Minarai Diva

ORIGINAL REVIEW (2014 Oct 27) - Minarai Diva gained some notoriety as the first-ever live anime. Two voice actors speak unscripted with the goal of producing a new song every episode. Their movements are captured and turned into 3D CG. Viewers could tweet and influence the production.

Unfortunately, this idea is as bad as it sounds. You won't get any pleasure out of this unless you were one of the people who tweeted during the live airing. The voice actors are easily distracted and talk about pointless topics. At times, the 3D CG program crashes and a "technical difficulties" screen is put up. Some 45 minutes ... later, the finished songs are sung karaoke-style and sound absolutely dreadful even by bubblegum j-pop standards.

Whatever you do, don't watch this show. This is my pick for the worst anime of the year, even worse than the much-maligned Pupa and Glasslip. At least both of those had some production value. If you want to turn off your brain and enjoy a different ED song every time, watch Super Sonico, which is infinitely better than this.

EDIT (2020 Oct 19) Six years later, the Vtuber industry has exploded with full-scale agencies like Hololive. It's clear that this show was just far too ahead of its time, and that the technology wasn't there yet to make Minarai Diva a success. This is still one of the worst shows of all time, but as a predecessor of Vtubing, the historic significance of this show should be remembered.