Ninja Collection

I stumbled across the start of this series some time ago, later discovering the anime series that spawned this, Yami Shibai.

Unlike Yami Shibai, who also takes a few minutes each episode to tell a short horror story, I'm afraid the premise gets in the way of the horror aspect. While the visuals work really well in delivering a creepy atmosphere, it's hard for the story to get too dark when the monsters are banished by the ninja-exorcists that the series focuses on.

This has happened a couple of times in Yami Shibai too. Like in Ninja Collection where the horror is somewhat undercut by the ... premise, one season of Yami Shibai focused on stories with really grotesque creatures that were so outlandish that it was hard to be scared anymore. They made up for it later with the next season having a theme of the ghost stories having quick live-action shots at the eeriest places for emphasis, something that worked a lot better.

I'll never undermine someone's creativity in giving this a shot, as the ghosts themselves were rather eerie and it was a fine time to be had each Sunday. However, it was just hard to get too scared with it.

This is THE best anime of all time. And I'm here to tell you why.

The Story: 10
The story follows a talented, young man. He is the most talented in his school and it was great seeing him succeed. This was incredibly relatable for me since I am the most talented NA.


Art: 10
The art is outstanding! Don't even get me started on it. It was a great choice to make it the way it is. Everything about it when I was watching was stellar, even background characters got decent art.

Sound: 10
... The sound was great and the sfx really fit well in pretty much every scenario.

Character: 10
The Characters are the best! They're all so relatable and that is why I think this is a 10. It's like they put real people in this, this is how relatable I think it.

Enjoyment: 10
Incredibly Enjoyable to watch with friends, family, or pretty much anyone.

Overall: 10
It was great watching this, might read the manga!

For the past couple of months, I have searched far and wide for what is subjectively the worst anime of all time. A search that can only be described as "enjoyable because they're so bad they're good." I have searched through the classics as well as the worst of the seasonal anime trying to find the one that will truly boggle my mind.

Ladies and gentlemen, it beings me the utmost pleasure to say that I have found it. The worst anime of all time. For if Ninja Collection is not the worst anime of all time, then God help us all.

First we must ... ask ourselves, what is Ninja Collection? Is it really a series of ten 4-minute episodes of ninjas? Who are the ninjas? Are we going to see a collection of them? The answer to all of these questions may surprise you... in which my answer is "I don't know either."
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So what really is Ninja Collection? To answer this question, we must first delve into the foundations of the genre itself, meaning we have to question "What is anime?" Merriam-Webster defines anime as "a style of animation originating in Japan that is characterized by stark colorful graphics depicting vibrant characters in action-filled plots often with fantastic or futuristic themes." In the present day, we might find this definition of "anime" to be inaccurate. Look at any romance or slice-of-life anime and you will find that we have plots that are not really "action-filled" or have "fantastic or futuristic themes". In short, our definition of anime can be broadened to the following: "a style of animation originating in Japan that is characterized by stark colorful graphics depicting vibrant characters." To be an anime, it must be an animation. Oxford languages define animation as "the technique of photographing successive drawings or positions of puppets or models to create an illusion of movement when the movie is shown as a sequence." In other words, animation should create the illusion that something is moving in the first place. This gives us a very broad definition of "animation"; after all, even a rapid sequence of pictures could count as "animation" because of how we perceive time. But that philosophical tangent can come another day.

Does Ninja Collection fit into the definition of anime? A quick look at the season and you'll see that the characters in Ninja Collection move at a pace that averages somewhere around 1 frame per second. You fucking heard that right. ONE FRAME PER SECOND. In reality, the frame rate ranges from 5 frames per second to 1 frame every 5 seconds. The damn thing is so inconsistent that you can't help but remember the horrible anomalies that are the more-than-occasional "1 frame every 5 seconds". How did anyone watching this thought this was a good idea?

To put in perspective, animation is typically done at 12 (unique) frames per second, such as Your Name, Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse, and Studio Ghibli movies. That means that Ninja Collection can be about 60 times slower than most other animes you watched! Now if anyone could possibly argue that one frame every 5 seconds can create an "illusion of movement", I would laugh at their face. Thus, Ninja Collection is not really animation. Hence, by definition, Ninja Collection is actually not an anime!
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But we're not here to see anime because of the animation, we're here to see the ninjas, right? It's their story that matters...

Right, the story is fucking abysmal too.

To lighten my pain and suffering, I sped through the 10-episode 4-minute anime at a blazing 4x speed. I am astounded... astounded to say that I was fucking bored to death by episode 5. I actually felt like I wanted to cry by episode 5. Notice... this is minute 5 we're talking about here since I am blazing through this at 4x speed. I swear to God, watching paint dry for 10 minutes would be less painful than watching these 10 episodes again.

Why? How did a 4-minute story-based horror anime somehow manage to make Pupa look like a goddamn masterpiece? We first reiterate the fact that this is a 4-minute story-based horror. Apart from jumpscares, most techniques that result in the "spook" require time. The ever increasing build of tension, the creepy atmosphere, and the sense of impending doom all typically need buildup in order to become effective. Four minutes is far too short to build any effective effect (and going in 4x speed does not help its case.) However, this isn't what pissed me off the most.
What made it unbearable was that all episodes were exactly the same. The story structure is literally: 30 seconds explaining that Tokyo is run over by ghosts (THEY REUSE THE SAME 30 SECONDS EVERY. SINGLE. EPISODE), main character has a regular day, the author presents a slight nightmare, it seems like the character is in deep trouble, then some deus ex machina happens as some random guy does some stuff and we have a happy little ending. Like... the fuck? THIS IS WHAT YOU CALL A FUCKING HORROR STORY? First of all, they change the main character every episode so honestly I don't give a fuck on who appears and who doesn't. It would be fucking nice to maybe... MAYBE kill them off after the deus ex machina shows up for maybe some uncertainty? Like fucking hell, give me SOMETHING that says that these main characters may not make it? But NOOOOOO IT'S ALWAYS SOME DIVINE INTERVENTION THAT SAVES THE DAY. It is brutally annoying and the most BORING way to fix everything. Like seriously, this gave the classic "He's supposed to die here BUT NOOOOOOO SOME BULLSHIT HAPPENS AND HE LIVES" cliche.

Yeah it got old... and stale......... so... fucking... stale...

Oh yeah, in addition to changing up the main character, they also change up the deus ex machina character every episode... in which by context I THINK are the ninjas. But like... the fuck so the ninjas are now nightmare slayers? Who the fuck are these guys anyway? The answer... is in the Ninja Collection trailers. I kid you not, I learned more about the ninjas from THE TRAILER OF THE ANIME than in the actual anime. I legitimately can't...
(My favorite memory while watching the series came from episode 8. My friend and I were watching through a call when suddenly my mom came in and asked me to test the milk to see if it was spoiled. It took me a couple sips, but I concluded the milk wasn't spoiled. I look back to find I missed the entire episode, and when I asked what I missed, he said "nothing". I replied "Yeah, you're right. Drinking the milk was probably more entertaining then watching that episode anyway.")
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And now, we get to the best part of the anime: the OST. With how god-awful the animation, graphics, story, and characters are, you can... well actually probably can't imagine how low the bar is to be the best category. For fuck's sake, even if the production put the happiest idol song as the ED of a "grim" horror story, it would STILL EASILY be the best part of the season. But to my own surprise when I searched up the song, the full version of the ED does not have a chorus! Ladies and gentlemen, the best part about Ninja Collection is a song... without a chorus.
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It brings me no end in pleasure saying that I have achieved my goal of finding the worst anime ever. There is almost 0 animation. My soul started to hurt after 5 episodes of the story. I learned more about the characters in the trailer than in the actual anime. The best thing in the anime, which is the music, doesn't even have a chorus. There is nothing redeemable in this "anime".

1/10. The actual score should be closer to 0/10 for creating a black hole that made me seriously reconsider how I rate other bad animes.