The supernatural is innately mysterious because no one can quite agree on if it exists or not. This means a supernatural mystery is almost the ultimate mystery to investigate.
And when something needs investigating, a detective is the person to do it.
This is why you will actually find a surprising amount of supernatural anime that follow detectives who solve – not criminal mysteries – but paranormal mysteries.
From vindictive spirits to unexplained deaths, supernatural mystery anime is a thriving amalgamation of two genres, and it explores these occult mysteries being solved in a surprising number of ways. Whether you want supernatural detective agencies solving the city-wide spirit problems or are willing to settle for curious school clubs that get wrapped up in the paranormal, you have quite a few supernatural mystery anime recommendations to enjoy.
Best Supernatural Mystery Anime About Occult Detectives
Bungo Stray Dogs
Bungo Stray Dogs follows a team of supernatural detectives who handle the cases the police cannot handle.
The series has the added fun twist of having characters named after famous literary names like Osamu Dazai, Edogawa Ranpo, and more recognizable, non-Japanese authors like Fyodor Dostoevsky. However, while these names can bear meaning in their personality and powers, they are mostly just flavor for the audience.
However, while Bungo Stray Dogs starts by emphasizing the mystery of their cases, over time you will notice that it begins to focus more on the action that their cases bring rather than cases that need serious investigation.
Midnight Occult Civil Servants
For as common as supernatural problems are in anime cities, you would think there would be ever so slightly more anime about government-sanctioned agencies handling those problems. While there certainly are a few in the supernatural mystery genre, Midnight Occult Civil Servants probably does government-sanctioned supernatural mystery-solving the best.
Midnight Occult Civil Servants follows a rookie who joins an agency assigned with driving off supernatural creatures so they don’t cause further problems. On his first day, he discovers he can understand what these beings are saying and uses mediation rather than violence to start solving their issues rather than chasing them off.
It is interesting to see what longstanding problems have been happening between the supernatural creatures in the city, though the mysteries aren’t particularly deep.
Special 7: Special Crime Investigation Unit
Like Midnight Occult Civil Servants, Special 7 follows a government-sanctioned agency that is tasked with solving supernatural disturbances in Tokyo. However, this series creates its own special lore for the world where humans and supernatural creatures live side-by-side and the world was, long ago, ruled over by dragons.
The bulk of the plot follows the super-powered and super-specialized detectives that are chasing after a terrorist organization. However, while this starts off feeling like a supernatural Psycho-Pass, it does get a bit lost in the action rather than focusing on the mystery.
Kemono Jihen
While this series is a shounen action anime, Kemono Jihen dares to not be the same old shounen battler and decided to be a supernatural mystery shounen instead.
Kemono Jihen follows boy from a rural village who strikes the interest of a supernatural detective from Tokyo. After it turns out he is a half-ghoul and helps the detective solve his case, the detective takes him to join his detective agency that has a number of kids like him there.
While there is plenty of action in this story, often being the punctuation of every mystery, the series does well to keep the mysteries as things that need solving before moving right to the action. You get invested in the cases, but also invested in the main character’s mystery as well.
In/Spectre
In/Spectre takes a unique approach to the supernatural mystery in that it is more about talking than it is about fighting.
The story follows a girl who, as a child, was taken by yokai and asked to become their goddess in order to mediate problems between them as well as in conflicts with humanity. She agreed, and some years later she meets a man that yokai are mysteriously frightened of. She instantly makes him her partner and also tries to lock him down as her boyfriend.
In/Spectre, instead of having the character solve problems through super-powered battle, often solves problems by talking or investigating the issue further in order to find a way to combat the cause of the conflict – like mediators often do.
This is one for those that love their narrative-heavy mysteries and enjoy a more grounded approach to supernatural that isn’t all building towards the next big battle.
Gosick
Gosick is unique in the way it frames a lot of its mysteries. Some mysteries seem supernatural, but have completely realistic causes. Some things seem to have normal causes, but are steeped in the supernatural. However, overall, Gosick leans more into being less supernatural than you would think given the characters, setting, and general tone of the series.
It does, unexpectedly, become a pretty great romance and by the time it moves onto that, you are fully invested in the characters and don’t mind the move away from the mysteries.
Psychic Detective Yakumo
While the set up of Psychic Detective Yakumo is familiar, it is a supernatural mystery that focuses more on the mystery than the ghosts compared to other series like it.
This anime follows a girl who ends up in a supernatural mystery that leads to her a fellow student and detective that can see and communicate with ghosts. He uses this ability to help the living by investigating the how and why the ghosts are causing problems.
This is a mystery series that is based on investigation. The main character needs to track down information and evidence in the real world in order to prevent the supernatural entity from causing more harm. As it is episodic, it does tend to get a bit repetitive, but its overall mystery often saves it from being too mundane.
Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun
Hanako is a popular ghost story in Japanese schools, but Hanako is traditionally a girl that haunts a bathroom stall. This series follows a male ghost that doesn’t specifically haunt a bathroom stall as he meets a human girl and they work to solve the supernatural mysteries of their school.
While this series is distinctly cute with its art style, it can get as dark as the best of them. As the series goes on, a certain sense of menacing starts to seep in there too. This really encourages you to keep watching because you do really get invested in what the next mystery will uncover about the titular character.
Ghost Hunt
When it comes to supernatural mystery, anime tends to go big to keep it interesting. It’s anime, they can create as many supernatural beings and powers to fight them as it wants. However, Ghost Hunt goes sticks closer to reality without completely forgoing powers.
Ghost Hunt still is about investigating paranormal mysteries, but it is about a ghost investigation company that melds real ghost hunting technology from our world with concepts like religious and psychic abilities.
While it isn’t realistic, it is nice to see them incorporate ghost hunting technology into supernatural mystery.
You’re Being Summoned, Azazel
If you don’t mind your supernatural mysteries on the irreverent and raunchy side, You’re Being Summoned, Azazel is very much that.
This series follows a detective who is able to summon demons to help him solve mysteries with his assistant. One of those demons is the cranky, lazy Azazel who is more of a bum than being the pinnacle of sin.
As you might expect, the mysteries here are more on the comical side rather than being mysterious.
Cuticle Detective Inada
If you are in the mood for more irreverent supernatural mystery comedy anime, Cuticle Detective Inada bears a distinctly similar set up to the aforementioned You’re Being Summoned, Azazel – though without being quite as raunchy.
In Cuticle Detective Inada, half-human and half-animal chimeras live alongside normal people. However, when these chimeras cause trouble, they are often too much for the normal police to handle. Enter the half-wolf Inada who solve the crimes by tasting hair and extracting critical information from it.
Again, this is a distinctly more comedic supernatural mystery anime where most cases end comically. It is not for those looking for a serious supernatural mystery anime.
Dusk Maiden of Amnesia
Dusk Maiden of Amnesia follows a paranormal investigation school club that is founded and led by the ghost of a girl that haunts their school.
In the beginning, the mystery surrounds why she haunts the school before moving onto other paranormal mysteries that happen there.
This series is darker than you would expect for school club-based detectives, but it is also a pretty strange romance anime too.
Muhyo & Roji’s Bureau of Supernatural Investigation
The synopsis of Muhyo & Roji sort of mistakenly sells it as a “Magic at Law” series where the main character is a magical lawyer, but really it is pretty similar to a lot of other series on this list. Supernatural things cause a problem, the main character uses his knowledge of magical law and his helpers exorcism rites to solve it.
That aforementioned “magical law” does use some legal logic to it that is a fun twist, but not fun enough to make this anime as different as some people perhaps wanted it to be.
That said, while the characters are particularly young looking, this is a supernatural mystery steeped in the darkness.
Dr. Ramune – Mysterious Disease Specialist
Sometimes a mystery calls for a detective, and sometimes a mystery calls for a doctor, especially when weird shit like crying soy sauce is happening to your body.
Those are the cases that Dr. Ramune investigates. Strange, supernatural, often food-related mysteries above and beyond a suburbanite trying to discern if they have a gluten allergy or not.
However, while the premise of the cases are always a bit strange, this series can dip its toes in both the comical and the darkness. It is a great choice for those that don’t necessarily need super serious supernatural mysteries throughout, but certainly like those mysteries to be creative.
Demon Detective Nougami Neuro
Speaking of weird supernatural mysteries and the weird people that solve them, Demon Detective Nougami Neuro follows a high school girl trying to solve the mystery of her father’s murder who teams up with a demon that eats mysteries.
In order to keep her very hungry and menacing demon friend fed, they begin solving a number of mysteries while working towards solving her father’s murder.
This series, while it sounds silly, actually crafts interesting mysteries and packs its fair share of malice into a demon with such a silly-sounding ability.
However, unlike many other supernatural mystery anime, the mysteries they are solving are usually your standard human mysteries. What makes it supernatural is the fact that it is a demon solving them.
The Mystic Archives of Dantalian
Unlike other supernatural mystery anime that are built around ghosts or folklore that are lore from our world, The Mystic Archives of Dantalian creates its own supernatural in the form of powerful Phantom Books.
The story follows the grandson of an eccentric rare book collector who inherits his father’s collection, including his archive of forbidden knowledge and the girl that help him. He discovers his grandfather had been murdered while trying to seal away Phantom Books that can be used as weapons in the right hands or run wildly out of control in the wrong ones.
The mystery of this series is ultimately collecting the books, which often leads to a mystery caused by a book that they need to collect.
Mnemosyne: Daughters of Mnemosyne
Daughters of Mnemosyne is an experience, to say the least. It follows a female detective part of a race of immortals. While she doesn’t strictly take on supernatural cases, many times it is the truly bizarre that often comes to her door.
As the series isn’t episodic, you are more invested in the overall mystery than some of the smaller mysteries that the main character gets involved in. However, it often invests you with an intoxicating mix of brutality and sex rather than more family-friendly intrigue.
Mononoke
Mononoke treats supernatural problems like a doctor treats a disease. While the mysteries he solves ultimately end with him slaying the mononoke causing the issue, the main character can’t just simply slice it in half right away.
No, like a doctor must find out what exactly is wrong with you before treatment, the main character must discover the Form of the mononoke, its Truth, and its Reason before his blade can dispatch it.
This means that for each incident he gets involved in, he must investigate it thoroughly in order to deal with it. Each mystery is thoroughly unraveled before your eyes in a very satisfying and visually lovely way.
Raven of the Inner Palace
There are a few anime on here that are different from the “supernatural detective agency solving occult cases” set up that is a pretty standard when it comes to supernatural mystery anime, but Raven of the Inner Palace perhaps looks the most different of all of them while still being a supernatural mystery anime series.
This series takes place almost exclusively inside the the imperial palace of a Chinese-inspired emperor in a fictional land steeped in spirituality. The supernatural detective of the series is a mysterious concubine of the emperor that does not perform the normal duties, and does not even interact much with the emperor himself. This Raven Consort, as she is called, solves the spiritual matters of the imperial palace, and the mystery surrounding her has piqued the interest of the young new emperor.
The series is balanced between unraveling the mystery of the Raven Consort and watching her as she investigates and solves the supernatural appearances in the palace.
Ryoko’s Case File
At a glance, Ryoko’s Case File starts kind of like a straight-forward detective anime akin to Detective Conan, but it becomes quickly apparent that the titular genius detective Ryoko handles cases that are so bizarre that they often become supernatural or paranormal.
This series, as a mystery, is one that doesn’t really like to walk you through things. It includes resolution, overall, to the mysteries, but it also is a show that enjoys its unanswered questions that either you ignore or make your own inferences on.
Do you have more supernatural mystery anime recommendations surrounding occult detectives? Let fans know in the comments section below.
