Ranking the Terribad

The almighty symbol of terribad.

For at least the next two days, I’ll be caught up with everything the SCCSAV terribad watch group has completed. (They’ve seen scattered episodes of Musashi Gundoh and Reign: The Conqueror, but as of this writing, they’re not finished with either.) Now that I’ve completed this utterly useless task, I figured why not put my newfound knowledge of awful anime to good use?

So here I present a (highly biased) guide to terribad — from the ones I enjoy most to the ones I enjoy least, because that is obviously how such a list should progress. Enjoy!

(P.S. There are multiple pages to this for you folks on Google Reader. Haha, you have to come here to finish the post!)

12 (Nice) Moments of Anime 2011 No. 10 – A Anticlimactic Crisis

You’re god damn right I’m putting California Crisis in the “nice” section.

California Crisis is about two dumb teenagers in an anime without a Wikipedia page who end up stealing a steel box with a magic alien MacGuffin inside, whereupon they start driving to Death Valley. Also, there’s an inexplicable bar scene in the middle. And everything looks like it was drawn by Roy Lichtenstein.

What I would say separates California Crisis from, say, Garzey’s Wing is that California Crisis is so committed to being straight up dumb that it works. It’s not pretending to be something it isn’t: It’s just a brainless anime about two dummies driving across pop culture California with a meaningless artifact desired by every military macho man within a 100-mile radius.

There’s also an odd amount of real-life brands in this OVA. California Crisis is fond of giving the finger to copyright law. More like California Chrysler, amirite? Ain’t no SOMYs here, motherfucker!

Anyway, I agree with this man of refined taste that the best part of California Crisis is the end. It’s such a deliberately terrible ending that it makes me laugh. I certainly didn’t watch this OVA and come out caring about the characters, so the ending is a riot to me. It’s literally the point where the creators say to themselves, “Welp, that was fun. Let’s go drinking!” and then they just end the anime.

No delusions at all about its place on the anime pecking order, and that’s what makes California Crisis so amusing.