With Halloween right around the corner, many anime fans seek spooky titles to fit the holiday's spirit. While anime has myriads of outstandingly frightening horror shows to offer, most of them aren't as well-known as more popular shonen titles or critically acclaimed drama series. Horror has always been a niche genre in anime, often facing backlash from the community and receiving endless criticism.
Many cult-classic horror shows never got the recognition they deserve. With more and more exciting, high-budget anime series coming out each year, the lesser-known, modest horror shows get overshadowed by their competition. These incredible horror series had the misfortune to come out during outstandingly cutthroat anime seasons, standing no chance in the ruthless lineup of much more popular shows.
10 Dorohedoro Was Much Less Popular Than Haikyuu!! To The Top
Under any other circumstances, the horror fantasy series Dorohedoro would be the over-the-top gory spectacle every fan was watching during the 2020 winter season. The series effortlessly balanced gritty, violent horror with dark humor, luring the audience into its unpredictable supernatural world of death and danger.
Sadly, Dorohedoro couldn't compete with the anticipated return of one of sports anime's most prominent Goliaths - Haikyuu!! Premiering its fourth season alongside Dorohedoro, the famed sports franchise blew all the competition away, leaving this incredible horror series in the dust.
9 Hell Girl Couldn't Compete With A Much Less Unique Horror Series Blood+
The cult-classic Hell Girl is a disquieting collection of revenge stories that uncover the unspeakable cruelties of people driven by vengeance. Following broken individuals willing to sell their souls for a chance to deem their enemies for an eternity in Hell, the series stands out among the sea of generic horror shows with its clever premise and heavy themes.
The audience picked a much more simplistic show as the top horror of the fall 2005 season. The ambitious Hell Girl was outshined by Blood+, a gory vampire flick that valued shock factor above compelling storytelling.
8 Boogiepop And Others Couldn't Outshine The Promised Neverland & Kaguya-sama: Love is War
Marking the 20th anniversary of the original light novel publication, 2019's Boogiepop and Others was one of the most anticipated releases for seasoned horror fans. The return of this classic psychological series about the enigmatic Shinigami guarding the Shinyo Academy had great potential.
The same season Boogiepop and Others released featured too many shows that went down in history as some of the most popular anime of all time. Old-school horror couldn't compete with such hits as The Promised Neverland, Kaguya-sama: Love is War, and The Rising of the Shield Hero, all of which grew into massive franchises while Boogiepop sank into oblivion.
7
Happy Sugar Life Tried To Compete With Extremely Popular Sequels
The yandere craze was still going strong in 2018, which promised the horror drama Happy Sugar Life a great success. The show follows an obsessive yandere Satou Matsuzaka on her wretched pursuit to will the love of a little naive girl, Shio.
Happy Sugar Life explored all the horrific and disquieting characteristics of this popular character archetype. Nevertheless, even such a promising show could not stand up against the highly anticipated sequels packed into the summer 2018 season, as Overlord III and Attack on Titan Season 3 overtook Happy Sugar Life with ease.
6 School-Live! Failed Against Overlord And Dragon Ball Super
The summer 2015 season gifted horror fans with a deceiving yet brilliantly original School-Live!, an unorthodox series that combined the "cute girls doing cute things" formula with a violent zombie apocalypse setting. However, School-Live! was pushed out of the spotlight by an arising isekai boom of the mid-2000s.
The same summer season saw the launch of Overlord's anime adaptation, which saw massive success with both the established fans of the genre and newer isekai audiences. Likewise, fans looking for something more familiar got Dragon Ball Super, another extremely popular show that compromised School-Live! 's success.
5 GeGeGe No Kitaro's Legacy Didn't Make It More Popular Than Tokyo Ghoul:Re
The horror franchise GeGeGe no Kitaro has been going strong since the 1960s, receiving multiple successful adaptations and spin-offs over the years. In 2018, old-school fans of this classic supernatural shonen were anticipating the return of Kitaro's adventures in the world of yokai.
Unfortunately, the return of a different supernatural horror in the form of Tokyo Ghoul:re gained much more traction than GeGeGe no Kitaro. While the fans' consensus on Tokyo Ghoul: re's quality is generally negative, the series still surpassed all other horror shows of the season in popularity.
4 Dusk Maiden Of Amnesia Lost To Kuroko's Basketball And Hyouka
The uniquely charming horror series Dusk Maiden of Amnesia is a true hidden gem of the horror genre. The show follows an amnesiac ghost named Yuuko who leads her school's Paranormal Investigations Club, investigating the Seikyou Private Academy's peculiar supernatural mysteries.
Lighthearted and mischievous, Dusk Maiden of Amnesia could've been a hit with seasoned horror fans and genre newbies alike. Unfortunately, the community's attention during the spring 2012 season was glued to other rising stars, such as the sports epic Kuroko's Basketball and Kyoto Animation's gorgeous mystery series Hyouka.
3 Ayakashi: Japanese Classic Horror Failed To Outperform Fate/Stay Night
Japanese folklore has a vast collection of culturally unique, intriguing, and terrifying horror tales, which are often incorporated into anime. 2006 anthology series Ayakashi: Japanese Classic Horror attempts to adapt three horror folk tales.
Ayakashi is highly regarded among hardcore fans of the genre and even inspired another criminally underrated horror anthology, Mononoke. Yet, another series rooted in history, although much more loosely than Ayakashi, took over the charts the same season - Fate/stay night. Sadly, a niche horror anthology could not compete with Type-Moon's massive fanbase.
2 Mononoke Couldn't Surpass Baccano!
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Released during the summer of 2007, the visually stunning horror anthology Mononoke is often confused with a similarly named classic Ghibli film. However, the disturbing tales of Mononoke are nothing like the wondrous worlds created by Hayao Miyazaki.
Famous for its unorthodox art style and surreal interpretations of Japanese folk tales, Mononokewas a hit with avant-garde and historical horror fans. Nevertheless, the series was too out there to top the most popular shows of its season, including Baccano!, a fan-favorite action comedy that mixes supernatural thriller with organized crime drama.
1 Ghost Hunt Had No Chance Against Death Note
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Universally recognized as one of the most popular anime franchises worldwide, Death Note left no place for competition during the fall 2006 anime season. Even such massive shows as Code Geass and D.Gray-man struggled to keep up with Death Note's absurd popularity. So, it's not surprising that the hidden gem of 2006, horror shoujo Ghost Hunt failed to compete with these shonen behemoths.
If Ghost Hunt was to come out during a less hectic time, it would've had every opportunity to take the community by storm. Unfortunately, the impossible competition made mass acclaim unreachable for this amazing horror series.