The 10 Scariest Horror Anime of the 21st Century
Are you looking to get your heebies jeebied? Want to be creeped out, disturbed, and appalled? With its threats of climate doom and malevolent AI takeovers, the 21st century has all the terror you’ll ever need. But if you’re tired of the real-life horror of the modern era, then it’s time to escape into the nightmarish world of horror anime. Body-stealing alien parasites, undead vampire high schoolers, and 40-foot naked cannibals—the real world has nothing on the terror in these titles. When modern times get you down, take comfort in the ten scariest horror anime of the 21st century—things could always be worse.
Theatre of Darkness: Yamishibai
Junji Ito may be the Stephen King of manga, but his anime adaptations have left much to be desired. His animated anthology Japanese Tales of the Macabre limped along with lackluster reviews, and like a predatory beast, another horror anthology series emerged from the shadows to silence it for good. Theatre of Darkness: Yamishibai is everything you wished Japanese Tales of the Macabre was—and so much more. A collection of spooky vignettes, Theatre of Darkness combines wildly creative animation with downright chilling stories to create a series that feels like Goosebumps for adults. Haunted countryside houses, serial-killing skin conditions, murderous ghosts that can only be banished by constant fake laughter—Theatre of Darkness pulls out all the horror stops. There’s even a story about a sentient lump of flesh that rides the subway train— I suppose Lovecraftian horrors have to commute too.
Mononoke
Set in an acid-trip version of Edo-era Japan, Mononoke follows a mysterious man known as the Medicine Seller on his never-ending quest to slay mononoke—malevolent spirits. A spiritual detective series, Mononoke shies away from brute force demon slaying to create something more cerebral and sinister. For a mononoke to be banished, the Medicine Seller must uncover the spirit’s origins and motives; only then can he draw his exorcising sword. How does he learn about a mononoke’s modus operandi? By studying the still-living people haunted by it. These spirits never latch on to the living without a good reason; hauntings are usually the cause of foul play. In a world full of murderous samurai, corrupt officials, and faithless priests, foul play is easy to find. Effervescent and eerie, Mononoke won’t make you scream out loud, but shiver in silence.
Devilmam Crybaby
Part coming-of-age drama, part psychosexual nightmare, part chronicle of the apocalypse, part LGBTQ love story, Devilman Crybaby contains multitudes. The mother of all puberty metaphors, this anime follows adolescent Akira Fudo, who was possessed by a powerful demon at a sex and drugs-fueled rave. Rather than having his body eviscerated like everyone else, Akira was transformed into a human/demon hybrid—a “devilman.” While most anime protagonists would go on to save the world from demonkind, Devilman Crybaby‘s narrative takes a far more tragic turn. What begins as a bodyhorror superhero story ends as a tragedy of cosmically horrible proportions. What’s worse than a demon-infested world? A demon-infested world that is totally beyond salvation. A subversion of save-the-world shonen anime, this series true terror lies with its refusal to play by the genre’s rules.
Boogiepop Phantom
Boogiepop Phantom follows an ensemble cast of characters connected by a mysterious event—on the fifth anniversary of a string of serial killings, each of them saw a mysterious pillar of light appear in the sky. Now high schoolers have begun disappearing again, and their classmates are whispering about the return of Boogiepop—an urban legend figure said to be the personification of death. A phantasmagoric panorama, Boogiepop Phantom‘s story is as sweeping as it is sweat-inducing. The details of the plot are left deliberately opaque, told from the point of view of multiple unreliable narrators. You have to carefully watch the entire Boogiepop franchise to understand the story, but like a playthrough of Dark Souls, you’ll be too captivated by the immaculately dark vibe to care about the narrative nitty-gritty.
Mushi-Shi
Mushi-Shi doesn’t look very scary on the surface, but peel back the charmingly rustic veneer and you’ll find body horror beneath. The story follows a self-proclaimed “mushi master” named Ginko, an enigmatic physician who heals people from mushi-related illness. What are mushi? Spiritual life-forms that come in a variety of shapes: animal, vegetable, and fungal. Most mushi are harmless, but this spiritual Dr. House isn’t dealing with most mushi—just the ones that create horrible diseases or kill outright. Shadow critters that crawl inside a victim’s skull, ghostly sound-suckers that nest in the ears until the afflicted goes deaf, fungal horrors that can disintegrate a person with a touch—plenty of mushi are downright terrifying. Good thing Ginko’s dealt with this sort of thing before (we hope).
Shiki
A gruesome twist on vampire myth, Shiki is a story of infection in rural Japan. A small village has been rocked by a series of murders, coinciding with the arrival of a mysterious family that has moved into a creepy hilltop mansion. Connection? Most certainly. After witnessing the death and un-death of a local teenager, Dr. Toshio Ozaki begins to suspect that a paranormal epidemic is the cause of the chaos. The survivors attempt to make a stand against a group of centuries-old vampires, and the results are predictably mixed. You can’t win a war against centuries-old undead horrors without a few casualties, after all. And speaking of casualties, the show features one of the most infamous kills in horror anime history: a meetcute between a person’s head and the wheel of a tractor. For all its gore, the series is essentially a metaphor about the stifling nature of small-town living. Many of its characters dream of an escape, and in this case, only undeath can bring it.
Parasyte: The Maxim
A heady combination of sci-fi and body horror, Parasyte: The Maxim is an anime Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Planet Earth has fallen victim to extraterrestrial parasites, shapeshifting abominations that devour people’s brains and puppet their still-living bodies. After one of these aliens lodges itself in the left hand of a high school boy in a failed takeover attempt, the kid uses his new shapeshifting appendage to wage war against the invaders. Gory to the max, Parasyte is a downright visceral tale of human vs. alien violence—a jaw-dropping, stomach-turning thing of body horror beauty. And yet for all its grotesqueness, Parasyte can be tender at times. It’s essentially a story about what it means to be human, a concept that some parasites begin to grasp after taking over human hosts. Who knew that skin-stealing body horrors had feelings, too?
Higurashi: When They Cry
Don’t let their cherubic faces fool you, the cast of Higurashi: When They Cry are cold-blooded killers. Set in a rural Japanese village, the story follows a group of middle schoolers preparing for an annual harvest festival. How will they celebrate? With murder, of course! In a shocking reversal of their normally cutesy personalities, each teen succumbs to axe-swinging impulses as the festival day draws nearer. Little do these children know, this sort of thing has happened before—the festival has been turning normal people into nightmares for years. A folk horror tale framed in a sci-fi time loop, Higurashi is Midsommar meets Groundhog Day—if Bill Murray’s character were a knife-wielding preteen girl.
Paranoia Agent
From the mind that created the psychological horror masterpiece Perfect Blue, Paranoia Agent is Satoshi Kon’s baseball bat-swinging follow-up. The story revolves around an ensemble cast of characters who have each been attacked by Shonen Bat—an adolescent boy who enjoys introducing his baseball bat to the back of people’s heads. Gripped by paranoia, the community struggles to find a method to the middle schooler’s madness, but law enforcement agents are baffled. An exploration of unresolved trauma and societal pressure, Paranoia Agent is a parable about the dark emotions that human beings hold inside. Sometimes a person’s feelings can get so big that they reach a psychological breaking point—and that breaking point is sporting golden roller skates and an aluminum slugger.
Attack On Titan
Hailed as one of the 21st century’s greatest anime titles, Attack On Titan is part dark fantasy, part political thriller, and part survival horror. The show takes place in a walled city, its citizens protected from the cannibalistic giants that lurk outside. At least, that was the plan. When a towering colossus kicks a hole in the outer wall, flesh-eating Titans pour in—killing the mother of a young boy named Eren Jaegar. After swearing revenge against the Titans, Eren enlists in a steampunk military dedicated to protecting humanity down to the last. What begins as a standard man vs. monsters tale soon evolves into a sweeping geopolitical epic that continually asks the viewer if the ends justify the means. When the means involve becoming the sort of monster you sought to destroy, they become increasingly more difficult to condone.
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