18 Gang Anime About Tough Street Thugs

Mafia, Yakuza, No-Good-Nicks – They are all drawn to one thing – the safety and brotherhood of a gang.

Everyone loves a good gang story, even if gangs in real life are a bit of a hassle, to say the least. Gang anime has all the camaraderie and the good times of a group of people that follow no man’s rules but their own, but is something you can enjoy from the safe distance without worry of physical harm.

Typically, anime about gangs are an excellent mix of fast-paced gun or fist-fighting action all wrapped up in a blanket of more personal character struggles. However, even if a gang anime lacks action, the themes of brotherhood often make it alluring to many who crave the comfort of such a strong bond.

So if you enjoy tipping on that ol’ Al Capone fedora and are threatening to cut off your subordinate’s finger tip off with your well-worn tanto blade, here are a few gang-related anime recommendations to set the mood.

Gang Anime

Gungrave

Gungrave in an anime firmly cut into two parts. It is part sci-fi tale of a man brought back from the dead to protect his target and get revenge on his old friends that betrayed him, and part flashback to how things got to that bleak future.

The first part of Gungrave is a classic rags-to-riches mafia story. Two young orphans rise up the street rat ranks, and attract the attention of the major Mafia syndicate in town. As they both climb up the ranks of more organized crime, an inevitable betrayal shatters their friendship.

Ikebukuro West Gate Park

Gang anime are often neighborhood anime, because that is where turf wars start and end. However, Ikebukuro West Gate Park isn’t about a leader of a gang at all – it’s about the guy who mediates gang disputes.

Ikebukuro West Gate Park explores a small neighborhood through the main character that is trying to keep the peace between two neighborhood gangs while outside events threaten to cause a war between them. Each arc and each problem he solves leads up the to bigger intrigue that is trying to force these two sides to butt heads.

Gangsta

With a name like Gangsta, you expect a certain amount of “gangsta”-ness from the series. You know, maybe a cocky swagger while they peddle substances on the corner or some wanton gun violence as they prowl a gritty, terrible city.

While Gangsta delivers on the violence, this series is more about urban mercenaries than actual gangs.

Gangsta follow two men that work as handymen for the criminal underworld in their rough city. With super-powered abilities, they solve whatever problem is tossed their way for cash. However, as the series goes on, it becomes less about eeking out an existence and more about the intrigue building around the enhanced super-powered humans known as Twilights.

Tokyo Revengers

These days, when anime fans think of gang anime, they think of Tokyo Revengers.

While not a perfect series, Tokyo Revengers melds the themes of gang brotherhood with, of all things, time travel. It follows a man who peaked as a middle school thug learning that, as an adult, his girlfriend from back then was killed by the violent Manji gang.

Given the chance to time travel back to those years, he tries to set things in motion to save the girl, but ends up joining and building strong relationships with the blossoming gang that would later kill her.

Banana Fish

Banana Fish tells a complex tale following a boy raised by a Mafia family who is taking care of his older brother who was rendered mentally unstable after he returned from war. When his brother dies, this leads him down the rabbit hole following a mysterious drug and its unknown connection to the brutal men that raised him.

Banana Fish tells such a tautly pace, gripping tale of a former child sex slave taking down the Mafia family that raised and abused him that many anime fans look past its very clear boy’s love leanings due to such an unexpectedly good thriller story.

Durarara

Durarara is an urban anime comprised of many different stories that are all going on at the same time. The series presents these stories like a series of separate threads all happening in a neighborhood, and weaves them into an taut rope by the end of its three-season run.

One of the major mysteries is the odd rumor of the mysterious colorless color gang, the Dollars. Run and recruited through a website, anyone can be a member, but no one knows who leads them or what actual purpose they serve.

Like any color gang, the Dollars are innocent at first, but have an increasing presence in the neighborhood and present a building powder keg that threatens to break free of control.

Baccano

Set in the 1930’s in the Prohibition, Baccano seamlessly melds together a story about mafia warfare with just a touch of alchemical fantasy that spans the ages.

The Mafia-style gangs of the series are a huge influence on the overall plot as you follow the characters through turf wars and touching relationships alike.

Like Durarara, as the series share the same author, Baccano loves its huge ensemble cast and weaving its thread-like individual stories into a much larger narrative.

Cyberpunk Edgerunners

Cyberpunk Edgerunners takes place in a dystopian cyberpunk world where technology has advanced to the realms of widespread technological human augmentation. However, true to the statement that some things never change, if you are poor, you still get treated worse than street trash.

Exploring the class equality even in such a futuristic world, Edgerunners follows a boy whose mother passes away from inadequate healthcare after an accident because she was poor. Forced to eek out a life on his own, he implants the pilfered cybernetic hardware that he had intended to sell and starts life as a mercenary on the streets with a tight gang of fellow street thugs.

While it has that nice gang camaraderie for a time, Cyberpunk Edgerunners is a spiral. It follows the main character who has an increasing need for more power, and gets it from more cybernetic implants. However, the cost of too much chrome is your humanity and your sanity.

Bungo Stray Dogs

Bungo Stray Dogs starts off about a private detective agency staffed by people with supernatural abilities. Their jobs are to deal with supernatural cases that the police are ill-equipped to handle.

While that is a perfect set up for an average, episodic adventure through an odd city, Bungo Stray Dogs elevates itself with taut arcs that often involve them trying to contend with the powerful Port Mafia that runs the underworld with an iron fist.

K

In the urban fantasy that is K, there are seven Kings who, along with their color gangs, secretly rule Japan.

While the gangs co-exist somewhat peacefully, the shocking sudden murder of a member of one gang sets the underworld abuzz. Blame for the killing lands on a friendly high schooler who has no memories of committing the murder, but is prominently featured in the video of it.

From there, the that boy finds himself on the run from, not just one gang, but almost all of them as his capture means restoring peace to the city.

Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens

Disproportionately making Japan seem like it is 80% assassins, Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens follows a hitman frustrated by a lack of jobs who decides to team up and defend the private investigator he was sent to kill for more stable pay.

From there, the series dives deep into a variety of arcs that showcase the – again, ridiculously dense – criminal underworld of Fukuoka in way that makes you think this series is more a subtle parody of similar series than actually a legitimate tale of it own.

91 Days

In the town of Lawless, Angelo witnessed his family slaughtered by the Vanetti Mafia Family. After losing everything, seven years later he returns under the new name of Avilio in order to infiltrate the Mafia family and destroy them from within.

There are a lot of mafia themes in anime, but 91 Days is the only anime to tell a true mafia-style story of intrigue and revenge. From liquor-running to taking out rivals to the family, the series does everything with an American mafia style right out of the Prohibition era despite its fictional setting.

Bucchigiri!?

Bucchigiri tells an increasingly familar story about high schoolers who are more about fist fights and turf wars than studying and club activities.

However, while Bucchigiri follows a main character that is more interested in getting a girlfriend than joining a gang, this series features a light supernatural twist to it. The main character becomes host to a distinctly Djinn-like being who gives him magnificent physical abilities the stronger their bond grows. However, he isn’t the only Djinn lurking around this neighborhood full of delinquents.

While Bucchigiri starts off very much about gang wars, it transforms into an increasingly personal story of brotherhood between two best friends that fell out with each other long ago and want very different things from life.

Arcana Famiglia

Arcana Famiglia follows the tales of a mafia-like group of protectors called the Arcana Famiglia. Each member made a contract with tarot cards in order for a unique power.

However, when the leader of this organization announces his retirement, he decides that the next leader will marry his daughter and take over, but only if they win a massive free-for-all.

Of course, no one anticipated that his daughter would enter as well in order to maintain her freedom.

My Home Hero

You’re never too old or too normal to get pulled into the depths of the criminal underworld, and My Home Hero is the proof in the pudding for that.

My Home Hero follows a perfectly normal, excessively average, mystery novel-loving salaryman who kills his daughter’s abusive boyfriend in a rage. Disposing of the body and cleaning up the evidence, he soon discovers that the boyfriend was the son of someone prominent in the criminal underworld – and his dad wants answers.

My Home Hero starts as a scramble to “get away with it,” but increasingly becomes about underworld dealings as the main character continues his fall from grace and spirals into manipulating shady thugs with prowess he nipped from reading too many mystery thrillers.

Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom

In an America where assassinations are a common occurrence and the Mafia rules the streets, Inferno is a company that carries out most of these hits with their invincible, inhuman weapon – Phantom.

When a Japanese tourist witnesses Phantom’s latest deed and discovers her identity, she brainwashes him into being an assassin alongside her.

While that alone is an interesting set up for a bullet-riddled romp through the criminal underworld, Phantom is a series with layers. This means it grows increasingly complex as it goes on.

Wind Breaker

I don’t know what it is, but something is setting off a small boom of anime about high school gangs. Does Japan have a burgeoning gang problem among its dwindling youth? Or do gangs just make for a compelling excuse to make a series about cool-looking characters picking slickly animated fights?

Regardless, Wind Breaker is about a boy with a rough – and surprisingly tsundere – personality that transfers to a notorious delinquent school to try and conquer it with his fists. However, before he even steps foot inside, he is recruited into the school’s gang that helps protect the town from the gang violence of other, less scrupulous delinquent schools.

Like Bucchigire!? and Tokyo Revengers, Wind Breaker really puts an emphasis on the brotherhood forged in a young gang while also bringing beautiful modern animation to bear when it is time to throw fists.

Akiba Maid War

And finally, we have the most gangsta anime of all – an anime about maids working in maid cafes in Akihabara.

Now, if you are a particular connoisseur of yakuza anime, you will find that yakuza representation in anime is a bit… Well, comical.

Anime tends to make yakuza do anything under the sun to be silly, but very rarely tells actual serious yakuza stories. This makes Akiba Maid Cafe, an anime about maid cafes that act – and fight – like yakuza clans, the best yakuza story that the medium has to offer.

Akiba Maid War really does tell a serious gang story. It just has the equally enjoyable veneer of cute maid characters who, on occasion, shoot each other and threaten to take a bat to the kneecaps of people who piss them off.

Do you have any more gang anime recommendations for those that crave camaraderie and violence? Let fans know in the comments section below.