Human beings are often enamored by the darker sides of stories. Fairy tales have always been fraught with horrors, and gossip has a tendency to turn even mundane tales into full-fledged conspiracies. Anime fans are no exception to this human tendency, and over the years, several anime series and films have spawned bizarre mythologies that sometimes feel all too real.
While many anime urban legends have little or no basis in fact, others have sturdier ground to stand on. Anime urban legends still proliferate forums and discussions, compelling as they are haunting.
Trigger Warning: This list incorporates extremely dark content, including themes of murder and suicide. Please proceed with caution.
7 Totoro Is The God Of Death, & The Film Is Based On The Sayama Murder Incident
Among the most prevalent anime urban legends is the idea that Totoro, beloved Ghibli icon, is actually the god of Death. Totoro is purported to be an omen seen only by those soon to meet their demise. According to this logic, when Mei's sandal is found floating in a pond, she's actually already drowned, and Satsuki, with Totoro's help, crosses into death herself to find her sister. Thereafter, only their mother can see them because she's also close to death, and the girls have no shadows. Compelling and Orpheus-esque as this theory is, Ghibli has denied these rumors.
More chilling is the Sayama Incident, the real-life murder of two country girls in the 1970s. My Neighbor Totoro is set in Sayama, and rumors have proliferated that one of the actual murder victims claimed to see a cat-shaped apparition before her death. Though the ties between the Sayama tragedy and the beloved film are negligible, there's no denying that the notion is truly unsettling.
6 Death Note Inspired A String Of Copycat Murders
Society has a fraught relationship with violent storytelling, and most entertainment is subject to censorship or warning tags. While no show can make someone commit a crime, it's undeniable that criminals have taken inspiration from everything from Dexter to The Catcher In The Rye.
Death Note has been tied to a range of copycat crimes, and the so-called Manga Murder is the most infamous among them. In 2007, a mutilated corpse was discovered in a park in Belgium. Near the body were two notes that read, "Watashi wa Kira dess," a misspelling of the Japanese for "I am Kira." Death Note fans would know that Kira is Light Yagami. In 2013, three men were arrested for the crime, but the victim has never been publically identified.
5 JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Predicted 9/11
On of the more dubious urban legends in anime circles involves beloved mangaka Hirohiko Araki, creator of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Theorists claim that Araki actually predicted the 9/11 attacks a decade before the event.
In chapter 189 fans are introduced to a character named Boingo, whose Stand, Thoth, grants him the ability to predict the future as abstract images. Among these future visions, Araki illustrated a mercenary wearing a shirt that reads "911." The character makes reference to the time, 10:30 AM, which is eerily close to the minute when One World Trade Center collapsed at 10:28 AM. In the succeeding panel, the mercenary is impaled on a telephone pole, and a plane with a vicious face can be seen flying in the background. When asked about these panels, Araki himself confessed that he had no idea why he'd drawn them that way.
4 Dragon Ball Z Caused The Death Of A Child In Hungary
These days, almost any rumor can be confirmed or denied by means of a simple search on Google. But rumors have existed since long before the advent of the Internet, and myths traveled by other means, often without being challenged. It's not surprising that a series as popular as Dragon Ball garnered its own urban legends.
In the '90s, fans commonly heard and believed that the anime was banned in Hungary because it had ties to a tragic accident. According to the urban legend, a young boy, imitating Goku, jumped from a window because he believed a Flying Nimbus cloud would catch him. Other rumors suggested that a boy had tried to stop a car using a Kamehameha attack. While Dragon Ball was canceled in Hungary, it had nothing to do with these baseless stories, and everything to do with its 18+ rating and poor after-midnight timeslot.
3 Doraemon Has Spawned A Lot Of Bizarre Rumors
A show as popular and long-running as Doraemon was bound to build its own set of legends. Common among them is the notion that Doraemon doesn't exist, and is nothing more than a delusion created by the lonely mind of Nobita, an imaginary friend of sorts. Fans even go so far as to theorize that Nobita is schizophrenic and takes his own life as an adult. Of course, none of this is backed by confirmed evidence.
Other theories suggest that Doraemon, a robot sent from the future, is actually a time-traveling assassin a la Terminator. Another rumor pertains to a lost episode that supposedly aired at midnight the same day that Doraemon's creator died, alluding to his demise. No such episode has been proven to exist.
2 School Days Was Pulled From The Air Because Its Violent Final Episode Coincided With A Real Murder
School Days has a seedy reputation that persists to this day, but the twisted visual novel anime with a sick ending might have been less notorious were it not for the circumstances of its release. In School Days, an apathetic teen named Makoto Itou carelessly toys with the affections of his classmates, engaging in intimate acts with different girls without considering the consequences. Makoto comes to a bad end, a violent death that's as garish as it is cheesy.
The day before School Days' infamous finale was scheduled to air, a teenage girl in Kyoto brutally murdered her father with an ax. Due to the parallels between the show and the murder, TV Kanagawa immediately pulled the episode from the air, choosing instead to air a travel montage featuring footage of Norwegian fjords set to classical music. Unsurprisingly, all of this inspired a dark-hearted meme and permanently established School Days' infamy for decades to come.
1 Magical Princess Minky Momo Cursed Japan & Caused Several Earthquakes
Among the eeriest and most renowned urban legends is that of the Curse of Minky Momo. Magical Princess Minky Momo was a magical girl series that aired in the early 1980s. While the show garnered a lot of fans, its merchandise sold poorly, and the show lost funding after 45 episodes. Furious at this turn of events, the show's creators retaliated in spectacular fashion, killing off Minky Momo in a car accident in the 46th episode. She was reborn without magical powers, but thereafter the show continued as if this freaky episode never happened.
All of this may have been laughed off if not for the other frightening aspect of her supposed curse: the earthquakes. When Minky Momo aired its final episode on May 26th, 1983, Japan was struck by an earthquake that killed more than 100 people. In 1995, while a rerun of that final episode aired, the devastating Great Hanshin earthquake claimed more than 6,000 lives. It's not hard to see why Minky Momo is seen as cursed.