It is seriously hard to find a good horror anime and that isn’t surprising given how few are released in general (when compared with the plethora of isekai stories or cute girls doing whatever anime). But it does make it hard to do a Halloween anime list each year when very little has changed. So to shake things up, this year I’m just looking at my favourite horror anime released in the last 5 years (so since the beginning of 2014). My only requirement for this list is that I enjoyed the anime and it is tagged as a horror anime. That said, I’d love to know your favourites so please leave me a comment below with some of your recent favourite horror anime.
Please note, there will be spoilers below.
Honourable mentions: Devilman Crybaby and The Lost Village. Both had potentially good ideas but neither really worked for me in the end. Still, they are both better than the Ito Junji Collection anime.
Number 5: King’s Game
It would be so wrong for me to not include King’s Game on this list. As terrible as it was, it was the kind of terrible that ended up just being a joy to watch. With a number of other bloggers on board watching this weekly ended up being pure fun even as the show descended into every sillier lows (I’m still stuck on the girl who was on fire calmly spouting exposition before jumping). It is ridiculous, over the top, violent, and mostly senseless, but it is still one of the most entertaining horror anime I’ve watched in a while.
Number 4: Ajin
Okay, creepy animation style aside, Ajin delivered a fairly compelling plot and an interesting cast of characters. Did it always use them to their best advantage? Not so much, but Ajin did manage to keep me entertained. Whether it was the tense feeling of needing to escape, the horror of confinement and human experimentation, or the outright shock and gore of some fairly bloody fight sequences, Ajin delivered and it did it with style and consistency for the most part.
Number 3: Parasyte
There’s something genuinely unsettling about the idea of having your hand eaten and replaced by a parasitic being that awakens you by lamenting that it didn’t manage to eat your head. Throw in the cold and alien intelligence with no regard for life outside of its own survival and you have the makings of a really interesting story. Now, Parasyte may not have lived up to the expectations set by its premise and it did have a lot of wasted side quest moments, but the core story is one that provides plenty of unsettling moments and if you want blood you will certainly find that here.
Number 2: Tokyo Ghoul
Speaking of blood, Tokyo Ghoul managed to slip in to the time frame and so I had to include it. Season one begins with a lot of gross out body horror with slicing and dicing and vomiting. It’s a generally visually disturbing opening to a show that continues to bring shocks and grossness with over the top violence, cannibalism, and finally descending into a slow torture sequence before ending its first season with a bang. While the narrative has its issues and the pacing is all over the shop, if you want something that knows how to get a visceral reaction out of an audience, Tokyo Ghoul is going to do the trick (at least the first season did).
Number 1: School-Live!
There’s not a lot I can say about this one without getting straight into spoiler territory but if you’ve never given this anime a go and you like horror at all, I’m just going to tell you to go watch the first episode and watch the whole episode. What you do after that is up to you but if you are anything like me you’ll be hooked. Again, the mid-season of this anime flounders a bit but with a solid opening act and some genuinely horrific sequences for the cast coming your way, this one is well worth watching and attempting to watch cold. The less you know the more impact it is going to have.
Have I missed your favourite horror anime released since 2014? Let me know your picks in the comments below.
Thanks for reading.
Karandi James
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If there is a puppy in a horror anime… that makes me nervous.
Puppies and horror stories don’t usually end well.
Hardly seen any horror animes, but Parasyte I did enjoy a great deal. I never found it unsettling. It’s premise, and story were enough to keep me watching. I kept wondering where the story was going to go. It sadly didn’t end up on a bang, but had a great time with it. Most of my time with horror anime tends to leave me underwhelm sadly.
Tokyo Ghoul I dug the opening theme, and felt it had potential, but didn’t end up liking it. Same with School Live. A friend recommended it to me, and didn’t end up liking it. She on the other hand enjoyed it, and jokingly apologized for showing me the anime lol
Tokyo Ghoul definitely had more potential than it ever delivered on. I really wanted it to dig deeper into the divide between human and ghoul going on within Kaneki, but the story just kept bringing in external threats and sensationalist and increasingly silly violence. The far more personal and touching story kind of got buried in it all and then season 2 happened and I really shouldn’t have even tried RE.
I found “In Another World With A Smartphone” and “Monster Musume” rather horrific in how bad they were – do they count? 😉 😛
Not quite the feel we’re going for here but possibly a list for another year.
I really need to finish School-Live… I ended up stalling it when it came to the middle where you said that it flounders a bit and never went back. Now, I want to go and watch the rest!!
Great TOP 5, for someone who did something similar last year for Halloween and you are completely right! There’s not much that has changed and I don’t know what to write this year lolol 😀
There just aren’t enough horror anime to sustain a list year after year so I’m going to have to keep specialising I think to keep this going.
I really need to continue watching School Live. It was quite good!
I really had a lot of fun with it and there was a clearly a lot of love put into School Live which is more than a lot of horror anime can say.
I liked Parasyte, it was gross but it at least was entertaining. Tokyo Ghoul, on the other hand, was just gross. There isn’t a single thing I like about TG, and I suffered through the first 2 seasons.
I liked season one of Tokyo Ghoul. Season two on the other hand really didn’t do anything for me.
Reblogged this on Tio’s MTL.
Great list! I had started with Parasyte, but it didn’t really work for me (to be fair I don’t think I really gave it a chance, and I might not have been in the right mood for this one) so probably need to start a rewatch/watch for this one.
Lol: Ah King’s Game…so many fun memories of that one: And you mentioning the girl on fire is cracking me up again 😂😂😂
School Live was of course amazing as well and I still can’t believe why I haven’t gotten around to writing about Tokyo Ghoul yet…ugh….😅😅
The only one that I haven’t seen yet is Aijin. It sounds very interesting so maybe I will give that one a (binge) watch this weekend 😊😊
I really like the idea in Ajin though a lot of the interesting aspects of the world that could have been explored kind of get swept under the rug later in the series for the sake of cool fight scenes between characters. Still, worth trying.
Cool…well…I’m really watching a lot of anime the past few weeks (bingewatching entire shows and the seasonal anime), so might give this one a try as soon as the weekend: looking forward to it 😊😊
Of those, the intended two I’ve seen are Tokyo Ghoul and School-Live! Both are fantastic though
I really enjoyed Magical Girl Raising Project, but like you say there isn’t a lot of straight up horror. It often seems to blend into the other genres.
Yes, there’s a lot of anime that have horror elements but aren’t actually horror. And then there are horror anime that mostly just kill the cast off and splash blood around but they aren’t all that enjoyable. It really is hard to find good horror anime which is kind of a shame.
Yeah, that’s what I thought about Deadman Wonderland. It was fairly horrific but it was just over the top gore for the sake of it.
If they’d finished the story in the anime with Deadman Wonderland it may have made it all worth it. But as it was I never felt much emotionally while watching it and it was a title I regularly forget I even watched until someone mentions it. No lasting impression at all.
Sometimes, I think they’re worried that if they give a season a satisfying ending they won’t get a second season, but that often ends up working against them.
Particularly if they are wanting the DVD sales. I regularly won’t buy a first season if it is incomplete (unless it has some kind of satisfying resolution where I can stop) until I know a second season has come out and finished the story. And I know I’m not alone in that so just leaving things totally open isn’t really a great plan.