You can look at some anime series and know exactly what you are getting with it. However, there is this thing that can happen – a thing that breaks the tiny trusts of many – where an anime looks super cheerful, but actually is crushingly depressing. It is certainly not a trap that everyone can appreciate, but if that is the sort of delectable indulgence that you are looking for, we have rounded up some cute, yet depressing anime recommendations.
Best Anime That Look Happy But Are Actually Depressing
Girls’ Last Tour
Girls’ Last Tour is a masterpiece of melding super cute with terribly depressing. It is a show that ultimately shows that even in a world that has ended, you can find nice moments within. However, just as there are very wholesome moments, there are some melancholic ones as well as this pervasive sense of dread as the empty world gets progressively more desolate.
Life Lessons With Uramichi-Oniisan
Uramichi-Oniisan is a pretty unique show that frames adult angst through the guise of a children’s TV host. It’s like if they made Steve from Blue’s Clues into an anime character. On set, Uramichi should be professional, but sometimes that darkness slips out onto his very young audience. It also makes you realize how poorly your own adult life is going.
Made in Abyss
I have long suggested that the childish character designs that makes even some of the adult characters look like children was done to make some of the horrific things that happen later have more impact. The lower you go in the abyss, the more morality goes out the window as well. It really is an aptly named deep hole where not even light can penetrate.
School Live
School Live puts the cute in zombie cutepocalypse. It follows the most moe girls that are surviving while surrounded by flesh-eating monsters. It has its dark and serious moments, but it also has those light-hearted slice of life moments as well, and not all of them are part of the main character’s ongoing delusional state that preserves her sanity either.
Land of the Lustrous
Land of the Lustrous is an unexpectedly complicated show. It isn’t that it starts off happy and then gets dark. Instead it wears that darkness on its sleeve as soon as you discover that the gem people are hunted by beings that want to use their pieces to decorate themselves. That doesn’t even become that much more hurtful as you watch the gems form friendships with each other knowing full well they will be ripped apart. No, the truly depressing part of Land of the Lustrous is watching the main character rather literally lose pieces of herself in her many battles until at the end, you can’t even recognize what she was from what she has become. It is a pretty on-the-nose metaphor done in an interesting way.
Madoka Magica
This is perhaps the most famous use of this, with the initial shock of which likely spurring its popularity. Madoka Magica starts off nice and fluffy as per tradition in the magical girl genre. Then it becomes a show that just wants to hurt you. Then it becomes some high-minded philosophy! Needless to say, it gets dark and violent, and nothing ever ends up happily.
Magical Girl Raising Project
In the exact same vein as Madoka Magica, Magical Girl Raising Project followed in the trend of dark magical girl anime series. Again, it starts off nice with a girl achieving her dream of becoming a magical girl. It is then deemed that there are far too many in this one area, and now they must battle royale each other. Unlike Madoka Magica, much of this series is just cute girls killing each other. They try to establish something more going on by the end, but since there are no subsequent seasons, we’ll never really know what they were going for.
Shadow Star Narutaru
The best way to describe what Shadow Star Narutaru is is that it is kind of like violent Pokemon. People end up with this cute little companion, and for one reason or another, they start fighting to the death. This and Bokurano, made by the same author, really expertly examine the innate evilness in humanity. However, unlike Bokurano that is framed as a mecha series, this is framed as a battler via cute familiars.
Sound of the Sky
This is in a similar vein to Girls’ Last Tour. It is a cute girls doing cute musical things show, but if you look exactly past the characters to the environment they are in, you will see a world in ruin. It is about girls embroiled in a war in some minor fort, and the world is pretty bleak around them. It isn’t so much a sad show at face value, but the more you think about it, the more that creeps on in there.
Charlotte
Charlotte starts off like its going to be a pretty simple show about friendship. A guy has a powers, gets strong-armed into joining a student council tracking down others with powers, and they have a few light-hearted adventures in doing that as they all bond. However, around the half way point, the darker reason behind their goal is revealed and it thrusts the main character onto a miserable path.
Princess Tutu
Although well-aged at this point, Princess Tutu is a dramatic masterpiece. It isn’t a show that seems particularly dark in its premise or even its execution. It combines all the sparkliness of fairy tales and ballet, but the more you think about what is happening and particularly what is being said, the darker this series becomes. As it turns out, it also captures all the dramatic melancholy of ballet as well.
Higurashi: When They Cry
Higurashi, at least in the beginning, is built on the foundation of looking like a cute school life series then switching to literal insanity and brutal violence. It is part of what makes it so affecting. However, as you get further into it and the deeper going-ons are revealed, it just becomes a little less happy and depressing, and more just convoluted.
Happy Sugar Life
I mean, to be fair, you can’t expect a show with that kind of title to be about anything good. And it’s not! It is bright and colorful moe girls that serve as a very thin veneer for the obsessive questionably-aged romance that is within where one girl would murder everyone for the sake of her young lover. It is indeed the kind of show people bring up when highlighting how problematic anime can be.
Somali and the Forest Guardian
If this list were a scale, Somali and the Forest Guardian would definitely be on the more wholesome side of it. However, there are moments in the series where you realize how dangerous it is for a little human in a world of not humans. The cute veneer here is pretty thick, but there are things going on in the world that are not as wholesome as the overall plot here.
Humanity Has Declined
Humanity Has Declined is a show that features a lovely light color palate and cutens up all of its characters, but in the backdrop during all this is a world that has suffered catastrophe. Humans live scattered in a ravaged world where fairies are taking over. It is a comedy show full of shenanigans, but it is for sure a melancholy comedy show.
Do you have more anime series that you think are cute yet depressing enough to be on this list? Let us know in the comments section below.
