Horror romance anime is something that is hard to put together into a cohesive series. When romance is done well, it typically isn’t horrific. Alternatively, when horror is done well, it typically isn’t focused on a character’s romantic relationship.
Unlike horror comedy anime that are just fundamentally hard to get to work together, horror romance anime is just something that is hard to define. Ideally, you want something that is focused on a romantic relationship, but is also innately happening in a sort of messed up sort of way. To balance a horror atmosphere or situation with a romantic relationship in a satisfying way is the peak of difficulty.
If you are on the hunt for the elusive horror romance anime, then give theses anime recommendations a try.
Horror Romance Anime
Future Diary
While a good number of anime about killing games do have an element of romance, Future Diary makes the love story a bigger part of the actual plot and uses it to make the story even more messed up.
This series follows a boy who gains the ability to read the past or present details of the surrounding area on his cell phone. He is then told that several other “diary users” will be pitted against each other with the sole winner able to become god.
Luckily for the rather meek main character, his classmate is also a diary user and has an increasingly strong attachment to him. Strongly in love with him and able to murder indiscriminately while he cowers in a corner, she keeps him safe in hopes that they can deepen their relationship.
This is one horror romance anime that starts off rather normally, and then slowly becomes increasingly more concerning with her progressively more unhinged behavior.
School Days
School Days will forever be remembered for the way it took the standard harem drama romance all the way to the extreme end of the spectrum.
This series follows a main character who clandestinely falls in love with a girl he rides the train with. He gets help dating her from a female classmate. When his girlfriend doesn’t sleep with him, he then sleeps with the girl who helped get them together. Long story short – it turns to jealous, drama, and ultimately, to violence. Pretty graphic and shocking violence, at that.
Kemonozume
Maasaki Yuasa, creator of the distinct art style you see in Kemonozume and other anime series, is not known for creating heart-throbbing romantic tales. It can be noted, however, that any romantic tales he does write often have bloody ends to them.
Kemonozume is a series about beings that live among humans but need to eat humans to survive. As they are a threat, there are secret organizations dedicated to slaying these creatures. Kemonozume is the star-crossed vicious romance tale of a monster hunter and the flesh-eating monster that he fell in love with.
Blood+
While Blood+ is more of an action romance, its focus on a vampire slaughtering other blood-sucking creatures is certainly better than melodramatic romance that vampire characters are usually subjected to.
The series follows a high school girl that is attacked by a creature, fed blood by a man, and awakens her suppressed vampire powers to slay the creatures that attack her. As a human-vampire hybrid, she discovers that the adult man that came to her aid has been her servant since their shared childhood together, but her memories of him had been sealed.
Throughout the series, you watch their bond grow and strengthen as she remembers more of her past and they endure a number of vicious battles together.
Sankarea
There aren’t a lot of zombie anime out there, and zombie romance anime? Well, there is really just Sankarea.
Sankarea follows a boy obsessed with zombies who grows close to a girl her met when he discovers her yelling her grievances into a well. After his cat gets run over, he tries to make a potion to resurrect him. While the potion succeeds, the girl, unaware of the success, uses it to kill herself only to be brought back as a zombie.
While Sankarea does lean into some rom-com moments, it never lets you forget that this romance was built on death and he is indeed dating an undead creature. It is the type of dark romance anime that can go from very cute to downright sinister with the flip of a flesh-hungry switch.
Dusk Maiden of Amnesia
There are a few supernatural harem anime series out there that include ghosts in the mix, but only Dusk Maiden of Amnesia dared to stand up and say that it was building a sole, non-harem romance between a human and a ghost.
This series follows a girl who was murdered at school 60 years ago trying to solve her own murder with the help of her newly recruited and very human Paranormal Investigation Club. While they actually do solve her murder (and find her remains), the ghost is still bound to the school and starts a romantic relationship with the main character.
While Dusk Maiden of Amnesia is more chipper than you would expect, it also acknowledges that a human dating a ghost is kind of a sad thing. Thus, for every happy relationship moment, it never forgets a dose of of melancholy.
Vampire Knight
Not the first or last vampire romance anime on this list, Vampire Knight is probably the most traditional sort of vampire romance anime. In much of romantic vampire media, it is all terribly Gothic and just dripping with melodrama – Vampire Knight keeps with that tradition and wraps it up in a shoujo romance blanket.
Vampire Knight takes place in a school with human students during the day and vampire students during the night. The heroine works for the disciplinary committee and finds her self in a love triangle between the vampire that saved her life as a child and her childhood friend and fellow disciplinary member who is from a family of vampire hunters.
Lunar Legend Tsukihime
While fans of the visual novel it is based on will consistently tell you its flaws, Tsukihime is actually a master of creating an intriguing and tense atmosphere right from the get go.
The series follows a main character that developed the ability to see invisible lines on people after being hospitalized after an incident. While he gets glasses to suppress this ability, suspicious murders have been happening around town. After feeling compelled to follow a woman, he ends up dismembering her, and then she appears before him the next day asking him to help her find the blood-draining monster in town.
Now, bear with me, because Tsukihime’s plot is often hard to compactly sum up. Furthermore, it isn’t exactly a summary that translates to romance. As it is a visual novel adaptation, it has multiple romance routes. While you can see the ghosts of all the romantic routes of Tsukihime, it does follow a main one to a conclusion.
Elfen Lied
While Elfen Lied is most remembered for how many people it dismembered, its romantic element played a rather important part in the gore story as well.
The series follows a member of a race known for psychic abilities escaping the government facility where she was experimented on. After the killing spree, she is shot in the head and loses her memories. After escaping, she lives as an amnesiac with a college boy and his cousin until her memories return.
During her time with the boy, they grow closer, but unfortunately, this isn’t the first time they have met.
The Fruit of Grisaia
In truth, The Fruit of Grisaia is more of a harem series than a romance, and a visual novel adaptation-type harem series where he technically commits to a girl, but it never actually feels like he actually dates her.
However, a harem series – particularly one where he accepts a single girls’ feelings and enters into a relationship – is still a romance, and The Fruit of Grisaia is probably one of the strangest harem experiences you will have.
It follows a main character who, after his parents met a violent end, is raised by an international terrorist, then by an assassin, and after working as an assassin himself, goes to the world’s most empty school staffed by one woman and with a small harem of students for him to never attend class with.
He helps each girl with their very dramatic problems before they in turn help him after he is captured by a terrorist and hunted by the government.
Now, while dramatic, that doesn’t sound especially horror-oriented. However, when I say the girls have “dramatic” problems, I mean that most characters have horrific back stories. Since one girls’ whole arc is about being in the forest with a bunch of high school girls that start eating each other, I’m counting it.
Devils’ Line
In one more vampire romance anime for the road, Devils’ Line presents probably the most unique vampire world in that its set in our modern world.
In Devils’ Line, vampires don’t need to drink blood to live, and thus can live among humans somewhat normally. However, blood is presented more akin to a drug. The sensation of drinking blood is like the best high and orgasm all wrapped into one, and the sight of blood alone can send vampires into a blood-crazed rape and murder frenzy.
The series follows a vampire enlisted into a secret subsection of police assigned to dealing with these attacks and still hiding the existence of vampires from the public. After arresting a suspect, he ends up forming a deepening relationship with the college girl who was friends with the vampire he arrested.
This series is actually pretty great in that it presents vampires as, not charming Casanovas of the night, but more like recovering drug addicts trying to resist their dark urges.
Do you know more anime that happen to masterfully blend horror and romance? Let fans know in the comments section below.
Dusk maiden is a pretty decent show, had some scary moments. I did watch fruits of Gresia briefly a few years ago, I do recall the girls having some dark moments. Nice post for halloween
Grisaia goes well and truly off the rails. I don’t often finish harem anime, but I had to see how that one ended.