Not every story gets a happy ending, since even the designated bad guys are prone to winning in the end. This happens rarely in shonen anime, but it’s more frequent in its older counterpart, seinen anime.
Seinen anime skews more towards teenagers and older, meaning that their stories and content have more liberty to be darker and bleaker. Free of child-friendly restrictions, these anime either closed on a sad moment or dark fates where death would be more preferable. Warning: Spoilers ahead.
10 Every Junji Ito Adaptation Ever – There’s No Escaping The Cosmic Horrors
Without exaggeration, most Junji Ito stories ends on very disheartening notes. While not the usual hero-versus-villain narratives, Ito’s horror stories always follow a general formula: the eldritch horrors inevitably overwhelm the hapless characters. This is the case for all adaptations of his works, from OVAs like Gyo: Tokyo Fish Attack (left) or anthology series like Junji Ito Collection (right).
Underwhelming quality aside, Junji Ito Collection ended most of its episodes on a dark note, with otherwise innocent people becoming an uncanny monster or location’s latest victim. Expect this dread to be ramped up for the upcoming adaptation of his harrowing magnum opus, Uzumaki, set to air this year.
9 Gantz – Kei Beats The Game, But Stays Dead
Gantz is filled with some of the most unlikeable characters ever seen in anime, but the overall villain is the titular Gantz that forced these people into fighting a life-or-death game in the first place. A strange black orb that acts as a save point and inventory, Gantz threw normal students like Kei and Katou into deadly fights against aliens for no discernable reason.
In the final contest, Kei beats the sadistic human player Muroto, regains his will to live, and Gantz just vanishes. Some interpreted this as Kei escaping Gantz, but Gantz escaped accountability and explanation. The sphere is free to start the game elsewhere, ensuring that the gamified murder continues. Additionally, this ending remains one of the most confusing in anime history.
8 Hellsing Ultimate – Millennium Dies The Way They Wanted To
Hellsing Ultimate ends during the Battle of London, where the Nazi vampires’ attack on the British capital was stopped by the combined forces of Hellsing and Iscariot. However, just because Millennium was eradicated doesn’t mean they lost. In fact, they got exactly what they wanted: dying in war after killing untold thousands.
As The Major revealed, he and the Last Battalion love war. After World War II’s end, they wanted nothing more than to wage one last war and die in it. The Major also won a more personal battle, as beating the immortal vampire Alucard proved his human superiority. Alucard resurrects 30 years later and Millennium was erased from history, but the Nazis died according to their wishes.
7 Tokyo Ghoul √A – The CCG Brainwashes Ken Kaneki
Despite diverging heavily form the manga, Tokyo Ghoul’s second season remained broadly faithful to its source material. Like the manga, the anime ended with the Anteiku destroyed and Ken Kaneki surrendering to the authorities. The finale’s closing minutes show CCG officer Arima pitying Kaneki for a bit before apparently killing him off-screen.
On its own, it’s bittersweet. However, it becomes tragic in hindsight. Kaneki’s ambiguous fate sets up the sequel Tokyo Ghoul: Re, set three years later. Here, it’s revealed that Kaneki was brainwashed by the Commission of Counter Ghoul (CCG) and reborn as the loyal and soft-spoken investigator Haise Sasaki (above). Kaneki may have survived, but it came at the cost of his memories, morals, and individuality.
6 Psycho-Pass – The Sibyl System Wins & Traps Akane Tsunemori
It’s easy to view the serial killer Shogo Makishima as Psycho-Pass’ villain, but he’s only a symptom of a larger evil. Makishima incited violent anarchy to protest the omnipotent social order of the Sibyl System. The system uses the dehumanizing Psycho-Pass program to predetermine a person’s worth and social value while denying freedom, which even Makishima found detestable.
In the end, Makishima is executed and the Sibyl System remains intact. Akane may have discovered Sibyl’s identity as a collection of disembodied brains and even struck a truce with it, but she’s still trapped in its machinations. After the first season, Psycho-Pass focuses on Akane’s determined but futile efforts to dislodge Sibyl’s authority and convince society to reembrace free will.
5 Scum’s Wish – Akane Minagawa Gets Married
Scum’s Wish isn’t about the forces of good fighting evil, but it still made its characters’ moralities clear. On the bad side of things is Akane, Hanabi and Mugi’s music teacher. She’s also an emotionally manipulative woman who specifically targets men who are either married or already interested in someone else, such as Mugi.
Despite wrecking peoples’ love lives for fun, Akane somehow winds up with the best romantic ending. In the end, Akane gets engaged to Narumi, Hanabi’s naïvely wholesome homeroom teacher that she crushed on. This can be seen as Akane turning a new leaf, but the fact that she never receives comeuppance for what she did beforehand irritates some viewers.
4 Inuyashiki – Hiro Shishigami Gets A Redemption Arc
Inuyashiki examines what happens when regular people are suddenly blessed with amazing cybernetic alien powers. The titular Ichiro Inuyashiki, an old man who’s seen better days, decides to become a hero and help others. His polar opposite is Hiro Shishigami, an anti-social teenager who uses his newfound strength to indulge in his sadistic power fantasies.
Shishigami kills and tortures whoever mildly inconveniences him because this – according to his warped logic – keeps him human. By the end, Shishigami gets a change of heart and sacrifices himself to destroy an asteroid headed for Earth. While Shihigami dying to atone makes sense, this can still feel like an easy out for a remorseless mass murderer.
3 Vinland Saga – Askeladd Dies A Hero
To be fair to him, Askeladd is more of a complex anti-hero than a bad guy. But to Thorfinn and audiences, the Viking leader is the villain he must kill to avenge his family’s deaths. Despite knowing that Thorfinn wants his head, Askeladd takes the boy under his wing. Askeladd becomes a strange yet sincere surrogate father, who motivated Thorfinn by promising him vengeance when he’s ready.
Askeladd’s goal is to defend Wales from foreign invasion, and he killed many over the course of Vinland Saga to do so. When forced to choose between his homeland and Prince Canute, Askeladd goes murders the Danish king before he’s overwhelmed by guardsmen. In death, Askeladd preserves Wales’ safety, makes Canute the new king, and helps Thorfinn mature.
2 Re:Creators – Altair Reunites With Her Creator
The genre-bending and fourth wall-shattering chaos of Re:Creators occurs when Altair (aka the Military Uniform Princess) unleashes various fictional characters into the real world. In doing so, Altair gets people killed and endangers reality itself. Altair is a creation herself, and she wants to end the world that drove her creator Setsuna to take her life.
For this, Altair is rewarded by being reunited with Setsuna and even saving her in a rewritten version of what actually happened. The new Setsuna convinces Altair to drop her vengeance and she does – much to the delight of those watching the Border World Coliseum crossover event. As selfish as she was, Altair isn’t purely evil, which only makes her all the more complex.
1 Berserk – Griffith Is Reborn As Femto
There’s no seinen anime ending that’s as equal parts tragic and horrifying as Berserk. The 1997 anime ends with Griffith sacrificing his loyal Band of the Hawk during the nightmarish Eclipse to be reborn as the God Hand’s fifth member, Femto. Worse, he assaulted Casca in front of a mutilated Guts – the couple being his most faithful comrades for the longest time.
After showing just how much of a family the Band of the Hawk is, seeing them get viciously sacrificed to evil incarnate for one man’s ambitions is both gut-wrenching and hard to watch. While The Golden Age Arc movie trilogy continued with the botched CGI anime, the original series ended at the Eclipse’s darkest point, making it one of the darkest endings in anime history.
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