There is a time for cozy slice of life and wholesome romance, but that time is not now. You, my edgy friend, wish to dwell in the darkness and embrace the chaos of the universe. You want anime that is vicious and brutal. Something that is rarely happy and you know it will only end in tears. A taste of the twisted, perhaps? Well, I’ve rounded up the darkest anime recommendations out there for your viewing pleasure.
Best Dark Anime
Future Diary
Yukiteru Amano likes to imagine himself as an observer. He spends his days keeping a diary on his cell phone, but not about himself, about everything that goes on around him. At home, he spends his time conversing with his two imaginary friends, Deus Ex Machina, the God of space and time, and Murmur, his assistant. However, one day he discovers his friends are not so imaginary when they imbue him with the power of a diary that tells the future and force him into a bloody survival game with godhood on the line.
Future Diary becomes a killing game in which only one can survive, which in an of itself is pretty brutal. However, a number of twisted things go on throughout the series as you watch people become confronted with their mortality or, in some cases, just because they are twisted people.
School Live
Yuki Takeya is in love with school life. She loves it so much that she joined the School Living Club with three other girls, their supervising teacher, and the club dog Taroumaru. This club makes the most of living at school. However, Yuki’s blissful school life is all a delusion. The real purpose of the School Living Club is to prevent Yuki’s fragile reality from shattering. In reality, these girls are surviving the zombie apocalypse by barricading themselves within the school.
The genius thing about this series is that for much of the first episode, it seems like a cute girls doing cute things school life show, but the main character is delusional and they are actually in the zombie apocalypse. Now there are nice slice of life moments here, but it is not a show without its suffering.
Shiki
The fifteen-year-old Megumi Shimizu dreamed of leaving her small country town behind for the big city, but those dreams died when she did. It was her murder that kicked off a summer of blood and terror in this small town where a city boy and a country doctor try to stop the epidemic of death happening around them.
Fear and paranoia surrounding numerous mysterious deaths in a rural town spreads like the plague. The fun part of this show is the guessing. Well, right up until the mystery is unraveled. Then the fun part is watching a small town be fully consumed by chaos.
School Days
In a stroke of fate, Makoto Itou noticed Kotonoha Katsura on the train ride to school. Too shy to ask her out, he finds himself encouraged by his classmates Sekai Saionji who also has a crush on Makoto. What should have been blissful school days soon turns sour as a love triangle forms and both women find themselves unable to live without Makoto.
Notorious in its portrayal of extreme parody of rom-com relationships, School Days is a must for those who dwell in darkness. Of course, you have to make it all the way to the end in order to get to the really twisted parts.
Higurashi: When They Cry
Keiichi Maebara just moved from Tokyo with his family to the small town of Hinamizawa in the summer 1983. As the town is so small, school children of all ages are lumped into one class. There he becomes fast friends with four girls where he spends his days after school idly playing games. However, as the town’s annual festival approaches, he learns about a series of murders, disappearances, and other mysteries that surround it. When he confronts his friends, he finds them mysteriously tight-lipped.
Higurashi can be difficult to get into because of the way it tells its story. What you need to keep in mind is that it is essentially retelling events that happen over a series of days before resetting and telling them differently. It creates an intoxicating blend of happy friendship moments juxtaposed with vicious violence among that friend group, though. That’s what entices you to unravel its arcs.
Redo of Healer
As a boy, Keyaru awakened the power of a Hero. His specialty was healing. However, by using these powers, he experienced the trauma of the injured person as well. It eventually drove him insane, but he was forced to use his powers anyway. After enduring torture and abuse by his fellow heroes for years, Keyaru formed a plan to get his vengeance. He was able to turn back time and restart his life with all his previous memories. Thus his vengeance began.
Don’t be fooled by the bright fantasy color scheme and cute anime girls, Redo of Healer is perhaps one of the most messed up things to come out of anime in recent years. It is rife with violent torture and an absolutely “how did this get put on TV?” amount of rape and sex. So, long story short, watch it behind locked doors.
Akame ga Kill
Tatsumi is a naive boy from a rural village that makes the trip to the city in order to join the military and help his hometown. However, after he is rejected, he ends up joining Night Raid, a group of assassins part of a revolutionary movement to overthrow the government. From there, he must fight a brutal and increasingly bloody shadow war.
When it was shiny and new, Akame ga Kill was adored for being the “any character can and might die” anime series where no one was safe. We know now that’s not quite true, but rest assured that most of the characters you will come to enjoy will indeed die pitifully.
Talentless Nana
Earth has been assaulted by monsters that have come to be known as the enemy of humanity. To combat this, secluded schools were formed to train children with extraordinary powers to fight back. However, in this school, there may be an enemy of humanity itself. One among them has no powers who instead uses deduction and manipulation to combat the enemies of humanity.
You go in thinking it will be a lesser My Hero Academia, but instead you are, like me, delighted to learn that she is trying to kill all these super-powered individuals. The show embraces how messed up those with power over others can be, as well as puts some creative effort into how they meet their ends.
Shigurui
At the beginning of the Edo Era, a time of peace has descended over the land. The Lord Tokugawa Tadanaga, however, has decided to hold a fighting tournament with real steel instead of wooden swords. Within this tournament, the one-armed Gennosuke and blind Seigen are set to face off. As they were both disciples of Iwamoto Kogan, the greatest swordsman in all of Japan, both are determined to prove they are the rightful successor.
Samurai series are usually pretty heroic, but not this one. This one is just a messed up show about messed up people getting seriously maimed. It is filled with awful people and an awful lot of vicious violence.
Another
Ever since 1972, class 3-3 in Yomiyama North Middle School has had a strange tradition of pretending that one of their students did not exist. When Kouichi Sakakubara transfers into the class, he finds himself drawn to a girl that no one seems to notice. Not paying heed to the warnings of his classmates, all hell is about to break loose.
While Another perhaps ruins itself by playing its built mystery out too early, it is another notorious anime show. You watch it to see a lot of people die in creative Final Destination-esque ways. It is also why I can’t look at an umbrella the same way ever again.
Goblin Slayer
A young priestess fresh out of the temple is excited to start her life as an adventurer. On her first day, she joins an adventuring party to go slay some goblins. However, like so many young adventure parties before them, they underestimate the goblins. It ends with two dead, one viciously raped, and the priestess saved from fate by a man whose only mission in life is to slay all the goblins.
Compared to other shows on this list, Goblin Slayer isn’t actually that bad. In fact, its most brutal moment is played out in the first episode where an entire adventuring party is decimated and raped. After that, it’s more just standard violence against goblin.
Made in Abyss
The Abyss is an enormous cave system and the only unexplored place in the world. No one knows how deep it goes, but generations of bold adventurers have descended into it. In the town at the edge of The Abyss, an orphan named Rico dreams of raiding, as her mother did before her. One day while exploring the murky depths, she meets a boy, who turns out to be a robot, kicking off the start of her epic adventure.
Ah, now don’t you be fulled by those cute potato character designs. They are a tool. They are used to make the suffering those characters will endure later hit a bit harder. Made in the Abyss is charming most of all because it puts its characters in legitimate danger since adventuring should indeed be dangerous. It also highlights what people can and will do in a lawless, dangerous place.
Berserk
Gutts has been a mercenary for as long as he can remember, caring for nothing but moving to the next battle. One fateful battle puts him at odds with the rapidly rising mercenary group, the Band of the Hawk. Their charismatic, idealistic leader Griffith soon makes him join by force, but the bond he forms with the Band of the Hawk may very well mean the end of the world.
As an old school Berserk fan, I see some of the stuff coming out now and start to think it be looking a little tame. Still, the 1997 series (and the remake movies, I guess) had one of the most shocking endings in all of anime for awhile there. Even that gross CGI 2016 sequel had its messed moments.
Madoka Magica
Madoka Kaname and Sayaka Miki are your typical middle school girls, but one day they encounter a cute creature named Kyuubey that offers to grant them one wish. In exchange for their wish, they must become magical girls and protect humanity from witches. While Sayaka accepts right away, Madoka is more hesitant, not knowing what she would wish for. However, her decision is even further delayed when the mysterious Homura Akemi, a transfer student, begs her not to accept.
While there is plenty of death to be found in Madoka Magica, it’s not as viscerally vicious as some others on this list. It dwells more in the twisted and tragic rather than the bloody. Still, it remains the progenitor of so many dark magical girl series.
Happy Sugar Life
Once with a reputation for messing around with men, high school girl Satou Matsuzuka has finally fallen in love – with a young girl she keeps locked in her apartment. Shio, this young girl, seems to have no other place she would rather be than in Satou’s arms. However, Satou is ready to do anything to protect their relationship.
Yet another series where you shouldn’t judge the content by the bright, cute cover. Happy Sugar Life, despite even its happy, cute name, is absolutely messed up. It is yandere yuri love at its finest.
Elfen Lied
Lucy is a special breed of human known as a Diclonius, sporting a pair of small horns and telekinetic powers. All her life she has been held captive in a government facility. However, after staging a bloody break out one night, she is hit in the head and sent tumbling over a cliff. Washing up on shore with amnesia, she is taken in by some college students who are about to be pulled into the bloody world of government conspiracy.
Yet more proof that recent anime is just getting more messed up, because Elfen Lied is looking a touch tame as well. It starts off with a naked telekinetic murder spree, and just gets more vicious from there. Though it is not without its happy anime moments to augment how much harder other things will hit later.
Tokyo Ghoul
The citizens of Tokyo now live in fear of vicious creatures called ghouls that blend in alongside humans and feast on their flesh. One day, Ken Kaneki, a shy college student, meets a girl called Rize who is also an avid reader like him. Unfortunately, as he finds out on his first date, Rize turns out to be a ghoul. Just when she is about to eat him, Kaneki is saved, barely clinging to life. In the process of surviving this attack, Kaneki finds out that he has now become a ghoul.
I think Tokyo Ghoul was so popular because it had that shounen style action with more than your standard amount of shounen darkness to it. I mean, it’s about creatures that are innately designed to eat people, so it needs to have some messed up moments to it.
The Promised Neverland
Grace Fields House is a home for orphans. However, even though they have no blood families, they are all one big family. That is, until the age of twelve when they are adopted out. The kids also know that they are not allowed outside the fenced yard, but one day, two children break that rule. They then discover that the children who are “adopted” are actually subjected to something much darker.
While it is technically about kids being raised as livestock, The Promised Neverland only dabbles in darkness, I’ll admit. It maintains a significant amount of positivity throughout, but it is a bit of a twisted series if you don’t crave a lot of violence.
From the New World
After the sudden outbreak of psychokinesis, the .01% of the population that developed it started using their powers for nefarious means. Far into the future, the town of Kamisu 66 is wholly populated by psychics with the young Saki being one of the most recent to awaken her powers. Finally she can join the rest of her friends at the Sage Academy. However, her school days are plagued with questions that threaten to unravel the dark secrets of her idyllic village.
At a glance, this looks pretty normal for anime. You know, supernatural tinges, coming-of-age story, maybe a little action later on since they all have mind powers. However, the more you watch, the more twisted little secrets get unraveled about their society like how it came about, what happened to normal humans, and what happens to the children that don’t manifest mind powers.
Devilman Crybaby
Akira has always been a little weak and blends into the background, so when his childhood friend asks for help uncovering devils, he agrees. The pair head to Sabbath where many gather for debauchery and to be possessed by devils. When the devils begin to wreck havoc in their new living hosts, Akira agrees to merge bodies with a devil in order to save his friend. Though he now has a voracious devil inside him, he still has the heart of a crybaby.
Devilman, historically, has always looked like a “superhero” type series, but every iteration of it has been some form of messed up. It is nice to see the modern series of Crybaby shines a big light on that. Devils in this series, unlike in some other anime series, are vicious and immoral here. Expect orgies, dismemberment, and terrible things to happen to everyone.
Corpse Party
On the night after the school’s cultural festival, eight students and their teacher gather to say goodbye to a friend that is moving to another school. While it was a fun time of telling scary stories, they decide to perform a ritual that will assure that they are together forever. However, what they don’t realize is that their school is built atop an elementary school where a series of gruesome murders took place many years before. After doing their spell, the groups finds themselves transported to another dimension where they are trapped inside the old elementary school building that is now home to only corpses and vengeful ghosts.
If you just want graphic death, Corpse Party, as you might expect by the name alone, is for you. There isn’t much of a story to it. Mostly you just watch it to see people die horribly and in very graphically displayed ways.
Beastars
This is a world of anthropomorphic animals where carnivores and herbivores live side by side with each other. At Cherryton Academy, young wolf Legoshi is a member of the drama club. While he is often called menacing due to his appearance, he wouldn’t hurt a fly. When one herbivore classmate is killed and devoured, Legoshi finds himself as the primary suspect.
It’s not furry bait, but it does highlight the sexual nature of some animals. Instead, Beastars really shines by not being all happy school life with animal people, but instead focuses on the nature of predators and prey. They may be human-like, but they are all animals in nature.
Magical Girl Site
Aya Asagiri lives a miserable life. At school, she is bullied. At home, she is beaten. Her only bright light is a cat, but one day even that is taken away from her. However, while browsing the internet, she finds a person that takes pity on her and gives her the powers of a magical girl. So starts her vengeance.
Magical Girl Site perhaps hams it up by abusing the main character in every imaginable way in order to endear them to you. However, even if it goes hard on her, there are plenty of other stories of more realistic suffering to be found in other characters.
There are plenty more dark anime series out there. If you think something needs to be on this list, but isn’t, list it for hungry fans in the comments section down below.
