What Anime Fell Off After Season 1?

When anime fans aren’t complaining that their favorite anime didn’t get a new season, they’re whining about the new season being shit. In this post, let’s explore the top anime that fell off after season 1, according to some fans, anyway.

Great news! J-List has started our Pre-Black Friday Sale, giving everyone an automatic 15% off all in-stock items shipping from Japan (except for 2025 calendars). Now is the perfect time to pick up those special naughty items you’ve had your eye on, or stock up on ero lotion, or browse our in-stock figures. Browse all our products here!

Why Some Anime Can’t Recapture the Magic

Anime fans always seem to be loudly asking for a new season of the anime they enjoyed, then aren’t happy with what they get, for various reasons. This can happen so often that some anime fans forego watching new seasons altogether, despite being fans of the show. Some reasons include:

When a new show explodes in popularity, fans are united in their love for it. But this can be an impossibly high bar for new seasons to meet.
Bad signaling by the studio about future content. Fans won’t be likely to return to a show after several years of radio silence from the studio.
Naturally, a season of anime must make some accommodations about what parts of the manga or light novels to adapt. Die-hard fans of the original works often get angry about what gets left out.
Often animation studios are changed in between seasons, which can kill the passion the studio had.
Fans can be downright unreasonable. Star Wars fans punished George Lucas for his prequel movies because they didn’t feel exactly the same as they did when watching the original films. But nothing could make us feel like we did when we were ten years old again, since we’ve all grown up.

What Anime Fell Off After Season 1? Let’s Ask J-List Customers!

I asked J-List followers on Facebook and Twitter to share the anime they thought fell off the fastest after the first season. Here are the responses we got!

Season two of Promised Neverland actually hurts my soul every time I think about it.

The Devil is a Part-Timer. The second season was just awful.

Season three of Shield Hero was great. Season two, not so much.

SAO, Goblin Slayer, and Overlord…fight me!

Wake Up, Girls! had a great storyline in its first season. Season 2 totally dropped the ball in both story and artwork.

BEASTARS season 1 was amazing, exploring the gritty details about what a society made up of carnivores and herbivores would look like, right down to black markets selling forbidden animal flesh and how sex would work between different species. Season 2 was…much less magical.

The Big O. The shift from cel animation to digital coloring between the two seasons ruined the noir atmosphere for me.

Season two of Goblin Slayer. They turned it into a normal kawaii fantasy anime.

How much perverted anime is too much? Read my blog post here!

I finished season 2 of One Punch Man, but it didn’t have the magic of season 1. I think changing studios really hurt it. Of course, almost any studio is going to be a downgrade from Madhouse.

More Anime That Stopped Being Great After Season 1

If we’re only talking about anime, Tokyo Ghoul was just painful.

Shield Hero is fine, and so is Tokyo Revengers. People just enjoy hating on them, especially fans of copy-pasta series like Jujutsu Kaisen.

Dunno why Promised Neverland is in the meme. It doesn’t even have a second season.

Fire Force for me 😀

Psychopass and Aldnoah.Zero. In both cases, not having Gen Urobuchi continue the story made them unwatchable.

Overlord. It had shit animation during season 3 and season 4, skipping God knows how much content from the novels.

My Hero Academia. Absolutely loved it early on, but find it unwatchable now.

Meanwhile, at HBO.

Thanks for reading this blog post exploring anime series that fell off after season 1. What show is on your list of series that got terrible after the first season? Tell us below!