18 Brutal Survival Game Anime

Survival games, death games, killing games – they fall under many different titles, but they all refer to the same thing. Survival games depict high-staked, often organized events where a group of characters are tossed into space and told to murder each other if they want to win – or live!

Japan and anime has a passion for survival stories – and they do them well. The infamous manga and live-action film Battle Royale, for example, predated the Western craze for survival games that came after book-and-movie series like The Hunger Games really caught fire. It was a masterpiece of blood and drama which still perfectly encapsulates the core concepts of the survival game genre in any media.

In survival game anime, we tune in to watch characters struggle. The struggle to survive a dangerous situation. The struggle of grappling with the emotion that comes from the brutal, vicious loss of precious, friends, family, and allies. The struggle to overcome a foe of overwhelming might or skill. The struggle to crawl toward life and safety even when there is nothing left.

Humans love a struggle story because we get to see characters overcome or shockingly die trying. Either way, it is a compelling watch for the audience.

What is a Survival Game Anime?

Now, survival game anime doesn’t just go by many different names, it can also manifest different definitions. In this list, just so you know if you are in the right place or not, a survival game anime is classified as such:

• A group of characters gathered together
• Put in a situation that may or may not be gamified
• Told to kill each other if they want to win/survive
• Death is not just a possibility, but a likelihood

So while some high-stakes gambling anime may threaten death as a punishment for losing – Kaiji being a prime example – they will not be counted as a survival game anime here. This is a list only for the games in which characters need to – or at least try to – kill.

Survival Game Anime

Btooom!

While there are a few anime series that can technically be classified as survival “games,” like Sword Art Online, Btooom takes the game world and makes it a reality for many players – to deadly results.

In Btooom, some of the best players of the Btooom video game are transported to an island and forced to play the game for real. Only through killing the other participants will they be able to have proof of their victory.

For the main character, a top player and shut-in volunteered for the game by his beleaguered mother, he becomes determined to win and leave the island after he bonds with a girl he unknowingly was very close to in the game world. However, this is not a game that traditionally allows for two winners.

Deadman Wonderland

Deadman Wonderland follows Ganta, a student who was preparing to go to a prison amusement park with his class where prisoners perform dangerous acts for the amusement of the audience. However, his plans are thoroughly derailed when his entire class gets murdered and someone sets him up to look like the one who did it.

Now, Ganta is sent to the very prison amusement park he was excited to visit, but as a prisoner where he must not only perform for the crowd in brutal games, but try not to get killed by his fellow inmates.

Future Diary

Future Diary follows the story of Yukiteru, a loner who spends his time writing down what others are doing in his cell phone diary instead of interacting with the world.

However, when his imaginary god friends he talks to at home turn out to be not-so-imaginary, he finds himself thrust into a killing game with godhood on the line.

Each participant is given a power unique to them in the form of a diary. For Yukiteru, his cellphone has been transformed into a diary that shows the future. Reluctantly joining forces with a classmate-turned-murder hobo that is obsessively in love with him, this otherwise meek boy struggles to survive the game he was thrust into.

Darwin’s Game

From the flip phones of old in Future Diary straight into the future of smartphone mobile gaming, Darwin’s Game tells a less vicious, and more action-oriented survival game story.

This series follows a boy who was tricked into signing up for a mobile game by a classmate. Instead of gacha, waifus, and poverty, he finds that he is locked into a battle game where players challenge and fight each other to the death. Winning features huge financial payouts while losing features death and being wiped from the world.

As all the bodies become pixelated after death, it cuts down on the shock value present in Darwin’s Game, but the series does more than make up for it with an abundance of well thought-out plot.

Juuni Taisen

Sometimes, a battle royale tournament is every ounce of plot that you need for your story, and that sums up Juuni Taisen.

Juuni Taisen is a tournament in which the best mercenaries in the world, each belonging to or recruited by a clan corresponding with a member of the Chinese Zodiac, fight in a battle royale tournament. The winner of this tournament can have whatever wish they want granted, but to win, they must kill everyone else.

That’s it. That’s the anime. The series is that tournament and each episode is vicious fights inter-spliced with a character’s backstory. If you don’t need depth of plot and just want violence and mayhem from interestingly designed characters with unique abilities, it is actually a really enjoyable watch. It just isn’t winning any critical acclaim for storytelling because it has little.

Platinum End

At some point, the authors of Death Note looked at Future Diary and said, “we could do that.” And that’s how I like to imagine Platinum End came into being.

Platinum End follows a boy attempting to kill himself saved by an angel who picked him to be her God Candidate in an upcoming competition to be the successor to God. Each candidate is chosen by an angel and given specific powers they can use to achieve godhood.

The important takeaway from this set up is that none of the angels ever said it was a killing game, but some participants swiftly turned it into one. As killing opponents isn’t strict necessary, but not discouraged, it provides a heady set up for vicious betrayals.

Battle Game in 5 Seconds

In some survival games, they aren’t actually really games at all, but Battle Game in 5 Seconds injects more gamification into its series. Although, that does mean sacrificing some brutality.

Battle Game in 5 Seconds follows a gamer who is abducted and transported to a room where he and many other individuals had their existence erased and will now participate in an experiment.

The participants are each given a unique power and put in a variety of scenarios where they can test it. The unique thing, and what makes this series well worth the watch even if it lacks the gore, is that the main character’s ability is whatever his opponent thinks it is. So combine that with his high intellect and you get a lovely death game full of clever manipulation.

Gantz

Perhaps questionable as a survival game anime in that the participants in the Gantz game aren’t killing other humans, but there is no question as to the gamified brutality present in Gantz.

This series follows a horny, somewhat apathetic boy who dies immediately! However, he wakes up in a closed room with a group of people where a black ball tells them to put on skin-tight leather suits and go kill aliens. If they kill enough aliens to earn enough points, they can eventually buy their freedom.

The concept sounds as delightfully bizarre as anime can muster, but it is pulled off in a spray of blood and dismemberment.

The Fate Series

The Fate series is a powerhouse in anime – and mobile gaming – and it all started with a survival game.

The core Fate series, Fate/Stay and its prequel Fate/Zero, follow a small event in Japan where a group of mages from throughout the world summon familiars of historical or mythical significance and then fight each other to the death in a large battle royale tournament.

For the winner of this blood bath, they get to make a wish at the Holy Grail after it is summoned. Of course, things never go quite so simply in the tournament, and it is as full of gut-wrenching betrayal as it is epic fights between historical and mystical figures in anime form.

Now, the survival game status of the Fate series is not limited to the core series, but it is a mighty franchise that takes an above average amount of effort to get into.

Danganronpa: The Animation

Hope’s Peak is an elite academy that only accepts the most talented students. However, Makoto Naegi was only accepted for his one remarkable trait – his luck. Unfortunately, when he steps on campus, he loses consciousness and wakes up in the school building where the doors and windows have all been sealed.

As he soon discovers, he is locked in with his fellow classmates and a menacing teddy bear principal telling them that they can only leave if someone murders one of their peers without getting caught. However, if they are caught, the murderer will be executed.

Based off actually pretty fun-to-play visual novel game, Danganronpa presents a killing game in the form of a murder mystery solver. It explores bloody cases with a surprisingly gripping, albeit distinctly anime-weird, story.

Magical Girl Raising Project

Ever since she was a young child, Koyuki has always wanted to be a magical girl. Years later, there is a rumor going around that playing a special mobile game will occasional transform players into real life magical girls. Knowing it is silly, but trying it anyway, it turns out to be true!

However, it turns out there are just too many magical girls in her city now, and magical energy is in short supply. What starts off as a race for magical energy soon turns into a devastating bloodbath.

Spawning from the dark magical girl anime wave that came after Madoka Magica, magical girl battle royale was kind of an easy leap. Unfortunately, while the series has plenty of brutal moments, it doesn’t have much storytelling to speak of.

Bokurano

While on an educational retreat for the summer, a group of kids meet a strange man at the beach. He invites them into a cave filled with technology and asks if they want to beta test a game.

After they have all signed up, they are transported into a giant robot where one child must pilot it and fight aliens trying to destroy Earth.

The twist is that after each battle, the pilot dies. Now, they are in a race for time to try and stop this game before it it is the next pilot’s turn to fight.

While not traditionally a survival game story, Bokurano hits all those delightful struggle notes, and with a dark, miserable mecha plot to contrast the normally hot-blooded nature of the genre.

Granbelm

Granbelm is yet another magical girl battle royale, but this time, they brought mechs.

In the world of Granbelm, magic used to exist in the world, but to often chaotic consequences. So seven mages sacrificed themselves to seal magic away. Thousands of years later, that magic seal abducts people to participate in monthly battles meant to determine an individual that can be named the one true mage.

The series follows a non-mage transported to this realm where she gets involved in the battle royale mech battle that is happening between six other mages. While it features interesting world-building, it lacks a lot of flash, sizzle, and suffering to endear itself to most people.

Akuma no Riddle

For Tokaku, a recent transfer student to a prestigious all-girls academy, she finds herself purposely placed in a special class called Class Black.

There are only 13 students in this classroom, and a strong education isn’t the focus here. Instead, Tokaku and eleven others are assassins whose goal is to kill the thirteenth student, an innocent girl from a wealthy family, to get a wish granted in return.

With each assassin only getting one chance to kill the girl, they need to pick their moment. However, Tokaku becomes enamored with the girl. So much so, that she decides to defend her from assassins instead of try to kill her.

Akuma no Riddle stuffs in a healthy dose of shoujo ai with your gamified murder, but does tell a pretty intriguing and unraveling story amid the bloodshed as it goes on.

High Rise Invasion

You will find, on this very list, many series that are fun tastes, but ultimately squandered potential when compared to their manga source material. However, High Rise Invasion gives even Gantz, an anime that flounders in filler when it should have been adapting its best arc, a run for most disappointing survival game anime adaptation.

High Rise Invasion tells the story of a girl transported to a series of high rise rooftops with no way to get to the ground. In this strange place, she finds other people and those who are wearing masks and trying to kill them.

Fleeing for her life from masked psychopaths, she tries to survive and find a way to make it out of this twisted world.

During its run, High Rise Invasion was a pretty popular manga, but the anime only got one sloppy season and did not tell the story very well. It is entertaining as a survival anime, but it is certainly not the most compelling one unless you are compelled by panty flashes.

King’s Game

Speaking of highly disappointing anime adaptations based on pretty good manga, we’ve gotten to King’s Game, a series that went so wrong that it ended up a comedy.

King’s Game has the simple premise of being about a class of students who get sent texts saying that they are playing a King’s Game. In this game, they must do what King says in the text or face consequences.

The dares start off silly and innocent at first, then become progressive more violent or provocative. Unfortunately, those who don’t obey king mysteriously die.

This series can be faulted for low budget and a general lack of character exploration. Most of the time, you don’t know anything about the character being killed, and the deaths happen in sometimes kind of funny ways. As such, it’s not a desperate struggle to unravel a murderous mystery and survive like it should be. Instead, you just watch some school kids look at their phones until they get killed by invisible entities.

The Severing Crimson Edge

By far and wide the most hairy death game in anime is The Severing Crimson Edge. This edgy-sounding series follows a hair-obsessed boy who meets a mysterious girl with long, fast growing hair.

He then discovers that there is a death game surrounding her. It is said that whoever kills her with a specific cursed object known as a Killing Good will have their wish granted.

The boy discovers that he inherited one of these Killing Goods, a pair of scissors once used by his ancestor to murder people. He is able to cut her hair with it, although it grows back the next day. Instead of killing her, he decides to protect her from other Killing Good wielders.

The premise is as inventive as one can hope for in this genre, but it is not carried out with a lot finesse. The writing and characters are as basic as can be, but it still does offer everything that one would look for in a survival game anime.

Kamierabi God.App

Famed and notoriously eccentric game story writer Yoko Taro, of the Nier Automata fame, threw his hat into the anime game with this unassuming little killing game anime.

As is a common motivator in the genre, Kamierabi follows a battle royale of god candidates, told to kill each other until one remains to become god.

However, anyone familiar with Yoko Taro will already know that this series is less simple than its premise lets on, and that comes out by end as it moves into some pretty high-minded concepts.

Unfortunately, this series gets a pretty rough shake from the animation style used by the newly-founded studio that animated it. Studio Unend was founded by ex-Polygon pictures employees. While they left Polygon Pictures, they kept the signature CGI style of the studio intact – so it looks a bit jank.

Did we miss any more wonderlands of blood, guts, and betrayal that would be considered survival game anime? Let killing game anime fans know your recommendations in the comments section below.