Forum - View topicHorror anime
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DragonsRevenge
 Posts: 1150 |
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I think you're getting "horror" and "thriller" mixed up. Neither of those are horror. I know I've seen plenty but I'm drawing a blank on horror titles. |
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Sun King
 Posts: 68 Location: Virginia |
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I would like to believe that it's not impossible, it's a challange, and it just hasn't been done yet. Just think how awesome it would be if a comic like 'The Walking Dead' (and if anybody hasn't read TWD, you really need to) was animated in a Japanese studio. And I've seen pleanty of low budget horror movies that would have worked just as well if they had been animated, possibly moreso. Most horror films have either bad acting, or over-the-top acting (like in Saw) so it's not like I'm asking someone to animate a Tom Hanks caliber actor. Also, I've never seen the Japanese versions of 'The Ring' or 'The Grudge', but if they're anything like their American counterparts, I really don't care to. |
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Siilent
Posts: 184 Location: Canada |
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I second Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. One of my favourite titles, and I don't hesitate to name it horror.
Thriller and horror are the only anime types that really grab me. If you like gore, you could try my favourite series, Gantz. It has some frightening elements to it and keeps you on the edge of your seat until the very end. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find anything to meet my standards regarding thriller anime. 3: Paranoia Agent was good up until a certain point that ruined the plot for me, but thats about everything. Nothing else is very eerie that I've come across. |
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Sun King
Posts: 68 Location: Virginia |
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'Higurashi' is a murder mystery, and 'Gantz' is more sci-fi. I do like both those shows though. But as for thriller anime, I really enjoyed 'Perfect Blue' in all it's confusing weirdness.
hmm well it's pretty hard to compete with Disney, don't you think? |
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selenta
 Subscriber Posts: 1774 Location: Seattle, WA |
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Yeah, to be honest, I'm surprised I even kept watching the show after the second or third arcs. The show kind of luls itself asleep, and it seems pretty generic and formulaic for the first half, but the last two arcs I've seen were genuinely the scariest things I've seen in anime form. Now... I've seen far more disturbing things dozens of times to be sure, and while Higurashi has great potential build up to the dramatic horror moments, I never really felt it delivered and always left me hanging. You know, the lack of horror anime has actually surprised me a bit, as I would have initially expected there to be a plethora of it (seeing how much the Japanese love their non-anime horror, which is certainly a respectable amount). |
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Randall Miyashiro
 Posts: 2451 Location: A block away from Golden Gate Park |
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I just watched the first volume and will agree that it was rather disappointing. Unfortunately I pre-ordered the first two back in August, and will most likely get the third volume since I believe it will conclude the series. Something about it seems outdated much like ADVs new Guyver. There really isn't much of a horror element. The series that strikes me hard and gets almost no mention here is Requiem from the Darkness, This series is really twisted, yet I don't think anyone mentioned it on the very long "most disturbing scene" thread. I will recommend you not watch it if you are squeamish since the series is rather graphic. |
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EngrishFan
Posts: 75 Location: Somewhere in chilly Canada |
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Ooh, I get to disagree again. While I absolutely loved the first season, I'd be hard pressed to call it a horror either. The whole spoiler[Groundhog Day repetition of events] kinda threw my sense of fear out the window. I found the series tried to focus your attention on the cause of the events (or make you question them) and made you try to figure out what was going on and what everybody's motives were, as opposed to just leaving you shocked at the effects of said events. So, another psych thriller in my book. Addendum: Eagerly awaiting the release of season 2, as well as the domestic release of season 1. |
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Treetastic
 Posts: 164 Location: Canada |
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I have to disagree. What about Nerima Daikon Brothers? Anyway, back on topic. I have to agree with some of the titles mentioned so far. Perfect Blue is probably the closest thing to a horror movie in anime. Paranoia Agent is a great horror series. Narutaru seems very innocent at first, but I would consider it horror. Higurashi is disgusting, etc. etc. Other series/movies that I suppose *could* be called horror are Akira and Blue Gender. Anime are a different sort of show than horror classics and they have a different structure. Apart from stylistic differences on either side of the Pacific, t's just easier to make a cheap slasher film or zombie movie with random extras and cheap effects than to animate the whole thing. |
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d.yaro
Posts: 528 |
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It took a bit but one series does come to mind. It's an anthology series though: "Ayakashi - Samurai Horror Stories". Why they chose to call it "Samurai Horror Stories" is beyond me. It was originally called "Ayakashi - Japanese Classic Horror". "Yotsuya Kwaidan" is one of the stories in the series and it's a classic for sure. I'm not too sure about the other two entries: "Tenshu Monogatari" and "Bakeneko". Of the latter two, "Bakeneko" has the edge that makes it a good horror story for me. It's a classic tale of something evil being afoot and it has its reasons for doing what it does.
Of the "Ghost Hunt" story arcs I found that the last three, "A Prohibited Game", "The Blood Soaked Maze" and "The Cursed House" fitt the label of horror stories. There were high degrees of tension and terror in the stories and the heightened presence of evil. In each story the protagonists had their hands full trying to deal with that evil. |
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Sun King
Posts: 68 Location: Virginia |
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I think I've seen a few episodes of 'Ayakashi' if it's the same series I'm thinking of, but I fail to find ghost stories like these very compelling. The same goes for 'Requiem from the Darkness' which I thought was pretty boring. I'll take flesh eating zombies over spooky ghosts anyday
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Vuwazy
Posts: 208 |
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Oh I've forgotten to watch Ghost Hunt. Only went up to around 5 or 6 episodes. Didn't seem that scary to me at first but after file 1 I thought it got better. After hearing what people have said about it as it goes on I hear good things from it and liking what I can look forward to. So I'll see what I can comment about it after watching the episodes I haven't seen yet.
Other than the opening theme Elfen Lied didn't seem that much like a horror series to me. It had the "mutant vs humans" theme like what is used in american comics. That's my put on it.
The first arc was scary but after that I didn't think the rest of them were as terrifying other than baseball bat murders and a couple of other things. |
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The Human Spider
Posts: 334 |
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I thought there was some great stuff in the second half in Rena's arc. I liked howspoiler[it wasn't clear how much of what was happening to Rena was real and how much was due to Rena's psychotic p.o.v., and the question of whether or not the research notes that Rena had were true or not. ] I thought that all added to a great sense of mystery and paranoia. |
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Tony K.
Subscriber Moderator  Posts: 11441 Location: Frisco, TX |
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So then you prefer gore over psychological horror, I take it? If that's the case, there are plenty of titles that have blood and guts, so I don't see why you're having trouble finding your version of "horror" anime. Personally, I prefer horror of the psychological variety through mind tricks and fear of the unknown. As others have said, anime doesn't convey this very well, and I think it's because we've become so accustomed to just how imaginative things can be animated, that it loses a lot of that effect and only manages to shock, more than scare us. In live-action horror, we know a lot of the material and footage feels more realistic because of how they're filming it (unless it's an insane amount of CG). And one thing I'll take any day in live-action over animation is the sound. If you've got a good surround sound system and the film supports a DTS track, then you've got the makings for some nice, quick jitters. I don't care much for slasher flicks, which is what most Hollywood movies seem to focus on these days, because you know someone is just going to get killed. I like the supernatural aspect of ghosts and spirits a lot more because they're good for catching you off guard. If Jason stabs some guy in the neck and blood comes spraying out, or if a zombie bites down on some slut's head and you hear it crunch like an apple, that's just the plain and banal depiction of human mutilation; an easily imaginable conclusion of scientific application because body to body contact can only represent so much. We all know what'll happen if you inflict certain kinds of physical abuse on someone's body. It's just a matter of "how" in all of these movies. But when you deal with ghosts, spectres, and the like, it seems a little scarier because we're moving beyond the physical and scientifically possible, beyond just dismembering or eating a corpse, and into the supernatural where the mysterious and unknown can have any number of things happen both physically or mentally. Of course, that depends soley on your own personal beliefs. I don't truly believe in the supernatural or an afterlife or anything, but I feel the concept itself to be quite intriguing and good for fiction. And in reference to Hundred Stories ("Requiem"), it's not just the ghosts and spirits one should look for, there's also a bit of an underlying moral for each story that, in my opinion, makes you psychologically think about certain aspects of life on another level. Granted, the setting is a lot different than what we live in today, and it might not reflect as strong on our own society's values, but I believe there to be certain principals in a lot of the horror/thriller anime or live-action movies I see, while the rest of it is just a mind trip for the sake of being a mind trip. A few years ago, I got into the trend of watching Asian horror movies, and the best I've seen so far is a Korean movie called A Tale of Two Sisters. It's available on R1, and I highly recommend it for any of you Asian horror fans out there. I just hope the Hollywood remake doesn't stink... |
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Sun King
Posts: 68 Location: Virginia |
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I do have a deep affection for gore flicks, but the best ones are when they add a good dose of psychological terror to the gore, like in a Geroge Romero film. 'Dawn of the Dead' (the original, not the remake) is a good example of what I'm talking about, with the terror that occurs with the world being overrun by zombies, and the characters are forced to find a safe haven in the form of a mall, but nothing they do can make them feel 'safe' for very long, as they discover no matter what they do, death still waits around every corner. But for flat-out psychological fear of the unknown horror, nothing comes close to the works of H.P. Lovecraft. In Lovecraft, the fear comes in the form of ancient evil beings lying dorment in the earth, madness, and demons. Here we discover that in our seemingly normal world, there are things that seem like ghosts or monsters that don't make logical sense at first, untill we discover that these creatures exist because they aren't native on our planet, and come from places we can't even imagine. If a story like 'Call of the Cthulhu' or "mountains of Madness' were ever animated, it would be like a wet dream. Perhaps the main reason I don't like ghost story type shows is because I don't believe in any form of the afterlife, I believe when you die you rot in your grave, the same as any other animal (that's pretty pessimistic, huh?). That is not to say I believe in zombies or vampires, but these are things that aren't quite dead in the normal sense. Of course it's all fiction, but.. ah, I don't really know how to explain it. An ex-girlfriend of mine thought that ghosts really did exist, and movies like 'The Ring' and 'The Grudge' scared the crap out of her, while I was falling asleep. So I guess while you don't have to believe in ghosts to be scared by them, it does help haha And when I say that there are no horror anime shows or movies, I mean that there aren't any that can compare on any level to good (or B) American or European movies. And in a medium that will animate nearly every other genre imaginable, I do find this disappointing. |
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Cloe
Moderator
 Posts: 2728 Location: Los Angeles, CA |
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Have you tried asking about this in the manga forum? While I definitely agree with you about anime, and animation in general--nothing has ever been produced that's even vaguely frightening, outside of the first section of Memories and a few select episodes of Paranoia Agent, IMO--there have been several several manga titles I've found very scary, and come closer to the tone of American and European horror flicks (although many still have that "J-horror" feel). |
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