(This post is part of a series of posts covering Christmas-themed anime episodes. For more posts like these, check out the 12 Days of Anime tag.)
Itsudatte My Santa is quite possibly a prime contender for the Worst Anime Ever Made. It’s a two-part ecchi romcom OVA about a boy named Santa who meets the actual Santa Claus – who turns out to be a big-breasted blonde girl with a pet reindeer called Pedro. What makes this anime particularly awful is not its silliness but the fact that it is not silly enough. For about half of its running time it takes its maudlin drama incredibly seriously, which kills all of its campy entertainment value.
Nevertheless, I cannot say that I hated Itsudatte My Santa with every fibre of my being. I kind of liked the first OVA, even. It was forgettable but harmless fun. I have a major soft spot for ecchi comedies and basically everything Ken Akamatsu writes, which no doubt factored into my appraisal.
Admitting to this publicly on Twitter, however, was aniblogger suicide.
@frog_kun no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no — Scamp (@5camp) December 11, 2014
@frog_kun I didn’t think it was possible to like Itsudatte My Santa. Its a classic staple of terribad when you don’t want to go hyperviolent
— Scamp (@5camp) December 11, 2014
@frog_kun Every single person I’ve ever heard who watched it had the reaction “oh it can’t be that bad OH GOD THIS IS HORRIBLE MAKE IT STOP”
— Scamp (@5camp) December 11, 2014
@frog_kun I know I shouldn’t be doing this. I shouldn’t be shitting on someone elses taste. BUT ITSU-FUCKING-DATE MY FUCKING SANTA FUCKING — Scamp (@5camp) December 11, 2014
@5camp @frog_kun I’m with Scamp. FUCK THAT OVA SIDEWAYS.
— Patches (@the_patches) December 11, 2014
I hadn’t realised I had stepped on a landmine here. Feeling very confused and concerned, I decided to check out Scamp’s video review of it. Surprisingly, his reaction was pretty much identical to mine. He thought the yakuza jokes and the silly anime humour were mildly amusing as well, while the HEARTBREAKING DRAMA was a slog. I even ended up giving the OVA the same 3/10 rating on MAL. So basically I got shat on by a fellow anime blogger for having the same opinion as he did three years ago? Anime blogging is such a cruel world.
After that, I got in the mood to look up more video reviews of people shitting over Itsudatte My Santa. I’ve never been much of a video review fan, but I am starting to see how much more effective videos are over text at expressing snark and rage, two very common reactions to a work like Itsudatte My Santa.
Truly, I was surprised by how heated the reactions were over something so eminently forgettable. Perhaps Itsudatte My Santa is the kind of show that gets worse the more you think about it?
…this wouldn’t surprise me, actually. The show does have a way of biting you in the butt.
Okay, so maybe the show was really horrible and a blight upon human existence. The ecchi wasn’t even that good, even if the DVD I was watching was uncensored. It’s the kind of old-school ecchi that is aggravating to look at with its bad proportions. Even if I still could not bring myself to feel rage, it still was a very poorly crafted anime by every possible angle of evaluation.
After reflecting deeply on my memories of this OVA, I came to the following conclusion:
Listening to anibloggers rage over Itsudatte My Santa has turned out to be unexpectedly more entertaining than the OVA itself.
— Frog-kun (@frog_kun) December 11, 2014
I thought this statement would get me back in the good books with anime bloggers, but…
@frog_kun I could stomp you in the nuts and it’d be more entertaining than Itsudatte My Santa. Actually, you know what?…
— Alex West (@theanimefighter) December 11, 2014
Being an anime blogger is suffering.
Frogkun.com 
When a fanbase of anything loathes something with every fiber of their being and someone else even REMOTELY says “it’s not the worst” they will tear that person to shreds, often in comical fashion. Although it has not yet happened to me in the aniblogger world (Because of my solidified genre preference) it has happened in other circles of “otakudom”.
After seeing your tweets about the show my only comment is still “How dare anyone say Santa is an idiot!?”
That’s because Santa was accidentally peeking on her in the shower. Santa’s a bit of a hentai as well as a baka, it seems :'((((((
I should have known it was because of a cliche pervert joke involving male Santa. It’s cool.
Eh, really boring or really dumb stuff like this wouldn’t cause much frustration for me. For me to seriously get angry at a piece of work would require it to either contain something I personally loathe, or for it to make me feel “betrayed” (only thing to do the latter was the second season of Natsu no Arashi).
Also, Alex’s tweet made your article.
Yeah, there didn’t seem to be much worth getting over in this anime. I actually can’t remember the last time I legitimately raged over a work of fiction. Guess there are just better (er, worse) things in life to get mad over.
Still wonder on why the rage over a ecchi romcom. I mean, shows like this are just going to be pass of as forgetable and people most likely going to laugh it off anyway, sooooo…. yeah i don’t quite understand the rage.
Last time i remember this happened was with School Days. Although there are also who deemed it as a masterpiece.
iirc Itsudatte My Santa is a Terribad Anime staple. So it’s a title that ended up getting mentioned a lot, like Kenya Boy and the Prince of Tennis movie. But for Terribad standards, Itsudatte My Santa isn’t really that all funny, so maybe that’s why the anibloggers just don’t like it at all. Usually, they seem to have some weird sort of fondness for the really terrible titles, so Itsudatte being so bland is kind of disappointing in a way. I’m not really sure.
So it’s bad but not in a way that’s funny enough to laugh at? Huh…….
I feel bad now =(
I guess it was more surprise than actual hatred or anything. It’s not the worst anime or anything. It’s just I hadn’t ever heard of anyone having any reaction other than “this is awful” ever so seeing someone say they thought it was good was a real shock moment.
Lesson learned yet again: Stop shitting on other people’s tastes.
…but seriously, Itsu-fucking-datte my fucking santa
Ha, I thought the whole thing was more amusing than anything. I might have ended up exaggerating the terrible, deep-seated persecution I face as a NON-HATER of Itsudatte My Santa.
Sounds like my kind of show. How bad can an Akamatsu work be? He always has a dab hand at comedy, even when his ecchi is the most ridiculously overblown thing ever. I expect exploding clothes.
You should probably read the oneshot manga then, since it doesn’t take as long and it’s a bit more charming than the OVA (though still ridiculously overblown). No exploding clothes, though :(
Just like whemleh, it sounds like my kind of show. It sounds badly hilarious and especially even more so if the community reacts this strongly towards it. I expect a terrible rendition of “Santa Baby” and fun for the whole family.
Then you should watch it and see how it goes ;)
I totally will and I’ll live tweet it for added fun!
Some anibloggers have a reputation to uphold. They gotta go through the motions of blowing a gasket over community-designated Terribad Anime #588, even if the actual material is just mostly bland and forgettable. Gets more attention after all. The only anime I’ve seen so far that actually pissed me off was ImoCho.
I went ahead and watched it now to gauge my own reaction. Most of the humor definitely fell flat, and the nonstop pace did not help at all with the drama side. However it did have a heartfelt moment near the end. Showing the parents caring for impoverished kids in another country was a nice touch that wasn’t in the manga one-shot. (Anime parents actually having a somewhat decent reason to go travelling while ditching their kid at home, how rare is that?) The most grating thing was probably the “Ho ho ho”s. Overall, not deserving of a Terribad title, but very much a mediocre product of its time.
Oh wait, there’s a second episode? Repeating the same jokes, making the drama even more unconvincing, and shoehorning in a Yukarin-voiced loli just for gags? Okay, I admit it. This IS really bad.
On the contrary, I thought the “Ho ho ho”s were the best part. It never fails to sound like a failed ojousama’s laughter.
Same difference. What I meant was that it was one of the few parts that actually registered as Grade-A Terribad material, stuff that is memorably “bad” and warrants ironic enjoyment like how people enjoy B-movies or Nicolas Cage. There was also the eyecatch that sings “MYYYYYYY SANNNNNNN-TAAAAAAAAA” right after the “ho ho ho”s. Quite the combo.
Somebody should collect all the “ho ho ho” clips and make an hour-long looping youtube video of them.
Uhm, I now have zero will to waste time of my life on what looks an utterly forgettable piece of anime, but I can’t understand the hate. I mean, I watched Mars of Destruction due to it having the not enviable record of being the lowest scored anime on MAL. And it was hilarious, but mostly because it was obvious how cheaply and lazily and let’s-just-fucking-get-over-with-this-job-and-go-home-ly it was produced. I mean, CLASSICAL FREE STOCK MUSIC as the OST, right? But this doesn’t look nearly that bad. It just looks your average turd in the immense ocean of crap that is average-to-low production value ecchi anime. So why is it singled out?
Wow, shit. I had no idea the OST of Mars of Destruction was such fail. Now I kind of want to watch it. But I’ve had enough of terrible anime for the moment.
I’m not really sure why Itsudatte My Santa is singled out for its awfulness. The second OVA is genuinely horrible, but not even in the amusing way, tbh… I suppose the hate is a way to make the experience of wasting forty minutes of your life somehow more justifiable. In the end, though, that’s still forty minutes of your life you still wasted.
MoD is very short, basically a single OVA, so I think you could give it a shot. Its comedy gold comes from the aforementioned terrible production values and the general lack of professional skill oozing from every pore, as if every person in charge of doing something didn’t even know what the others were up to (in one occasion, a medic says “there’s nothing we can do about her” prompting a sad look after checking out the body of a girl whose ENTIRE HEAD WAS BLOWN OFF. No shit Sherlock). The fact that it basically tries to be a poor man’s (well, really, a completely broken hobo’s) Evangelion is the cherry on top. It’s not the painful kind of bad, it’s just the laugh-out-loud, I-can’t-believe-someone-actually-DID-this kind of bad. There’s no toxic crap, nothing that will make you feel ashamed for watching, it’s simply stupidly, gloriously incompetent.
Hey, I want to say thank you for posting my Review on your blog! I Will admit while I am happy with the Jokes that Karto and I made, I’ll admit my editing was a bit choppy (Mostly because I had to rush it out for Christmas.) It’s one of my personal favorite Episodes. But yes, I’d say that it’s easily one of the worst anime I’ve seen, I don’t I’ve ever seen an anime that’s both Hyperactive AND Lazy at the same time. I wouldn’t put it in my bottom five, but it’s still pretty Odious.
Also, as a shameless plug you can find my Blog @ http://otakunate.wordpress.com/
And my Facebook-https://www.facebook.com/OtakuNateShow
Heyyy, thanks for commenting! I liked the jokes and the video overall, which was why I linked to it. It was more entertaining than Itsudatte My Santa itself, at any rate :)
Up next: write a positive review on Abunai Sisters!
Funny joke.
Everyone is a critics…
Nơ I’m even more interested in imagine how would Ken Aramatsu think when he is lumped together with this disaster?
To be fair, none of Akamatsu’s works have ever been adapted into anime (except maybe Love Hina). I don’t know what he thinks of Itsudatte My Santa, but I know he thought the Negima anime was terrible lol.
It’s Flawfinder, if all he feels after watching it is the desire to stomp someone in the nuts that probably means he liked it
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