It's hard to think that anything animated could provide the kind of scares a horror movie can. However, Japanese anime offers a lot of good scary moments, thanks to its more adult animation approach and unique (and often weird) storytelling techniques.
From High School of the Dead to Attack on Titan, anime continues to offer up chills, thrills and scares unlike any other medium.
But which series makes for perfect spooky viewing for this Halloween weekend? Here are the scariest anime shows you can watch online this weekend: all these series are available on Hulu.
Elfen Lied
Elfen Lied tells the story of a newly mutated species of human called the Diclonius. Although they appear human, they have horns and invisible arms called "vectors" that can crush and kill with just a thought. Considered dangerous, most of these creatures get captured and held inside a facility meant for experimenting on them, but one, Lucy, escapes and wreaks havoc before she gets injured in an accident.
The accident creates a second personality for Lucy, Nyu, a childlike innocent, who forms a special bond with two students, Kohta and Yuka. However, there's an assault team out to capture Lucy and this team will stop at nothing to bring her, now Nyu, back to the facility. This means using other Diclonius, which often leads to brutal and deadly ends.
The Diclonius are scary creatures, particularly when they are let loose without any control. However, it's even scarier when Nyu taps into that part of herself as Lucy, leading to an anime series worthy of Halloween.
Attack On Titan
Attack on Titan quickly became a worldwide phenomenon, thanks to its terrifying portrayal of the Titans, those gigantic freaky humanoid things that terrorize what's left of humanity. Perhaps most chilling, though, is the way the Titans came to reign over the world: by eating humans. These creatures are so scary and deadly that what's left of humanity lives in a small walled city.
But of course, that solitary city isn't safe, and eventually the Titans begin breaching those walls. It's up to a small squad of fighters to take on the giants, and those battles usually end in blood and gore. Things grow even more desperate when one of the humans, Eren, discovers an ability that transforms him into a Titan, but each time he transforms, he loses more of himself to the beast.
The way the Titans are drawn and animated make them so horrific that they're bound to give anyone nightmares. Who says cartoons can't be scary?
High School of the Dead
Zombies come to anime and high school in the popular High School of the Dead, which follows a group of present-day Japanese students making their way through the zombie apocalypse. The series starts with the beginning of the apocalypse, which happens when a pandemic spreads and turns humans into the undead (or "them," as referred to in the series).
Not only does this group of students have to deal with the outbreak itself, but they also have to do what it takes to survive. This means they must face the collapse of modern society, other survivors who are more dangerous than the zombies. Yes, this is basically the animated version of The Walking Dead, but because it's an anime series, it often gets a lot weirder than the AMC show.
This anime series was one of many that proved controversial in China, resulting in its ban in that country for to its graphic violence and adult content.
Hellsing
Hellsing is one of those series that throws everything at its viewers: vampires, blood and monsters pulled straight out of H.P. Lovecraft stories. This series also includes a lot of action: buildings under attack, loads of weapons and explosions galore.
Hellsing is about a secret war between a British organization and those things that go bump in the night. It follows a powerful vampire, Alucard, who serves the organization loyally. However, Alucard comes across a police officer, Seras Victoria, and turns her into a vampire, with her permission. That means that she not only has to struggle with becoming a creature of the night, but also has to figure out how she fits into the Hellsing organization, which gets its name from Professor Van Helsing of Dracula fame.
A new breed of vampires begin rising and it's up to Seras and Alucard to stop the new group in its tracks.
Boogiepop Phantom
Boogiepop Phantom began its life as a bestselling novel series by Kouhei Kadono. It tells the story of a town still haunted by death five years after a series of grisly murders. After a mysterious pillar of light appears in the sky, high school students begin disappearing, again, just like before, and the disappearances get blamed on an urban legend, something called the Boogiepop (leave it to the Japanese to give a cute name to something terrifying).
What makes this series so eerie is the way the story unfolds in a strange and disjointed style. This, along with the mystery of the students' disappearances, creates a disturbing series that revolves around something everyone is familiar with: an urban legend. Even the weird soundtrack chosen for the series plays into the horror, working to keep viewers feeling slightly off-put and disturbed.
Because of it's strange style of storytelling, which often changes point of view and jumps back and forth in time, this is one series you must commit to. If you don't have the focus to watch the series without distractions, you'll end up confused. However, for those who like to watch something a little different, this is the anime series for you.
Shiki
Many anime fans will probably mention Shiki as the one of the scariest series they've ever seen. Based on a horror novel by Fuyumi Ono, Shiki soon became a manga series and then later became this popular anime series.
For an idea on how scary Shiki is, here's a translation of its title: in Japanese, the word "shiki" means "Corpse Demon" or "Death Spirit," which is appropriate because the anime series' story starts in a quiet Japanese village plagued by a series of mysterious deaths. Although doctors suspect an epidemic, more bodies pile up, and people soon begin to believe that the shiki are responsible for the deaths.
Soon, one of the series' protagonists, a young boy who hates living in the village, fears that the shiki is after him, and must figure out how to escape its clutches. Eventually, his fate ties him directly to the shiki.
Shiki originally aired in Japan as part of a midnight block of anime, specifically targeted at older audience members who wanted to watch something that would scare them.
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