22 Anime Series That Totally Wasted Their Tremendous Potential

Gangsta

You know, anime about gangs are a relatively untapped plot fountain, so when Gangsta came out, I thought it was going to be awesome like the first half of Gungrave. I mean, it even had a deaf main character. You just don’t see that, and it was great. Then it just didn’t go anywhere. There really wasn’t much plot to begin with, but it tried to make one up at the end there.

Aldnoah.Zero

It seems like the creators of Aldnoah wanted two things from the audience. To say their show was pretty, and they did that, and to say they told a cool invasion story, which they fucked all to hell. They told the story of both sides of this war, so you think they would at least cover the basics, like just the motivations of the nations, but nope! They skipped World Building 101 and put all their effort into Main Character Gets a Robot for No Reason and Looks Cool 201.

Gate

While it was weirdly satisfying to watch medieval armor just get shredded by modern weaponry, Gate ultimately wasted its interesting concept with pro-military propaganda, making everyone else seem evil, incompetent, or irrelevant. Except for the members of the harem, of course, they were useful. Unfortunately, it left the most interesting character of the harem (Leilei) undeveloped and her magic under utilized.

Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet

Gargantia had such good animation and such a fantastic world that most fans are often blinded by how little it actual did with it. A universe of near infinite warfare? A planet completely flooded? People living on fleets of boats, in spaceships, and in what seems like a Utopia paradise in space that is mentioned about twice? They ended up explaining why they were fighting and what the aliens were, but there is so much more that could have been seen in the world. Still, for twelve episodes, it gave it a good try.

Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash

The vaguely RPG, medieval world genre is becoming a crowded one. However, instead of just being another Sword Art Online clone, Grimgar actually did some unique things, like dealing with death and actually having characters start weak and get stronger. For that, it actually turned out pretty well, but that was about the only interesting thing it did. It introduced Class Guilds, it barely did anything with them. It introduced all these party members, and then only developed the main character. It introduced this wide world, and then only showed three places. While the potential for a second season is there, and the light novels may explain some things, if the first season ends up being a standalone, Grimgar ends up being pretty bland.

Disagree with something on this list? Got your very own series like The Lost Village that makes you rant about its waste potential for a full-on 20 minutes? Tell us all about it in the comments section below.