Summary
Gamera Rebirth offers impressive kaiju battles, but the human story and animation quality are poor. Durarara!! blends mythological elements with gang warfare, showing that the most horrifying events are caused by humans. Hellsing combines terrifying monster designs with impressive action sequences, making Alucard one of the most beloved anime characters.
The best monster anime has scared and thrilled audiences for decades. As villains or even sometimes heroes, monsters have become mainstays in both classic anime and new favorites. However, even if monsters are heroes, that doesn’t make them any less scary.
The concept of monsters and what anyone considers monstrous is open-ended, and anime certainly has its wild interpretations. From classic horror creatures like vampires, to major threats like kaiju, to monsters that are much harder to pin down, monsters have always been an important part of anime. The greatest monster anime are horror masterpieces in their own right.
11 Gamera Rebirth – Classic Kaiju becomes monstrous
Manufactured by ENGI
The tagline for the Netflix animated series is “Gamera vs. 5 Kaiju”. Gamera Rebirth certainly delivers on that promise. Gamera fights five of his traditional opponents in the series’ history. While the human plot drags on and distracts from the kaiju battles and the animation quality of the human characters is average, Gamera and the other kaiju are rendered with significantly more detail and animations. The kaiju battles promise to be impressive enough to carry the series. . Although he is a heroic character Gamera himself is also very impressive and majestic when fighting evil kaiju.
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10 Durarara!! – Modern redesigned Death
Produced by Brains Base & Based on the Light Novel by Ryōgo Narita & Suzuhito Yasuda
Re-envisioning the Dullahan, headless horseman in Irish mythology, in the form of a woman riding a motorbike demonstrates how Durarara blends mythological flourishes into what is essentially a gang war between human factions. Although there are such fantastical elements, specifically the aforementioned Dullahan as one of the main characters, these mythological and fantastical elements mainly only highlight that the most horrifying events in the series story is caused by Durarara’s human characters. Durarara’s supernatural elements tie into an expanded universe that includes other anime series such as Baccano.
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9 Hellsing – The quintessential vampire anime
Produced by Studio Gonzo & Based on Manga by Kouta Hirano
Hellsing is a monster anime where the most notable monster is not only the main character but also one of the most famous anime characters. Alucard is a vampire who fights other vampires as a member of an elite secret Anglican order dedicated to protecting England. That premise sounds funny, and it is. However, Hellsing combines legitimately scary monster designs with legitimately impressive action sequences. In spite of Alucard has always been one of the scariest vampire characters in the show, this is mitigated somewhat by the fact that he is using his full power against oncoming enemies.
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8 Chainsaw Man – Design and gruesome demon gore
Produced by Studio MAPPA & Based on Manga by Tatsuki Fujimoto
One of the breakout shows of the fall 2022 anime season, Chainsaw Man, is, in a word, relentless. It’s relentlessly dark, relentlessly violent, and relentlessly stylish. The monsters, including Denji’s Chainsaw Man form, are the stuff of nightmares. The series does not pull any punches regarding violence or other graphic content. Denji’s demon hunts serve as the basis for a compelling dark Urban Fantasy story with a great visual style, but Chainsaw Man requires a strong stomach to truly appreciate.
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7 Hell Paradise – Ninja faces monstrous animal hybrids
Produced by Studio MAPPA & Based on Manga by Yuji Kaku
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Escorted by elite samurai guards with orders to kill them if they fail or attempt to escape, a group of prisoners are taken by the Shogun to a mysterious island to retrieve the elixir of life. Despite the series’ gorgeous art style, Hell’s Paradise is filled with nightmarish contentt. The island is inhabited by monsters with combined human and animal characteristics and is ruled by a group of eight ruthless shape-shifters with divine powers. Even more than a few of the completely mundane human prisoners are monsters in their own right, serial killers with horrifying backstories.
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5 Spirited Away – A strange and unstable world
Produced by Hayao Miyazaki & Studio Ghibli
Admittedly more bizarre than scary, However, Spirited Away remains monster-centric, and the designs of the various monsters and spirits give them unique visual characteristics. and wonderfully convey their inherent otherworldly nature. Most of the genuinely scary moments come from No-Face, who is more than capable of being legitimately scary when given the chance. Spirited Away is essentially a fairy tale and thus uses scary moments with the kind of whimsy one would expect of the genre.
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4 Inuyasha – Feudal Japan is recreated in a bizarre way
Produced by Sunrise & Based on Manga by Rumiko Takahashi
Although Inuyasha is more of a romance and adventure story than a pure horror story, Rumiko Takahashi’s art style and monster designs throughout the series are brilliant. The monsters that are demons hunting for fragments of the Shikon Jewel range from disturbing to horrifying, and many of them transform into newer, stronger, and more monstrous forms when they are given Powered by precious Gem fragments. Naraku, the main antagonist of the series, is prominent. His body is pieced together from the parts of other demons, and he tends to survive as just his head once the rest of him has been destroyed.
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3 Mushi-Shi – Spirits beyond human understanding
Produced by Artland & Based on Manga by Yuki Urushibara
via IMDB
Ginko is a Mushi Master, a sort of wandering cross between an exorcist and a healer. Traveling in a deliberately outdated version of historical Japan, Ginko helps people haunted by mushi, spirits that are not necessarily evil but operate according to their own internal logic and morality, to levels so incomprehensible to humans that they are inherently dangerous. Mushi-Shi is quite laid-back and calming for a monster-focused anime and there’s not a lot of action, but the mushi themselves are so strange that they’re fascinating creatures even if they’re not entirely scary.
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2 special features of Godzilla – the most famous Kaiju are scarier than ever
Produced by Studio Orange & Studio Bones
In re-envisioning Godzilla as a quantum monster from beyond space-time, Godzilla Singular Point manages to give Godzilla a completely unique spin and makes him the most truly terrifying and disturbing person since 1954.
While Godzilla itself lacks the sheer scale of his other recent adaptations, Singular Point does an astonishing job of presenting how helpless its human heroes can be in the face of with a puzzling monster that literally rewrites the laws of physics just by existing. Surrounded by a growing sense of dread, the struggle to defeat Godzilla at Singular Point is one of the most riveting Godzilla stories ever.
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1 Mononoke – The best monster anime
Produced by Toei Animation
A series of paranormal mysteries revolving around a mysterious Apothecary who appears unannounced to cure hauntings, Mononoke is a masterpiece of psychological horror and atmosphere. The series was designed virtually from the beginning to make the audience feel as unsettled and uncomfortable as possible. All of the characters are deliberately drawn to make the most of the Uncanny Valley, and that’s not even mentioning the fact that the Medicine Seller himself is clearly some kind of supernatural being .
The art style is all clashing colors and patterns. The mononoke themselves, the spirits responsible for the hauntings, are never depicted on screen or in an abstract style steeped in symbolism and visual metaphor. There are very few jump scares, but the scariest element of Mononoke is the fact that it’s never clear exactly what’s actually going on. Mononoke may not be as famous as some other horror anime, but its unique art style and engaging stories are enough to make it one of the best horror anime. best monster anime All Time.
Watch on Netflix