If youve fallen as far down the anime rabbit hole as I have over the years you would know about some really bad anime. Two anime largely considered to be the worst of them all are a pair of OVAs known as Mars of Destruction and Tenkuu Danzai Skelter Heaven. Personally I still think Kono Aozora ni Yakusoku wo is worse than both of them but I cant deny how incomprehensibly bad both are. Before those two bad anime could run however Spectral Force had to walk. Like Mars of Destruction and Tenkuu Danzai Skelter Heaven Spectral Force is based on a game from the video game company Idea Factory and like the idiot I am I decided to watch this as punishment for incorrectly guessing that the upcoming Haite Kudasai Takaminesan would be streaming on HIDIVE. I dont even know how to begin with this one though its just that incomprehensible. Spectral Force takes place in Neverland not related to Peter Pan or The Promised Neverland a once peaceful land now caught up in a power struggle between humans demons and gods. Although it seems like the demons are winning things take a turn when a hero named Chiffon finds a sword called the Tenmaken which he uses to kill the Demon Lord and give humans an edge in the war. Right before this our main heroine the halfdemon and halfhuman princess Hiro is sent away with a bunch of mercenaries and right when they come back is when her father is killed. Now its up to her to avenge her father and end the war and during that process she somehow comes to trust humans who she hates due to an incident in her past. At least that was what I interpreted the plot to be. I apologize if I summarized this anime wrong but can you blame me? The story isnt that easy to follow in terms of how its structured and in how entertaining it is. Throughout the entire thing I was either bored confused or some weird combination of both. The characters dont help make the story any interesting either theyre all typical fantasy series characters with no real characteristics that could make them stand out from one another. Not even our leading lady Hiro is all that interesting her whole thing of being a notentirelyhuman who hates humans has been done multiple times before in more interesting ways and the way she eventually comes to trust humans doesnt feel organic either. Im sure the story and characters are expanded on better in the original Spectral Force game but whether it has an English translation or not seems like it doesnt despite the fact that the third game did get an English release in 2008 I cant be bothered to play it and know for sure. For the first six minutes or so I was watching Spectral Force in Japanese with English subtitles and the voice actors for the Japanese version didnt sound too engaged in their roles. However due to some circumstances that I dont feel like explaining I was forced to switch to the English dub for the rest of the series. On that note I just want to question ADV Filmss choice to even give Spectral Force an English dub really quick. I cant imagine the original OVA earned a lot of money when it was released in Japan and its very easy to see why why in the world did ADV Films decide that something like this something that would very likely cause them to not make any of the money they must have spent on licensing dubbing and producing the DVDs back was a good anime to dub into English? The quality of the dub certainly didnt help matters perhaps it was due to having little experience with voice acting at the time but it saddens me to hear English dub voice actors who have shown incredible talent such as Chris Patton and Jessica Calvello give such lackluster performances. Well at least the background music and ending theme were okay they fit the fantasy vibe of the series well. The worst part of Spectral Force is without question the animation. To be fair this is the first Idea Factory anime that ever came out God help us all for what was to come after so the animators probably werent entirely sure of how to animate at the time. With that being the case however they could have gotten some more experienced animators to help them along so that the end product didnt end up being as much of a mess as it is. There is a lot of uglylooking CGI animation in the first episode that Im sure nearly made my eyes bleed but luckily there isnt as much of it in the second episode. The 2D animation however is consistently bad throughout both episodes. From characters seemingly glitching out in the middle of a walk cycle animation to lips not moving when theyre supposed to and even one scene in the second episode where a soldier literally slid into frame everything about Spectral Forces animation should be the subject of a study on animation disasters. Well at least they were able to improve on this terrible animation with Mars of Destruction and Tenkuu Danzai Skelter Heaven right? Its been over a decade since Ive watched either of them and Im not going to rewatch either of them just to answer my own question. Overall Spectral Force is a terrible anime and I implore you to not watch it. If you did you would have to suffer longer than you would having to watch both Mars of Destruction and Tenkuu Danzai Skelter Heaven. Question is though is it worse than Kono Aozora ni Yakusoku wo? Id say its not because I can confidently say this about Spectral Force and not the other one with a long title even though I dont do drugs I can see people enjoying this if they got really really high and watched it with equally high friends. I would prefer it if people didnt do nonprescribed drugs though so....yeah. Dont watch this.