The mystery genre of anime is vast and full of cases to solve. However, there is no case with higher stakes than a murder mystery. A human-shaped monster is among the crowds, having taken a life and likely to do it again if left to their own devices.
However, not all mystery anime are murder mystery anime. Even Detective Conan and its never-ending array of cases spread across thousands of episodes and dozens of movies isn’t about murder every time. If you are are looking specifically for compact, compelling murder mystery anime recommendations, then check out this batch of case files, gumshoe.
Murder Mystery Anime
The Perfect Insider
While a locked room murder mystery case is a staple episode for any detective mystery anime, The Perfect Insider stretches what would be a single-episode case into a 12-episode-long series.
The Perfect Insider follows a group of college students that go camping with their professor as he seeks to visit a reclusive genius woman who is locked away in her lab. Inside, they discover that the genius woman has been brutally murdered and dismembered in what should have been her locked cell.
From thereon, you get a wildly unraveling murder mystery that fully builds out the characters involved. While it always threatens to take this train fully off the rails, The Perfect Insider does perfectly tell a locked room murder mystery story.
Erased
While Erased is primarily a time travel anime about the main character suddenly being sent back to his childhood, the reason for that is because a series of brutal child murders were about to happen. By catching the person responsible for the murders that happened in his childhood, he can not just save their lives, but potentially undo the related murder that happened in his adulthood and caused him to be sent back in time.
While Erased, as a time travel anime, asks you to not think too hard about why he can time travel, it does tell an excellent murder mystery filled with misdirects and red herrings to keep things tense and unexpected.
ID: Invaded
While anime can’t quite seem to grasp doing a police serial drama without making it extremely sci-fi, Id: Invaded at least offers a wide array of serial killers to explore. Although, it does really accent the “serial killers all have eccentric calling cards” trope.
Id: Invaded takes place in a technologically-advanced future where police have started to adopt an experimental technology that lets them access the psyche of a killer from the crime scene. However, the only people who can use this device are those who have already killed.
The series follows an ex-detective jailed for vigilante murder that assists his once-comrades by using this device and hunting killers.
Shiki
Shiki often plays out as a “good, not great” B-horror movie in that is has some supernatural elements, but also a plot that is fully framed about mysterious deaths.
Shiki follows the numerous residents of an isolated rural Japanese town. When a teen girl suddenly dies, people are shocked. However, as more people begin to turn up dead, there are those who rush to find out the cause.
The most interesting part is trying to watch the characters unravel the mystery rather than trying to solve it yourself since Shiki is a little more honest with information given to the audience. However, it does capture a nice rural murder mystery story for those that don’t mind a bit more supernatural being present in that mystery.
Box of Goblins
Box of Goblins, most simply put, is a murder mystery anime about detectives looking into bizarre murder cases where the dismembered bodies of girls are all found curiously arranged in boxes.
However, Box of Goblins is also one of those murder mystery anime where “the murder” is often a secondary device that is used to explore the other concepts of the series.
Box of Goblins is an anime told in non-chronological order as well as an anime that follows multiple character stories at the same time. This means its is both told in a confusing, though rewarding to piece together way, but also likes to use long moments of ponderous, unrelated dialogue as well.
If you are addicted to those beautiful “A-ha!” moments of mystery anime where everything comes together, Box of Goblins may not be fore you. It is telling a murder mystery story, but one that is often more focused on conveying its Eastern philosophical concepts and exploring older folklore than solving the murder.
The Kubikiri Cycle
Like The Perfect Insider, The Kubikiri Cycle is a series that turns one single murder case into the entire anime as a series of geniuses, invited as guests by an infamous recluse, find one of their companions murdered and oddly beheaded. You follow a average male main character, who is the assistant to a genius engineer, as he talks to these various geniuses in order to solve the case.
While The Kubikiri Cycle is one of the best single-case murder mystery anime on this list, The Kubikiri Cycle is also a very “Studio Shaft” anime.
For those unfamiliar, Studio Shaft has a very distinct style in which it uses surreal visuals, long, lingering shots, and dialogue that is all simple statements said long. The Studio Shaft treatment in The Kubikiri Cycle works wonderfully for the mystery, but how meandering and verbose some of the conversations are is definitely not for everyone.
Danganronpa
Like The Kubikiri Cycle, Danganronpa is also about a group of genius-level people solving the mysterious, gruesome murders of their peers. However, there are two things that set Danganronpa apart from – not just other mystery anime – but other anime in general.
The first is that Danganronpa cranks the eccentricity and colorful design of its characters up to the maximum, which gives this visual novel adaptation memorable visual flair. The second thing that sets Danganronpa apart from other mystery anime is that the characters are playing a survival game.
To leave the school that a mysterious bear locked them inside, they have to murder a classmate and get away with it, earning their freedom and leaving the rest of their peers locked in to die. However, the main character is determined to find another way while also solving the various murders that are going on around him.
Psycho-Pass
Like Id: Invaded, Psycho-Pass is another sci-fi cop drama, but telling a longer running story.
Psycho-Pass follows a unit of police officers in a dystopian technological future where the police can predict a person’s criminal intent and take action before the crime is actually committed.
Officers work in duos of their handlers and those with high criminal intent that dispense out lethal justice when authorized. Together, the main duo and their unit hunt down a serial killer while handling other small cases.
Unfortunately for murder mystery fans, Psycho-Pass only starts out as a solid murder mystery anime before growing above that into a more ponderous sci-fi crime thriller.
It is a still a great choice for those who want a longer anime to enjoy, but Psycho-Pass isn’t as laser-focused on a single serial killer hunt after the first season.
Odd Taxi
Occasionally overlooked by those seeking serious anime for its use of what appears to be animal mascot characters, Odd Taxi is both a serious story and a serious murder-based mystery story.
Odd Taxi follows a grumpy walrus taxi driver who, after being the last one to pick up a woman who would be murdered, gets caught up in a murder investigation. When the police start talking to him, suddenly several neighborhood crime-aligned individuals take an interest in this beleaguered taxi driver as well.
Odd Taxi takes a slow and well-paced approach to unraveling this mystery while also building out its larger cast of characters. It is also a series where the whodunnit of the murder mystery is not the most surprising thing revealed at the end.
Persona 4
While the anime adaptation of the Persona 4 game is not exactly the pinnacle of anime or the pinnacle of “JRPGs with dating sim elements” story adaptations, it is still a pretty interesting murder mystery in its core plot.
Person 4 follows a new transfer student staying with his detective relative that gets caught up in a series of murders that keep happening on foggy nights. While the series quickly shows that something supernatural is happening, there is still a very real person orchestrating these deaths, and they need to be caught.
Pluto
Like Id: Invaded and Psycho-Pass, Pluto is another sci-fi-laden, detective-focused murder mystery series, but this time it isn’t following specifically police. As Pluto was originally Naoki Urasawa’s re-imagining of an arc in Osamu Tezuka’s famed manga, Astro Boy, you see Tezuka-designed characters and story told in the grim, captivating, and philosophical Urasawa form.
The series follows the sudden string of murders that seem to be targeting legendary war hero robots. You follows a detective trying to unravel this case with the help of Atom, the actual main character of Astro Boy.
While people hear Astro Boy and think “outdated children’s anime,” Pluto is as gripping a thriller as Urasawa’s more famous magnum opus, Monster.
Babylon
Is it murder if you are just talking people into killing themselves?
That philosophical question and more is what you can expect Babylon to ponderously explore as it follows the descent into madness a public prosecutor.
Babylon starts with a simple investigation into fabricated clinical research and ends with world leaders having deeply philosophical musing with each other – with the murder mystery of it all manifesting somewhere in between. While the series does indeed go off the rails at some point, it tells its story in a tautly-paced murder mystery sort of way that keeps you engaged right up to the end.
Ron Kamonohashi’s Forbidden Deductions
If you enjoyed slightly super-powered detectives like Bungou Stray Dogs, but also wished that Bungou Stray Dogs stayed a mystery anime and didn’t become more of an action show – then Ron Kamonohashi’s Forbidden Deductions is for you!
Ron Kamonohashi’s Forbidden Deductions follows a middling detective who is told to talk to a deduction-gifted shut-in for advice on his case. The shut-in, the titular Ron Kamonohashi, loves solving mysteries! Unfortunately, he has the problematic special ability he cannot control to command the guilty to kill themselves.
From there, you watch these two solve mysteries with Kamonohashi being an unofficial detective behind the scenes and his rookie detective partner preventing the perpetrators from killing themselves at Kamonohashi’s command.
While it has its strange quirks, Ron Kamonohashi’s Forbidden Deductions is a mystery anime for the detective anime fans. Throughout its arc-based murders, they set up the crime and then you watch the detective walk you through how it was done before revealing whodunnit.
Ranpo Kitan: Game of Laplance
Ranpo Kitan is a murder mystery anime for the gorehounds.
As an anime made to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Ranpo Edogawa’s death, a man who help shape the mystery and thriller genres in Japanese literature, Ranpo Kitan fully embraces the “ero-guro nonsense “ that permeated Edogawa’s most famous works.
The series follows an ordinary middle schooler who wakes up in his classroom and appears to be responsible for his teacher’s brutal murder and dismemberment. While the case is eventually solved when he seeks the help of a genius high school detective, the kid has caught the mystery-solving bug and works with the detective to unravel a number of other vicious, gruesome murders.
Migi and Dali
While most likely to be remembered as that weird and surprisingly sinister anime about two newly adopted twins pretending to be one normal boy, the reason they are performing this little act of deception is in order to investigate their mother’s murder.
As is quickly revealed, before ending up in an orphanage, Migi and Dali lived in a close-knit community where one among their neighbors murdered their mother one snowy night. Now, the pair act like one boy so the twin not with his parents or making friends with other children can investigate the other adults and find their mother’s murderer based on the small clues they have.
If you are looking for a gripping murder mystery, but also don’t mind a little levity in the form of somewhat absurd humor, Migi and Dali is an unexpectedly excellent little mystery tale that is compactly told in one season.
The Case Files of Young Kindaichi
Often considered kin to Detective Conan as it also follows a teenage detective, The Case Files of Young Kindaichi is superior to Detective Conan in two ways – It knows how to end and all the cases are murder mystery cases.
While he may just be a silly average teen boy, Kindaichi is also a brilliant detective with both a high IQ and prowess for mysteries inherited from his private detective grandfather. So, who better to solve some of the most horrific murder cases in Japan, right?
Are you looking for a murder mystery anime that isn’t just one linear murder mystery, but a series of interesting, unique, and kind of shocking cases? Then skip Conan and go Kindaichi instead.
Do you have more murder mystery anime recommendations for fans that are starved for crimes to solve? Let fans know in the comments section below.
