BACKup?"
"Kakyoin! (uhh, unh) IT GOT KAKYOIN! UNNGH! AGH! KAKYOIN! IT GOT HIS EYES!"
"An oil tanker for you."
The Manga UK dub of Wicked City is laughably terrible. Lots of ill-fitting voices, dialogue that ranges from so bad it's funny to stilted. ("Don't ever think you can win this battle you pathetic aniMAAAAAAL!") The overuse of profanity doesn't help either.
The Norwegian VHS dub of Urikupen Kyujotai, aka Jungle Tales, is basically a reminder of what not to do when making a dub. Bad lip syncing, terrible audio, some of the characters getting disturbing high-pitch voices, and many examples of Dull Surprise. You know it's bad when people claim that Gag Dubs on Youtube are more professionally made than this. You can watch it in all its glory here. (The series later got a new and a way more professional Norwegian dub when it aired on Fox Kids, for obvious reasons.)
The Geneon dub of Fate/stay night delivers a surprise unintentional hilarity. Lancer's voice actor pronounces "Gae Bolg" as "Gay Bulges". Worth watching for some good laughs.

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