20 Most Edgy Anime of All Time

What does it take to be considered “edgy” these days? There is such a delicately fine line between edge and cringe that one could argue that they are indeed one and the same. Certainly a high schooler making jokes about school shootings is pretty edgy. Carrying a blunt replica katana down the street as you go get groceries is very edgy. However, to be edgy, as it is a term we have recently created, is rather subjective.

What is our definition of edgy anime?

Something that is so dark almost for the sake for being dark. While it is having diminishing returns, if you have an anime series that is stuffed to the gills with violence, rape, abuse, and all those gooey buzzwords – It gets attention.

You get articles written about your series. Concerned parents tell their kids not to watch it. Those kids go out of their way to watch it immediately.

This isn’t to say that edgy anime is bad, many shows on here are some of my favorites (and probably yours), but let’s be honest, some content in these edgy anime recommendations was probably put in purely to grab your attention and not really to contribute to the plot.

Best Edgy Anime

Bastard!!

It’s easy to say older anime was edgier, but that’s not quite true. If anything, it took less to shock us than it does now. However, Bastard, a recently remade relic from the past, is reminding everyone that old anime had some edge to it. This series is everything a teenage edgelord could possibly desire.

You have your fairly standard ever powerful, near immortal cocky anti-hero who only takes commands from his lady, and even then, if he feels like it.

You have his lady who is strong and independent yet somehow constantly captured, stripped naked, and threatened with rape.

You have his enemies that, if they didn’t know the previously villainous main anti-hero, die in a bloody mist almost immediately.

Oh, and of course you got to have his adopted daughter he raised as a child then later took as a lover. Gotta have that.

Akame ga Kill

When airing, Akame ga Kill built its hype on the platform that anyone could die and no one was safe.

That wasn’t true, of course. However, it wasn’t until the end that you could see what this series really was – edgelord bait.

Over-the-top psychotic villains, brooding main characters with sad back stories that explain their present coldness, being a band of terrorist fighting against the overtly evil government that doesn’t even try to hide its evilness, and, of course, there is nothing more edgy then killing off as many characters as you can get away with in graphic ways.

No one just simply dies on a battlefield, no, every death needs to be spectacle.

Redo of Healer

Even before it was adapted to anime, the reputation of Redo of Healer preceded it. It is easily the edgiest anime on this list.

It is all about how abused the main character was to justify all the terrible things he does to people as he exacts his revenge.

Of course he was beaten, humiliated, and raped, so he then in turn does that to all the people who did that to him while brainwashing women to be part of his happy harem of degraded bedroom buddies.

It’s like teenage fan fiction, but someone published it because horny fantasy misogyny is so hot right now.

Hellsing Ultimate

Vampires are always a good recipe for edginess, but Hellsing isn’t about moody, broody, tortured edgelords. It is about a vampire that probably would act as vicious creature of the night would act.

He isn’t tortured by his nature, he revels in it. This allows Hellsing to have absolutely brutal and interesting fights.

However, it never forgets its edge by having busty maidens spattered throughout, religious themes, and nazis. Things that all get a rise out of people, but used in such a way that anime fans can’t really hate.

Devilman Crybaby

For as many demons as there are in anime, they are a profoundly tame breed. Devilman Crybaby takes a different approach.

It draws forth the orgies, debauchery, and dismemberment that sinful demons should embody and brings it to anime. It is an anime of sex and blood, but also has more balls than most edgy anime in that it didn’t feel the need to have a happy ending.

Elfen Lied

That fact that Elfen Lied starts off with a naked girl murdering her way out of a government facility should have been a good indicator of how sharp this edge was. However, Lucy’s body count is perhaps the least edgy thing in the series.

What makes this series legendary in its edge is the fact that every character is some form of messed up, or is going to be.

Their families are going to die. They’re going to have an unhealthy interest in their cousins. They’re even going to get their puppies beaten to death.

It is through all those shocking things that the otherwise cardboard characters will be developed.

Tokyo Ghoul

Tokyo Ghoul is an anime series about a race of demi-humans that eat people. After the main character becomes one, he agonizes over his hunger and the fact that he’d have to kill to satisfy it before being introduced to a more harmless way.

That in and of itself isn’t particularly edgy, but Tokyo Ghoul grows into it as it dives into the ghouls’ resistance to the government and the terrible things that the government does to ghouls.

Naturally, this timid, harmless protagonist becomes a full-on murderous terrorist given enough time and torture in the series.

King’s Game

Why did a class of kids suddenly start having to play a game where if they don’t obey the commands they get on their cell phone they’ll die horribly?

Who knows. They are none too interested in explaining it in the anime.

They know that people came to watch students take desperate actions to live, and die trying. That’s really all King’s Game is. Kids dying for your entertainment.

Magical Girl Spec Ops Asuka

After Madoka Magica really set off the craze, the concept of magical girls really suffering instead of just saving the world got pretty popular.

Now, militarized magical girls with PTSD doesn’t sound too edgy. It even sounds pretty good. However, this series wedged in dark things just for the sake of having them.

Highlighting how dangerous and vicious fighting an enemy is isn’t the edgy bit. Instead, it is the tidbits like how Asuka received bits of her dead parents in a box or how Kurumi was viciously bullied in school.

Wedging in little bits of trauma and abuse to every character is pretty edgy, and so is not being able to go one episode without dismembering someone.

Edgy as it is, it was at least nice to show PTSD addressed in anime.

Magical Girl Site

Although yet another dark magical girl series, this is one that takes the edge of all its predecessors and perhaps takes it too far.

It crams in so much abuse, violence, and trauma into every character that it becomes almost a comical show without meaning to be. There’s no depth to any of it. It is just there to to help the anime end up at the most flimsy message about suffering ever at the end.

I like to think of this as the nail in the dark magical girl coffin since there haven’t been many shows since.

Made in Abyss

There was a very brief era in anime where creators seemed to relish in making you watch cute potato-shaped characters suffer in brutal worlds. Made in Abyss, while it takes time to get going, was the pinnacle of that.

The edge within this series does often serve a purpose, though. You are meant to see how dangerous the Abyss is and how the deeper you go, the more morals must degrade.

Still, it is pretty edgy to make a girl bleed from everywhere and piss herself onscreen. Yet, that is definitely not the worse thing you will see.

Arifureta

Whereas a number of anime series on here are edgy purely by being violent or sexual, Arifureta is the tamest of the bunch. It is an isekai series which, as a form of escapism, is an edgy genre in and of itself.

However, this is real bait for those that feel downtrodden. Then main character lives a happy isekai life until his comrade betrays him and leave him at the literal bottom of a pit to die. He struggles to survive, and after he gets on his feet and finds a similarly nihilistic vampire companion, coldly goes on his way in the world.

While an “anti-hero,” he definitely ends up saving everyone in trouble in his path. His character was developed purely from that trauma and has close to no growth after that.

Berserk

While not the edgiest, Berserk does indeed have its moments. The further you get into the series, the more edgy it becomes.

Initially it is just Gutts’ abusive childhood, and sometimes Griffith’s manipulation. Then after a graphic rape, Gutts is transformed into true edgelord who wanders from place to place with the sole purpose of vengeance that constantly slips from his fingers.

He takes out this impotent rage on most any demon he sees until he inadvertently gathers another human posse that have a tempering effect on his endless rage.

Angels of Death

An edgy title does not always mean an edgy series, but it does this time.

Angels of Death follows a girl trapped in a locked building without memories. This building is home to serial killers on every level, and she must climb to escape.

To do this, she strikes a bargain with a man in bandages who was trying to kill her with a scythe for the pleasure of it. They come to an agreement that they help each other get out, and in return, he gets to kill her after that.

The rest of the series is all edgy back stories and revelation where you find out that she is just as damaged as everyone else in the building.

Corpse Party

Corpse Party exists not to tell a story. I mean, it has one, but it is one that you could create in 30 minutes. Instead, this series exists to show you exactly how graphically an anime can show dead and dying people. Brains hanging out, half a face missing, splatter everywhere. It’s gore porn.

Pupa

This is an example of edge gone wrong. Pupa tells the story of two siblings (abandoned by abusive parent, of course) that are infected with a virus. For the brother, he able to regenerate damage to his body. For the sister, she is imbued with an insatiable desire to eat human flesh.

Can you guess what happens next? I bet you can.

Anyway, the part where this edgy show went wrong is that it failed to make you care. You aren’t shocked by siblings stripping down and chewing on each other if you don’t give time to build them as characters.

They could be two strangers making squelching sounds for all this anime told us about them. I blame them using the 5-minute per episode format. That’s enough time to tell spooky horror, but not edgy horror.

Texhnolyze

Who says edgy anime can’t also be art?

Texhnolyze sets its big focus on the nihilistic society that it creates and you explore it through the constantly kicked puppy of a main character that just happens to live there.

However, while nihilism in anime is often cut through with the hot knife of hope, Texhnolyze decides to skip that part, and instead becomes an exercise is how long you can last under the oppressive weight of the terrible world it created.

There is no hope, only edge, but good edge.

Future Diary

Killing games are expected to have a certain amount of edge. I mean, there is usually just the barest essentials of plot that justify a group of people being told to go at each other and end some lives.

Future Diary gives you that bare essential plot and really shines through its array of creatively broken participants where the cowardly, dislikable main character is the most normal of the bunch.

The real edge of this series gets sharper as things go on. You essentially watch what little morals and honor there was erode as participants get whittled away and the main character’s pocket yandere becomes increasingly unhinged.

Neon Genesis Evangelion

While widely considered one of the best anime series of all time by people with a certain amount of pretentiousness in their very blood, there is no argument that it is often one of the edgiest anime series of all time. Masturbating to coma girls. Religious imagery throughout. Parental abuse. Genji and his handmade harem.

There is a reason this series needed to be remade as movies, and that reason was to temper and explain the pervasive edginess of the series that was caused by Hideaki Anno’s spiraling depression the first time around.

It’s not a criticism of Evangelion, it is a fact that we were all edgy people that like edgy anime and call it thought-provoking.

What are your picks for edgy anime? I’ve left off a number of older series here like Angel Cop or Genocyber because who would care enough to hunt them down, so don’t be too offended. Let fans know your picks for edgy anime in the comments section below.