When I put together my list of the best SCPs of all time, Series IV might have been the one series I explored the most.
Series IV is popular for the high number of Meta-SCPs that were released. Quite a few of the Series IV SCPs twisted tropes in various creative ways or played with them.
In Series IV, some of the most bizarre and creative articles of all time were released on the SCP-Wiki until then. Author-inclusion, Meta-narratives, format screws and many other concepts not only came into play but become popular during its time.
Meta-articles were something to stay and over time they would involve, but Series IV can be considered the most meta-heavy series on the SCP-Wiki. And yet, Series IV doesn’t solely comprise Meta-articles. No, it comprises a plethora of fantastic articles, many of which I consider among the best SCPs of all time.
For this article, I want to present you with my twenty-eight favorite Series IV SCPs.
Notice: All articles cited here are licensed under CC-BY-SA.
Anantashesha is one of the best SCPs Series IV SCPs out there and one of the most well-written SCPs of all time. What starts slowly soon develops into a fantastic story. It’s not merely one about an anomalous entity by the same name, but one about personal journeys, believes, memory deterioration and much, much more. It’s truly one of the best SCPs on the entire SCP-Wiki and any fan should read it.
Red Reality tells the story of a paradoxical pocket, or a non-dimension. During an experiment, Dr. Scranton was transported into this same pocket. What makes this is SCP so great, however, are Dr. Scranton’s logs and what happens to him while he’s there. It’s a story of a man entirely alone, a man who’s slowly eroding both mentally and bodily. It’s a terrible, disturbing and sad story, but it’s also a fantastic one. This Series IV SCP truly packs a bunch and proves to be one of the best Series IV SCPs out there.
The End of History is another great Series IV SCP. It’s an SCP full of world-building which details an interesting, alien but strangely human society. The descriptions of the society and how it functions are fantastically done and well thought out. What I truly loved about it, however, was the ending.
I wasn’t a big fan of SCP-2852 – Cousin Johnny because I felt it was full of needless body horror and gore. This one ties into it, but it’s also vastly different. I loved how it ties into Christianity, but most of all, the description of the entity which can only be called truly Lovecraftian. What makes it even better, however, is its ending, the final tab and what it entails.
World of Two Artists is an absolutely outstanding Series IV SCP. What’s first assumed to be about dreams of a strange cityscape soon turns much darker and more complex the more’s revealed about the place. What makes it so great, however, is that the horror wasn’t revealed by words alone, but pieces of art. This makes it an entirely different experience. Coupled with the descriptions of the cityscape, the horror and death all around it and the Lovecraftian implications the SCP itself holds make it truly great.
The Infinite IKEA is one of the most popular articles on the page and for a good reason. I really love extradimensional SCPs and the Infinite IKEA might be the best of them. The idea of being trapped in a world that’s nothing but a giant IKEA is creative and fantastic in its own right. The reason this Series IV SCPs so great, however, is because of the long diary of a person who escaped from the Infinite IKEA.
The Counting Station is another strange Series IV SCP. It’s a horror SCP concerning a counting station. What makes it so great, however, are the descriptions and the many details. The SCP isn’t merely a description of the anomalous object, but it includes an interview, audio analysis, and even incident logs. All of those details help to shed more light on what the Counting Station truly is, or might be. It’s a fantastic SCP, but its ending is truly great. One can’t help but wonder what would happen if the count ever reaches zero again.
Murphy Law is yet another format screw and one of the best one I’ve come upon. This Series IV SCP is written as a thriller noir from the perspective of the titular character. It’s such a strange idea, but such a well-written and well-done Series IV SCP. I can’t help but truly love it.
There are many strange Series IV SCPs out there, but bzzip.exe might be amongst the strangest ones. It’s an SCP that combines great humor with bizarre horror and imagery. What I loved the most were the increasingly simplified summaries of Hamlet. They were truly funny and had me laugh out loud multiple times. In later parts, however, this Series IV SCP changes its tone entirely and turns from humor to nothing short of horror.
Indeterminate Source is another hard science-fiction SCP and one of the best Series IV SCPs. It’s an idea that’s as fantastic as it’s weird. The entire SCP is one about disorientation, twisted memories, and a confusing order of events. It also provides us with some very interesting future world-building. While it might be confusing and heavy on the scientific details, it’s very much worth reading.
There are many horror SCPs on the SCP-Wiki, but A Monster-Shaped Hole is entirely unique. It’s a Series IV SCP that’s more about concepts, more about thoughts and imagination than an actual monster. This, however, is exactly the reason that makes it so great and elevates it above many other Series IV SCPs.
How do you contain something you know nothing about? This question is at the center of this Series IV SCP and makes it a paradox. The descriptions are great and well-written, but more so is the mystery behind it and the danger the entity holds. It’s without a doubt one of the best Series IV SCPs and one of the best on the entire SCP-Wiki.
I don’t know why, but robotic SCPs and the Church of the Broken God have always been amongst my favorite creations on the entire SCP-Wiki. The entity described in this SCP is no different concerning a liquid metal organism. It’s one that’s not only able to alter its form but also create smaller entities. What made this article so interesting, however, were the historical details about the entity and the attempted containment breaches.
There is No Canon might be amongst the strangest SCPs on the entire SCP-Wiki. Reading this SCP is a strange experience and it will most likely leave you wondering what exactly is going on in this article. And yet, there might not be a clear answer, and it might just be another, unresolved mystery.
The Aristocrats is one of the longest Series IV SCPs. It’s, however, extremely well-written and tells a fantastic story. What starts out with strange murder cases in Vienna soon grows in scope. I truly loved every single part of this Series IV SCP. While it takes some historical liberties, it shouldn’t deter from its enjoyment. I believe it’s one of the best Series IV SCPs and one of my all-time favorites.
THE FOUNDATION is a Series IV SCP about a board game which was created by Dr. Wonderteinment for the Foundation. It’s a bit of a weird SCP, one that honestly doesn’t feel like an SCP. Instead, it’s merely a description of a game with rules, cards and everything else it contains, albeit an anomalous game. It’s an extremely interesting, enjoyable and complex article, however, one should remember that this is more a description of a board game than a true SCP.
Tower is another extradimensional Series IV SCP. This one’s about a fire lookout with a top door. This top door leads to another lookout above, which sprouts another top door. All those lookouts stacked on top of one another create a tower. Yet, the higher one climbs, the stranger things get. The SCP comprises several exploration logs, which slowly reveal more about the strange tower. What makes this Series IV SCP truly terrifying is the last exploration log in which we learn what happens to those who make it to the top of the tower.
SCP-3444 – She Took The Midnight Train Going Anywhere… by Tufto
She Took The Midnight Train Going Anywhere… really wasn’t my type of SCP. It’s long, ambitious and creative. As many other SCPs by Tufto, it’s well-written, well-done and, at times, even humorous. As I said, this is not what I’m looking for in an SCP. One has to admit that a lot of effort went into writing it. While it’s not for me, other people might truly enjoy it. Read it and see for yourself, but I think for the writing and the idea alone, it’s worth a read.
Unearth is another genuine horror SCP, but a rather bizarre one. It’s about claustrophobia, about being stuck and full of surreal and nightmarish imagery. What I enjoyed the most were the dialogues, which were heavy with emotion and truly made you feel the futility and, of course, the claustrophobia the D-Class suffered from. It’s a truly twisted Series IV SCP.
This was another very interesting Series IV SCP with a nice little twist in it. It’s interesting to see how far people will go to keep themselves safe. What I loved the most, however, was the ending which I thought was fantastically well-played.
This is a rather simple Series IV SCP, but one I truly came to love. It’s a fantastic diversion from the general SCP tropes and it’s very, very creepy. What makes it so great, and so terrifying, however, are the interview logs, at least once you understand what’s truly going on.
Well, we’ve officially entered bizarro world. Mind-Milk™ by Moosphere, Inc. might be the most bizarre Series IV SCP out there. It’s full of surreal ideas and imagery and a wild ride I think needs to be imagined. It’s an SCP about disgusting milk slowly taking over the world, people being changed into udders and much, much more. While it can be confusing in parts, it’s also extremely well-done and well-written. If you like bizarre SCPs, this one’s a must-read.
SCP-3838 – Nomads of the 4th-Dimensional Steppe by Tufto
Nomads of the 4th-Dimensional Steppe is another Series IV SCP by Tufto. He’s, at least in my opinion, one of the best, if not the best, writers in terms of prose on the Wiki. Once more, he doesn’t disappoint. This Series IV SCP is one of the most creative I’ve come upon. It’s about nomad tribes who all live in the same area, but not at the same time. Instead of space, they divide up time as their living space. It’s such a weird, yet well-done idea, but of course that’s not all. No, there’s more going on.
Here we have another truly strange SCP, but one that’s absolutely outstanding. It’s another entry by djkaktus and this Series IV SCP might be my absolute favorite of his. Imagine a space that doesn’t exist, and that’s simply not there. What would you see if you stare at it? That’s what this Series IV SCP is all about. It’s an extremely strange and unsettling SCP, one that toys heavily with pattern recognition. As so often, though, that’s not all it’s about.
Another Series IV SCP by djkaktus. This SCP is about another small town in which strange things happen. At first, the SCP only concerns the local high school, which is plagued by strange incidents. Soon, however, the SCP turns darker as more and more details about the town and the events that happened there are revealed. Not all the information, and not all that’s going on, might be apparent right away, however. Once things fall into place, however, one might realize that this SCP is all about a different type of horror.
There are a few Series IV SCPs as clever as this one, but it’s also really long. While I enjoyed it for what it was and appreciate the effort that was put into it, I think parts of it were a bit too long. Overall, though, the twist, the ending and the explanation of what was actually going on were extremely well done. You should definitely check this one out.
The Observatory of Genghis Khan is another Series IV SCP by Tufto. Yet again, it’s extremely well-written. This SCP concerns a mysterious observatory in which the body of Genghis Khan is entombed. What makes this one so great is the mystery of the place and the outstanding writing. The best part, in my opinion, however, is the ending. The last line is one of the best in the entire SCP-Wiki.
The Bone Orchard is a Series IV SCP feature the horrors of sarkicism. It features a space-time anomaly in Syria, one that turns out stranger than originally thought. What makes this one so great are the exploration logs. They show just how much is going on and what sorts of horrors are out there. The descriptions, the imagery and the many entities we encounter are all extremely well-done. It is, however, heavy on references to and information from other SCPs related to sarkicism.
During Series III, things grew in size. Over the course of Series III, there’d be much more world-building. We’d see higher concepts and quite a few of the best SCPs of all time.
Series III SCPs are often longer and more story-driven than those in earlier series. They are grander in style and often concern anomalous creatures and concepts different from what was there before. Series III SCPs weren’t just about monsters in cages. No, they were, at least at times, about entities that could threaten the entire SCP Foundation.
Series III also gave us a clearer picture of the many groups of interest and their motifs.
During Series III, the tone of the SCP-Wiki changed once more. The grimdark tone of Series II was replaced by one that was more ambiguous. The SCP-Foundation was still an unethical organization, but all it did was to protect humanity and keep the world a safe place.
Series III as a whole is great, and it contains some of my favorite SCPs of all time. For this article, however, I want to present to you the twenty best Series III SCPs of all time.
Notice: All articles cited here are licensed under CC-BY-SA.
Deus Ex Machina is a worthy winner for the SCP-2000 contest. It’s heavy on scientific detail, but it’s one of the most popular and important articles on the entire SCP-Wiki. It’s an SCP that changed the scale of the Foundation. What was once a secret organization that contained creepy objects and entities had now become something different, something much, much more powerful. For the machine bellow Yellowstone is exactly that, a Deus ex machina, and if you read this Series III SCP, you will find out exactly why.
Preferred Option was one of the first SCPs I read that was about different realities and dimensions. This Series III SCP is special and doesn’t only talk about how to learn about the future, but also how to manipulate it. It’s one of the most interesting Series III SCPs and one I truly enjoyed. While I enjoyed the entire article, my favorite part was the last Addendum.
LA U GH IS F UN is one of the most bizarre SCPs I ever read and it’s for this exact reason I like it so much. This Series III SCP concerns a television series, but things are much stranger than what one might expect. The reason I enjoyed it so much is just for how bizarre the imagery was and how detailed the descriptions were.
The Way of All the Flesh is another one of the best Series III SCPs. What starts off with a strange man or entity who’s been alive for a long, long while soon goes down a different route. In its latter half, this Series III SCP becomes much more interesting. There’s even a little twist hidden at the end, one that makes the entire SCP so much better.
SCP-2132 – Most Dangerous Fighting Exhibition and Obstacle Resort by ahbonjour
A dangerous obstacle course is already a great idea, but this Series III SCP takes things even further. I really enjoyed the test logs and the results of different courses that were outlined, but it was the ending that made this Series III SCP so much better. It showed us that there were more things to this and that it was much more twisted than original thought.
The Demon La Hire and the Valley of Lust was one of the first SCPs by djkaktus I read and it’s a fantastic one. While it’s related to djkaktus’ greater universe, this Series III SCP works well on its own. It proves once again how far the Foundation will go to contain entities and what horrible things they will do. Yet, the entity, too, is terrifying. Even worse, however, are the implications near the end. Truly one of the best Series III SCPs out there.
In the Court of Alagadda is one of my favorite SCPs of all time. It’s one that hits all the right spots of Lovecraftian literature. What appears at first to be nothing but a simple door soon concerns itself with an interdimensional city state controlled by terrible entities. The descriptions are great, the world-building is fantastic and the Ambassador of Alagadda who learned about in SCP-701 proves to be a truly terrifying antagonist.
Here we got another space SCP, this one by no other than djkaktus. Once more, his writing’s fantastic and as a science-fiction fan, I really loved the entity this Series III SCP presents us with. What truly makes this a fantastic SCP, however, are the messages near the end.
The Laughing Man is another one of those Series III SCPs you love for how horrible it is. What’s described here is truly the stuff of nightmares. Once more, it shows what a horrible place the SCP Foundation can be and what they can do. The most interesting part, however, is that the doctor sees D-Class as nothing but irredeemable monsters. It’s, however, mainly because of his actions that they become exactly that. A truly brilliant Series III SCP.
Room Service is another truly weird and bizarre Series III SCP. The original entity, the room itself and the channels on the TV are great and weird all by themselves. What truly made this one of the best Series III SCPs, however, is the addendum. Here we learn the true horror of this Series III SCP. I absolutely loved it.
The Rainbow Body is one of the most complex, thought out articles on the entire SCP-Wiki. It features a lot of historical tie-ins, scientific details and philosophical discussions. I enjoyed it a lot and many parts of it were outstanding, but I thought it was a bit too long. Overall, it’s an incredibly ambitious piece, and I’m sure a lot of effort went into it. For that alone, giving this article a read is well worth it.
Got A Secret, CAn You Keep it? is a different Series III SCP, but one that’s still creepy. The biggest question here is not what the secret itself is, but why and especially how it is hidden. It’s an interesting spin on trope of small towns who keep terrible secrets hidden.
Cragglewood Park is a great horror SCP and one of the best Series SCPs. I loved the idea of strange dreams and hidden memories all concerning a creepy amusement park. The entire SPC is great, but it’s the implications near the end that make this one truly terrifying.
Sometimes I go Out in Pity for Myself is yet another SCP about recordings, but this time the concept is entirely different from what we’ve seen before. It’s not about a strange recording, but being able to move around inside the recording of a TV-show or movie. From here on out, however, you can go even deeper and enter other recordings that are shown within the recording you’re currently in. The creativity that went into this idea is great, and slowly, as we continue reading, things turn stranger and stranger.
The Blind Idiot is a Series III SCP about an alien entity that ends up in our universe. It’s one of the strangest, yet best SCPs I’ve ever come upon. The description of the entity and especially the dialogues are nothing short of fantastic. It’s the best depiction of an alien entity I’ve come upon in the SCP-Wiki’s entirety. An absolutely outstanding and well-written Series III SCP.
Lucibelle Perhacs has to be one of the most horrifying body horror SCPs on the entire page. Needles can be terrifying, but this Series III SCP makes this much, much worse. The descriptions in this SCP didn’t just make me uncomfortable, they made me cringe multiple times. It’s for this exact reason I love this Series III SCP so much. Other horror SCPs are scary or creepy, but this one takes it to an entirely different level.
On the Barcelona Skyline is another bizarre Series III SCP. There’s just something about weird SCPs like this one that I came to truly enjoy. The descriptions are great and the anomalous object is quite the creative idea.
There are many weird SCPs on the SCP-Wiki, but this one’s by the great djkaktus. The less is said about this SCP, the better. Read it, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. It’s definitely one of the best Series III SCPs out there.
There are quite a few Meta-SCPs out there, many of which are good, but this one by minmin has to be the best one out of all of them. The writing is great, but the incidents and the media described are both extremely well done and really creative. What makes it truly great, however, are the implications at the end. The words ‘DATA LOST’ have never been as scary as in this Series III SCP.
Titania’s Prison is yet another SCP that’s part of djkaktus’ greater universe. I really enjoyed it, like many other parts of Project Paragon, but I have to admit that they aren’t really my type of content. Titania’s Prison, however, is extremely well-written and concerns the titular prison. It’s a place that contains or imprisons powerful entities and beings. It’s an interesting piece, one that ties in well with many other parts of the overall SCP-Universe. What I truly liked, however, was the description of the various prisoners. Once more, djkaktus delivers a truly great Series III SCP.
When I put together my list of the best SCPs of all time, I read a lot of Series II SCPs.
Series II was a time when a lot of things changed for the SCP-Wiki. It can be best described as a deconstruction of Series I.
Series I was a time when the SCP-Wiki didn’t have a general tone. Some people wrote more realistic pieces. Others wrote articles of a more wacky and over-the-top nature. These over-the-top articles would later be known as lolFoundation. In them, the SCP Foundation is a crazy place, one populated by insane characters.
These articles were soon frowned upon. Instead, we got Series II, in which the SCP-Wiki grew grimdark in tone. The world of the SCP Foundation transformed into a cold, hard place. Many of the articles in Series II mirror this in tone by being depressing and grim.
The SCP-1000 contest also influenced Series II markedly. Because of it, the SCP-Wiki moved away from its horror roots and included articles cantered around folklore, the fantastical and the unusual.
Series II was also the first time format screws were featured on the SCP-Wiki. These SCPs moved away from the more normal, general SCP format, disregarded it or included other elements.
Series II can be best seen as a transitional period in which the SCP-Wiki moved away from its horror roots and more towards the grander, more scientific style common in Series III.
Series II is very well worth reading. Many of the Series II SCPs are amongst the best on the SCP-Wiki. In this article, I want to present to you my favorite 20 Series II SCPs.
Notice: All articles cited here are licensed under CC-BY-SA.
Encyclopedia of Diseases is a fantastic Series II SCP. What makes it so interesting are the actual properties of the SCP and what happened throughout the many experimentation logs. The ending, however, and the revelation it contains is what makes it truly great.
Builder Bear is one of the most fucked up Series II SCPs and one ripe with body horror. The object itself seems safe, even adorable. Eventually, however, it turns out that it’s a truly terrifying entity. Even worse are the additional entities the Builder Bear created and what they did. It’s truly the stuff of nightmares.
Bifurcation Man is one of the more interesting and fun Series II SCPs. And yet, it still proves to be truly dangerous to the SCP Foundation. At the outset, this Series II SCP seems more like a joke and even develops in a more amusing way. At the ending, however, as ridiculous as this SCP is, you’re left with a feeling of genuine danger.
Buried Giant is one of the strangest Series II SCPs and one of the strangest SCPs in general. It’s truly bizarre. The descriptions are weird enough, but the interview truly makes you wonder what’s going on here. If you check out the author commentary in the discussion, you learn that there’s another, entirely different level to this SCP. I’m sure it will make you ponder about this SCP.
The Harbinger was the very first space SCPs I read. The writing in this Series II SCP and the emotional impact is truly fantastic. What I love the most, however, is one a single the SCP contains: ‘One voice is small, but the difference between zero and one is as great as one and infinity.’ It’s truly a great SCP and one of the most emotional on the entire SCP-Wiki.
Solve for Bear is probably one of the dumbest, most ridiculous Series II SCPs. It centers on a strange, mathematical equation which, when solved, has a very strange result. What can I say about this SCP? It’s ridiculous, it’s dumb, but that’s what makes it so great. When I was done reading it, I couldn’t help but sit here, laughing and shaking my head.
To the Makers of Music is another space SCP and one of the best Series II SCPS of all time. It’s a fantastic SCP, one that comes with some fantastic descriptions and extremely interesting world-building. What makes it truly great, however, is once more the emotional impact it provides. It’s a truly outstanding SCP.
The Old Man from Nowhere is another extremely interesting Series II SCP. It’s not about a dangerous entity or monsters, but about a man who’s followed by them. While the man itself holds no danger, the danger comes from what follows him and being around him. The greatest thing about this SCP, however, is the interview in which the man talks about the entities following him.
Tunnel Slide is another truly weird SCP. The general idea is silly, ridiculous even, but the way it’s told and unfolds is utterly creepy, unsettling and most of all mysterious. It’s one of those SCPs that’s not trying to explain the horror, but that simply plays it out. All we get is the pure horror in the form of various audio logs. It’s for this reason I consider it one of the best Series II SCPs.
UnLondon is another one of the most fascinating Series II SCPs. The city, its description and the mystery surrounding it are well done. Even better, however, are the various entities populating it. Yet, there’s more to UnLondon. There are implications about it. UnLondon can be seen as an Orwellian nightmare, but there’s a reason for it. I truly came to enjoy this Series II SCP, especially for its world-building and the description of the strange city of UnLondon.
Bag of Holding Potatoes is another truly bizarre SCP. One might wonder what’s so bad about a bag holding an infinite amount of potatoes. Once one reads the exploration log about the place the potatoes come from, one will know. It’s one of the weirdest, yet greatest, exploration logs on the entire page. I truly loved this strange Series II SCP.
Came Back Haunted is another creepy horror SCP and one of the best Series II SCPs. It’s an SCP that’s very reminiscent of the good old creepypasta. It’s pure horror, pure weirdness and once again, no explanation is given or needed for it to work. No, the mystery’s itself makes it so much creepier. It’s truly one of the best horror SCPs in Series II.
Trapped in a Game is one of my absolute favorite Series II SCPs. It’s nothing but a recording of the season opening game of 2010-2011. When watching the recording, however, certain people noticed strange details. This might not sound outstanding, but once you get to the experimentation log, you will understand why this SCP is as popular as it is. It’s an absolutely outstanding piece of writing and one of the most creative Series II SCPs.
You might wonder what could be dangerous about an old laptop. If you read this SCP, however, you will soon notice why it’s so dangerous. Obsolete Laptop is one of the best Series II SCPs out there. It also presents one of the most serious and existential threads in all of Series II. It also proves once more just how far the Foundation will go. Another truly fascinating SCP.
Cotton Blight is another truly ridiculous Series II SCP. The overall SCP, as well as the events depicted, are truly interesting, but the greatest part is the ending. The moment I finished the article, I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. It’s a truly great Series II SCP, especially if you consider how serious most of the article and how ridiculous the ending is.
Life Over Geological Time is another truly great Series II SCP. It’s heavy on scientific details, very heavy. It’s worth reading, however, and the descriptions of the Cradle of Life, the way the scientists talk about it, and the ending make it very much worth reading. I really loved it.
The Crew of the HMS Wintersheimer is another fantastic horror SCP. I love the HMS Wintersheimer and its description, but most of all, I love the interview log with the D-Class, who became part of its crew. It’s another, entirely bizarre and weird SCP, once more with no explanation. And yet, the horror works fantastically and proves to be one of the best Series II SPCs of all time.
Escort and Officer is another truly weird and ridiculous Series II SCP. It details two strange, alien entities in Foundation custody. One is a strange, multi-limbed organism working as an escort. The other is a metallic sphere, an officer, who’s out to bring the escort to justice for her crimes. This might sound strange enough, but it’s the interviews with both entities that reveal how truly ridiculous this SCP is. The ending had me at a loss for words and I sat there, laughing and shaking my head.
RONALD REAGAN CUT UP WHILE TALKING is another SCP about a weird recording. I really enjoyed the weirder Series II SCPs, and this one is among the weirdest. I love the description of the recordings. The more Reagan’s body gets torn and cut apart, the more nonsensical his speech becomes. And yet, there’s even more to this recording as we learn near the end of this Series II SCP.
As someone who loves books, I love SCPs about books and libraries. This Series II SCP is the best of both. Imaginary Library is just that, a strange, never-ending library full of books never seen before. What’s truly great, however, are the various books and their descriptions. It’s a weird, yet extremely creative SCP, one I couldn’t help but love.
When I set out to create a list of the best SCPs of all time, I read a lot of SCPs. During that time, I also read many of the Series I SCPs.
Series I was the very first series of SCPs. This is where it all started. The first thing one can say about Series I SCPs is that they were written during simpler times.
Many Series I SCPs are considered classics and are widely popular. They are, however, criticized today for being too simple and too poorly written. Their popularity is more a result of age and of being around since the beginning than actual quality. One only has to look at the now archived heritage collection. It’s a collection of some of the most popular SCPs of all time, but almost all of them wouldn’t hold up today.
Still, Series I SCPs might be criticized, but they can still be quite effective. In comparisons to more modern articles, they are simple, short and to the point. They are often reminiscent of creepypasta.
Series I SCPs are less grand and less imposing than modern SCPs. And yet, for this reason, they have a certain charm to them.
While I agree that quite a few are weaker and more poorly written, there are some that are truly great and still hold up today. In this article, I want to share with you the best Series I SCPs.
Notice: All articles cited here are licensed under CC-BY-SA.
The “Living” Room is a great early SCP. It’s one of the most bizarre Series I SCPs I came upon, but also one that’s strangely scary. While an organic entity taking on the form of a room is scary enough, but that’s not all this SCP’s about. No, there’s something much scarier about this entity. It’s a fantastic, creepy and quite disturbing Series I SCP.
The Anti-Meme is one of my absolute favorite Series I SCP. It’s also one of the strangest SCPs on the entire SCP-Wiki. It’s an object you can’t describe, one you can’t even remember. Because of this, no one really knows what it is, and the object remains a mystery. The Anti-Meme also proved vastly popular and has been included in a variety of other, later SCPs.
The Red Sea Object is one of the best Series I SCPs and a favorite amongst many people. While the anomalous object itself might not be too interesting, it’s the story that slowly unfolds in the color tests that makes it truly great. It’s a long read, however, a very long read. While I felt some parts dragged on a bit too much and weren’t too interesting, the payoff and the ending are truly fantastic and worth the effort of reading it.
An Incomplete Chronicle is an outstanding Series I SCP. I absolutely loved the idea of a book that continues writing itself, outlining the history of a civilization. Yet, there’s more to this little book, something that makes this a truly fantastic SCP. It’s also the first time the Daevite Empire was mentioned, which should prove vastly popular.
Sauelsuesor was the first Thaumiel class SCP I read and one of the best Series I SCPs out there. At first I wasn’t sure how much I’d enjoy this SCP, but I soon came to love it. The idea of an entity out in space, helping to protect humanity and the planet itself, is extremely intriguing. It’s ending, however, the interview with Sauelsuesor itself and the many implications it contains is what makes this a truly great read.
The Architect might be my favorite Series I SCP. The object is interesting all on its own, but the exploration log set in Kowloon Walled City made it one of the best Series I SCPs. Traveling through ever-expanding labyrinthine and distorting rooms is as fantastic as it is creative. The exploration logs are full of fantastic imagery and serve as an absolutely outstanding read.
Special Personnel Requirements is one of the most iconic, fucked-up, but also best Series I SCPs. The reason it’s so well-known is for one reason alone, procedure 110-Montauk. It shows just how far the Foundation will go to keep the world safe. And yet, we never truly find out what the procedure truly entails. The article is full of omissions, of missing details. While it’s a controversial element, that’s frowned upon, it works very well here. It’s not what’s said about procedure 110-Montauk, but what we imagine it might be.
How dangerous can a single mass transit ticket be? If you believe this Series I SCP, it can be quite dangerous, deadly even. A Ticket to Ride is one of the longest but also best Series I SCPs out there. I absolutely loved the many details, the exploration logs and, of course, the ending. It’s truly among the best and most well-written Series I SCPs out there.
The SCP-Wiki features a variety of SCPs and a variety of genres. Series I, however, is most known for its horror roots and Beautiful Babies is one of the best and most disturbing SCPs out there. Everything described in this SCP is truly horrifying and disturbing, but what truly drives the point home is the interview at the end.
The Song of Genesis is one of the most interesting Series I SCPs out there. The song in question is a piece of music. If you listen to it, various things happen to you. At first, it revitalizes you, but the longer you listen, the more things will happen. What makes this SCP so great are the experimentation logs, the imagery and the sheer creativity at work here. It’s truly a fantastic Series I SCP.
I’m a big fan of body horror and Bone Hive is one of the best body horror SCPs and one of the most horrifying SCPs in general. The descriptions are fantastic, terrifying and disgusting. Yet, what makes it so great is the ending, a single line that makes everything depicted so, so much worse. Truly one of the best Series I SCPs.
I absolutely loved reading Scripted Nightclub. It’s truly one of the best Series I SCPs out there. The overall description of the club is good enough, but what makes it so great are the different scripts. In the article itself, we learn the details of three of them, but they are all outstanding. Scripted Nightclub is one of my favorite Series I SCPs and also one of my favorite SCPs in general.
The Flesh that Hates is a classic and one of the most iconic SCPs out there. It has prove vastly popular throughout the SCP-Wiki and has been featured many times in other articles. The imagery itself is powerful and I love the various flesh-organisms described in it. What makes it truly great, however, are the exploration logs. As we read them, more and more horrors and details are revealed to us. It’s truly the stuff of nightmares, and the SCP is very deserving of its popularity.
The Hanged King’s Tragedy is another fantastic Series I SCP. I loved the idea of the play itself, but the strange incidents happening during performances make it so much better. These are presented to us in the form of detailed incidents reports. There’s also the ominous figure of the Ambassador of Alagadda which will come up again in one of my favorite SCPs of all time, SCP-2264. Even on its own, however, The Hanged King’s Tragedy holds up as a classic and as one of the best Series I SCPs.
Industrial resolution is another take on Admin Bright’s SCP-001 proposal, The Factory. While Bright’s proposal describes The Factory as an origin of the Foundation, this SCP presents us with a different take on The Factory. Overall, though, I enjoyed this SCP more than Bright’s original. All parts of this Series I SCP are great, but it’s again the ending that makes it truly fantastic.
World Without Man is another one of the best Series I SCPs out there. What I love about it so much is not the object itself or the danger it holds. While it’s a great SCP by itself, it’s again the ending that makes it truly fantastic. I love it goes much further than just being about a dangerous object. No, it talks about the human condition in general. Truly a fantastic Series I SCP.
A Machine is one of those simple Series I SCPs I was talking about at the beginning of this article. It’s not grand and doesn’t hold deeper meaning. Instead, it merely details a mysterious and dangerous object. What really makes it great, however, is the interview which I truly came to enjoy. As simple as it is, however, this Series I SCP does everything right, and I believe it still holds up, even today.
The SCP Foundation is one of the biggest and most popular fiction collaborations on the internet.
It all started back in 2008 on 4chan’s x board when a user posted a log-based creepypasta about an animate statue, SCP-173, and how to contain it which I also included on my list of the best creepypasta of all time.
The post quickly sparked the interest of other users, who soon began writing their own SCPs.
I first learned of the SCP Foundation and the horrors it contains back in the late 2000s when SCP-173 was frequently shared on 4chan and on other places online. Yet, I never looked deeper, never visited the actual SCP-Wiki and read none of the many other SCPs.
Since I’m a horror writer, I love all horror fiction, be it as books, manga, or creepypasta shared over the internet.
In recent years, the popularity of the SCP Foundation has grown significantly. Many YouTube channels small and big talk about various SCPs and several video games have been released.
Before long, my interest was piqued and at the end of last year, I finally checked out the SCP Foundation myself. And thus my deep-dive into the world of Secure, Contain and Protect began.
To my surprise, the SCP-Wiki and many of its entries differed from what I’d originally thought. I’d expected that most of the articles would be containment procedures for anomalous objects or creepy monsters akin to SCP-173.
Instead, the content of the SCP-Wiki had evolved over the years. By now, it contains many different styles and genres. You can find horror, science-fiction, comedy, historical fiction and even meta-fiction, all in the form of SCPs.
The anomalous objects and monsters, too, have evolved. We can find articles about Elder Gods and monsters, but also concepts, dangerous thoughts, memes, parallel dimensions, the future, the past and so much more.
As part of this deep-dive I read as broad and wide as I could. Many articles, lists or videos concerning the SCP Foundation talk about the most popular articles, but that doesn’t do it justice. Overall, there’s over six-thousand SCPs out there by now.
I didn’t read all of them, of course, but I read a good part of it, almost a thousand entries.
While taste is subjective and not all the SCPs I read were good, I found quite a few that were truly amazing.
That’s why I put together my personal list of the best SCPs of all time.
Notice: All articles cited here are licensed under CC-BY-SA.
I included a small list of honorable mentions because I sometimes came upon articles I didn’t truly enjoy, but which were too well-crafted to ignore.
The articles here are all outstanding, well-written or took tremendous effort. Many of them are amongst the most popular articles in the SCP-Wiki. And yet, I had my problems with them. It could’ve been the narrative, the story told, the complexity, missing information or certain aspects I didn’t enjoy.
Still, I think they are all worth reading, or at least worth a look.
With that, I present you twenty honorable mentions that didn’t make it into my overall list of the best SCPs.
Series I is where it all started. Those are the very first SCPs, and they were written during simpler times.
Today, Series I is often criticized for being poorly written, having no character development, or being too simple.
While many of the articles in Series I are considered classics and rank high on the best-of-all-time list, it’s often more because of age and popularity than actual quality. A great example is the now defunct heritage collection, which includes some of the most popular SCPs of all time.
And yet, for all the criticism Series I is getting, the articles here can be quite effective. They are short and to the point, often reminiscent of creepypasta, and can be best described as monster-of-the-week articles.
They are less grand, less imposing and there’s no bigger mythos surrounding them. It’s because of this that they have a certain charm to them, at least some of them.
Overall, I read a good chunk of Series I, especially the more popular articles. While I believe the consensus of them being weaker compared to later Series holds true, I still enjoyed some of them. It’s here, I want to share those hidden little gems from Series I that I included in my list of the best SCPs.
With Series II, a lot of things changed for the SCP-Wiki. Series II can be best described as a deconstruction of series I.
During Series I, the SCP-Wiki didn’t have a general tone. While some people wrote more realistic pieces, others wrote wacky and over-the-top articles. Those would later be known as lolFoundation. In these articles, the SCP Foundation is a crazy place, populated by insane, over the top characters.
Series II was a movement against this. The SCP-Wiki grew grimdark in tone. The world of the SCP Foundation became a cold, hard place. It’s dark and horrible, and many of the articles in Series II mirror it by being grim and depressing.
Series II was also heavily influenced by the SCP-1000 contest and its winner. It turned the SCP-Wiki away from its horror roots and more towards, including folklore, the unusual, and the fantastical.
In Series II, we also encountered the very first format screw, articles who incorporated other elements, moved away from the normal SCP format or disregarded it entirely.
Overall, Series II can be best described as a transitional period, one in which the SCP-Wiki moved away from the creepypasta roots of Series I and more towards the grander, more scientific style of Series III. Still, Series II is well worth reading, and many of its articles are amongst the best SCPs on the SCP-Wiki.
Series III is where things grew in size. It’s here where we find higher concepts, much more world-building and quite a few of the best SCPs of all time.
The articles of Series III are longer and often more story-driven than earlier ones. They are often grander in style, concerning anomalous creatures or concepts of an entirely different order. We’re not talking about monsters in cages anymore, we’re talking about entities that could threaten the entire SCP Foundation.
In Series III, we also get a much clearer picture of the various groups of interest, their motifs and the impact they have on the world and the SCP Foundation.
Once more, the tone of the SCP-Wiki changed. The grimdark tone that had taken root in Series III was replaced by a more ambiguous one. The SCP Foundation could still be unethical and often was. As a whole, however, it was concerned with keeping the world a safe place and protecting humanity.
Series IV is known mostly for how Meta it was. Many of the articles in Series IV played with tropes and twisted them in various creative ways.
It features some of the most creative and bizarre articles ever published on the SCP-Wiki. Format screws, Meta narratives, author inclusion and many other concepts came into play here.
While meta-articles were here to stay and would evolve, Series IV can be considered the most meta-heavy series out of all of them. And yet, as many meta-articles as Series IV contains, it also contains of a plethora of fantastic articles and many of the best SCPs of all time.
Series V is one of the newer Series, and one I haven’t explored as deeply as some of the earlier ones, yet.
In Series V, the SCP-Wiki returned to its horror roots. Once more, many of its articles would center on horrible, ghastly and creepy creatures. It’s also in Series V that one of the most popular and best SCPs in the horror genre was written.
One thing I noticed during Series V is that the writing was absolutely outstanding. It was here I discovered many of my favorite authors on the SCP-Wiki who’ve produced some of the most well-written and best SCPs of all time.
Series VI was yet another series that brought fresh wind to the SCP-Wiki. Once more, writers would try out new things and brought forth new ideas.
We can see an influx of different format screws, multi-page articles or entirely fresh forms of SCPs.
Series VI also took a step away from the horror and the more serious articles that dominated Series V. Instead, we saw a multitude of silly or humorous articles, many of which I enjoyed tremendously.
The writing, however, stayed on the same high level as during series V and I once more found many outstanding articles that make a worth addition to this list of the best SCPs of all time.
Series VII is the current and newest series, but it already features some absolutely fantastic articles.
The SCP-6000 contents might be my all-time favorite contest and features some grand, outstanding and well-written articles.
Overall, the quality I’ve seen in the articles of Series VII so far might be the best I’ve seen on the SCP-Wiki so far. While Series VII is new, many of the articles can be considered among the best SCPs of all time.
Anyone who’s spent some time on the SCP-Wiki has heard about SCP-001 and the many 001-Proposals.
Being the number 001, many people had ideas what SCP-001 was supposed to be. Some said it had to be the very first SCP ever discovered, others said it had to be the most important or dangerous one.
It was eventually decided to keep the slot open, and instead fill it with proposals of what SCP-001 could be.
In-universe, SCP-001 was so important and dangerous, it was to be kept a secret and well-hidden. To keep its identity a secret, a variety of false entries were created to throw off any unauthorized reader.
What this meant is simple. The true SCP-001 could be any of them, it could be all of them, or none of them.
The SCP-001 proposals are a writer’s most ambitious work, their grandest article and the culmination of their efforts.
It’s because of this that the SCP-001 articles are seen as the cream-de-la-crop and the best SCPs on the entire SCP-Wiki.
After reading all of them, I have to agree.
Many of the 001-Proposals are amongst the most ambitious and best SCPs on the entire SCP-Wiki. As the last part of this list, I want to present to you the best of the almost fifty proposals there are on the SCP-Wiki.
I’ve always been a big fan of manga and have been reading a variety of different manga and manga series. While I’m usually torn more towards horror manga, I also love well-written manga.
I’m not merely talking about the plot or the story of a manga here, but also about themes, characters, twists or the general presentation of the story.
For this list, I gathered together 24 well-written manga anyone needs to read. I’d also like to give a spoiler warning since I want to discuss why I added these titles to the list.
Ikigami by Motoro Mase is set in a dystopian future. A strange law is in effect, the National Welfare Act, under which certain citizens between the age of eighteen and twenty-four are selected to die for their country.
Twenty-four hours before they die, they get sent an Ikigami, a notification informing them about their impending death.
Kengo Fujimoto, our protagonist, is a government messenger responsible for the delivery of Ikigamis.
The manga’s mostly told in episodic fashion, and centers on the people who receive an Ikigami. We’re shown how they react to the terrible news and how they spend their last day. While some of them accept, others wallow in despair and a few even rebel against it and try to change their destiny.
Ikigami presents a scenario that’s nothing short of terrifying. And yet, it also makes the manga quite thought provoking. It’s interesting to see how all sorts of different people react to the terrible news.
It’s the stories of those people that makes Ikigami such a well-written manga. They are unique and realistic, at times heartfelt and beautiful at others poetically beautiful.
While the art might not be the best, and the time we spent with most of the character is limited, it doesn’t mean Ikigami isn’t a well-written manga. Some of the short, often only a few chapters-long stories, are better than other, much longer tales.
Overall, Ikigami is a manga very worth reading. It’s interesting and not a bit thought-provoking and it makes you wonder how you’d spend your last day on Earth.
Ji-Hoon Jeong’s The Horizon is amongst the most depressing, yet beautiful manhwa I’ve read. While it’s not a manga, I still included it in this list of the most well-written manga because I think it deserves more attention.
In a world ravaged by war, a young boy witnesses the death of his mother. Before long, confused and stunted, he decides to walk the road towards the horizon.
It isn’t long before he meets a little girl and from then on, the two of them travel together.
The Horizon is the depressing, showcasing the brutality of war and the world in its aftermath. It’s a dark story, and, at times, one that gets almost a bit too dark.
The manhwa features some fantastic art. It’s often raw and gritty, sometimes simplistic at others, detailed, but always beautiful.
The Horizon comprises only twenty-one chapters, but it’s the perfect length. There’s a limit on how long you can keep up the gloomy atmosphere before it dissipates.
One of the greatest feats The Horizon accomplishes is the showcasing of raw emotions via the art. The entire style becomes grittier, rougher, and distorts completely when emotions spiral out of control. It’s a feat I’ve seldom seen in a manga, and The Horizon does so masterfully.
The Horizon is a hidden gem. It’s an unforgiving and depressing tale, one that showcases the brutality of war, and especially its aftermath. It’s a fantastically well-written manhwa one I urge anyone to read.
Anyonefamiliar with the works of Inio Asano knows they are famous for being depressing. Oyasumi Punpun is no different, but it’s an extremely well-written manga.
It’s the story of Punpun Onodera, an eleven-year-old boy. His life is fine, but changes when a new girl, Aiko, joins his class. Soon, Punpun has to learn how fickle relationships can be. We also learn more about Punpun, his family, his friends and watch how a shy little boy is consumed by darkness.
Punpun’s life is filled with problems. While it’s one of the best and most well-written manga I’ve read, it’s not an easy read. We experience Punpun’s romantic troubles, alcohol abuse, depression and anxiety. Yet, it’s the raw, gritty details in this manga that showcase how even the smallest things can influence us. It’s a relatable story. We’ve all experienced our share of misery and we all can relate to Punpun on some level.
The manga gives us multiple glimpses of Punpun’s life. In the earlier chapters, he’s a little boy, then a high schooler and ultimately a young adult.
Punpun is a mature manga, featuring its share of nudity and adult themes, but they are merely there to make us uncomfortable.
The same is true for Oyasumi Punpun’s cast of characters. They all suffer from problems and are all damaged to a degree. This is not a story of perfect people. No, it’s a story of real people. And similarly to the characters in Oyasumi Punpun, we all have our share of problems.
And yet, Oyasumi Punpun is an extremely well-written manga. It’s a depressing, deep story, yet it never becomes misery porn. No, it’s a thought-provoking tale, one that showcases how easy it is to fall into darkness.
Holyland by Kouji Mori is not only one of the best martial arts manga out there but also a well-written manga.
It’s the story of Yuu Kamishiro. After being bullied and abused, he turns to boxing and trains a single punch. He does so for an extended period, and finally takes to the streets to find his Holyland. After fighting street thugs, he soon builds up a reputation and becomes known as the ‘thug hunter.’
The reason I consider Holyland such a well-written manga is not for its plot, however, but for its characters. In essence, Holyland is a coming of age story, one driven by its characters. Instead of revolving around a general plot, the manga focuses more on character development.
Yet, the manga isn’t solely about Yuu. During his time out in the streets, he makes friends, but also enemies. Each one of them is as carefully developed as Yuu himself, especially Masaki Izawa and Shougo Midorikawa.
The biggest problem about Holyland, however, comes with its form of story-telling. It focuses almost entirely on character-development and uses street fights as a vessel. For this reason, the plot itself becomes rather repetitive.
Even though it didn’t deter my enjoyment of the series. It’s a fantastically well-written manga in terms of character-development. If you’re looking for a well-written manga about martial arts, read Holyland.
Annarasumanara by Ha Il-Kwon is yet another manga, but I still included it on this list. It’s extremely well-written and one of the most heartfelt and beautiful stories I’ve ever read.
The story centers on Yoon Ah-ee, a high school girl and a magician living in an abandoned theme park. Yoon is living in poverty. Her life comprises studying, working and taking care of her sister.
Eventually, after rumors of the mysterious magician spread, she stumbles into the theme park and visits him. It’s this visit that changes her life forever.
The manhwa centers on a variety of themes. The central one of those is growing up and living up to your own expectations and that of others. This theme is brought into conflict with the question of what happiness and life are about.
And yet, those are only two of a multitude of themes. Others include parental pressure, understanding yourself, and social expectations.
Magic is another important theme, but while it often showcases magic tricks, it’s more about the magic of life itself.
Annarasumanara is a story of real, genuine people, all with their own problems and genuine emotions. It’s a story that looks at life, at growing up and the questions we all encounter. And it might also be a story of magic and the question if magic can be real.
It’s a quick read, comprising only three volumes, but it’s very well worth reading. It’s a fantastic story and one of the most well-written manhwa I ever read.
Shuuzou Oshimi’s Chi no Wadachi is one of the most well-written manga I read in recent times. It’s a psychological masterpiece centering on abuse, trauma and manipulation.
Seiichi Osaba is a normal young boy. Yet, there’s one thing in his life that’s a bit strange, his mother. She’s overprotective of her son.
While it’s strange, it’s nothing too out of the ordinary. That is until Seiichi and his family go on a hiking trip. It’s there that a certain incident should change his life and that of his mother forever.
The manga might start out simple, even ordinary, but as it continues, we watch as things spiral out of control and become crazier and crazier.
What makes Chi no Wadachi such a well-written manga is the attention to detail and the way the story is told. It’s an extremely slow paced manga, but this slow pace adds a lot of tension and suspense. There are a lot of still shots, focusing on facial expression and emotions. Sometimes entire chapters are dedicated to nothing but a single interaction between two characters.
The manga’s art plays a huge part in it. Chi no Wadachi looks stunning and unique. At times, pages are sparse, others they are dense, almost oppressively detailed. Yet, it always helps to set the mood.
At first glance, the story might not appear too deep. It’s, however, the way it’s told, the way we experience it, that makes it special. Chi no Wadachi is an extremely well-written manga, one you can’t help be unsettled about.
If you’re looking for a psychological manga, one told uniquely and coming with stunning art, I urge you to read Chi no Wadachi.
Naoki Urasawa’s famous for his mystery manga. My favorite amongst his works is 20th Century Boys, which I consider one of the most well-written manga of all time.
The manga’s plot centers on Kenji endo and his friends.
Kenji’s a normal guy, working at a convenience store, but his life changes when he learns of the suicide of his former friend, Donkey. Incidentally, a cult lead by a mysterious figure, known as Friend, becomes popular in Japan. It isn’t long before Kenji realizes this cult is not only related to Donkey’s suicide, but also to him and his childhood.
From this point onward Kenji sets out to reunite his childhood friends and to learn the truth.
While conspiracy plots are nothing new, and neither are those about saving the world, 20th Century Boy’s stands out by how the story is told.
The sense of mystery and the foreboding atmosphere never let up. With each new development, new questions appear. What I especially enjoyed was the inclusion of different time periods. Many times, the manga takes us back to Kenji’s childhood to showcase certain events and reveal new pieces of the puzzle.
The manga comprises three arcs. The first is set at the end of the 20th century, the second in the year 2014 and the last during the Friend Era.
Amongst those arcs, the first two are masterfully told and amongst the best of the entire mystery manga genre. It’s during the third arc where things become a bit too strange and quality dips a little. It’s not bad, but it feels a bit detached from the rest.
Overall, 20th Century Boys tells a fantastic story and is amongst the most well-written manga of all time.
Hunter x Hunter by Yoshihiro Togashi is one of the longest-running most popular manga of all time.
It’s manga about hunter, who are essentially treasure hunters with various privileges. If you want to become a hunter, you have to pass the Hunter Exam.
Our protagonist, Gon Freecss, is a young boy who wants to be a hunter and takes part in the Hunter Exam. This exam makes up the first arc of the manga and introduces us to a majority of Hunter x Hunter’s main cast.
I consider Hunter x Hunter a well-written manga for various reasons. The first is the introduction of Nen, Hunter x Hunter’s equivalent of super powers. Yet, Togashi wasn’t satisfied by merely creating super powers. Instead, he created an elaborate system with rules and restrictions.
Another are the characters. The protagonists are all likeable, but it’s the antagonists I came to enjoy. Hisoka is one of the most bizarre characters I ever came upon and Chrollo, and the Phantom Troop, are extremely interesting.
While some of Hunter x Hunter’s arcs can be weaker, it’s the Chimera Ant arc that stood out to me.
There was, of course, Meruem, who served as a fantastic and well-written antagonist. The second was the presentation of the last part of the arc, the Palace Invasion. It was fantastically done and in many ways broke conventions in the way it was told.
Yet, it’s not only the Chimera Ant arc that stood out to me. The York New arc, as well as the newest the Succession Contest arc are both well written in their own right.
Overall, Hunter x Hunter is one of the best shonen manga out there, and one of the most well-written manga.
Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo might be the most influential manga of all time. It spawned one of the most influential anime of all time, and also the Japanese cyberpunk subgenre.
Akira’s set in the dystopian, futuristic city of Neo Tokyo. It’s a cyberpunk hell hole in which technology and skyscrapers go hand in hand with poverty and biker gangs.
Shoutarou Kaneda and Tetsuo Shima are two such bikers. They are best friends, but also bitter rivals. When Tetsuo tries to prove himself by pulling a desperate stunt, he sets into motion a chain of events leading to the awakening of Akira.
Akira is a story of government conspiracies, secret experiments, but most of all, one of megalomania.
It starts out as a story set in Neo Tokyo, featuring drug orgies and gang fights, but it soon shifts to government conspiracies. Among all this, however, Tetsuo stands out, an edgy teenage boy, a chilling and tragic character, who finds himself in possession of immense powers.
The story of Akira evolves, however. While the earlier volumes center on government conspiracies, the latter volumes are more post-apocalyptic, set in a derelict world.
The story-telling itself, however, is always brilliant and is always engaging. It’s for this reason I consider Akira such a well-written manga.
All of this is presented to us in Katsuhiro Otomo’s stunning art. Be it the dystopian cyberpunk hell that’s Neo Tokyo or its derelict ruins, it’s always shown in fantastic detail.
While Akira might have its share of problems, it’s still one of the greatest and most-well written manga of all time. It’s a stunningly beautiful cyberpunk masterpiece I recommend to any fan of manga.
Shigurui by Norio Nanjou and Takayuki Yamaguchi is one of the best and most well-written manga I ever read.
The story centers on a proclamation by the daimyo Tadanaga Tokugawa. He wants to hold a martial arts tournament with real swords and fights to the death.
The very first fight of the tournament is between the one-armed Gennosuke Fujiki and the lame and blind Seigen Irako. And yet, Shigurui doesn’t show us the result of their fight. Instead, the rest of the manga focuses on the backstory of those two characters and what led to their fight.
Shigurui’s a beautiful manga to look at and features some of the medium’s finest art. Characters, backgrounds and nature are rendered in beautiful detail while fights are ripe with gore and brutality, rendered in stunning detail.
What makes Shigurui such a well-written manga, however, is its depiction of samurai culture. Many manga often romanticize it, showing samurai as ideal and honorable fighters. Shigurui, however, sheds light on its unforgiving nature and the many lives lost because of it.
Shigurui’s a character driven manga, focusing on the paths of the two protagonists. It’s interesting, however, that there’s no distinction between good and bad. Instead, there are merely shades of grey. Both characters have their flaws and by following them along, we come to witness the true evil of the story, samurai culture itself.
The entire manga gives of a feeling of depression. It’s a story about the sword and how it forces people into a life of servitude and obedience under the guise of honor.
Shigurui is one of the best and most well-written manga in the samurai genre and in general.
Hideo Yamamoto’s Ichi the Killer is one of the most depraved manga I ever read. And yet, for all its sickness, for all its brutality, it’s also one of the most well-written manga out there.
Ichi the Killer centers on two characters. One is Ichi, the titular killer, the other is Kakihara, a twisted and insane yakuza. After Kakihara’s boss vanishes, he sets out on a brutal search to find him. This search brings him into bloody conflict with other yakuza groups, but also leads to a confrontation with Ichi.
Ichi the Killer is a depraved, sick story, featuring copious amounts of violence and a variety of disturbing incidents. And yet, the manga isn’t merely a gore fest. No, it’s a carefully developed, deeply psychological story that centers on a variety of themes. The most prominent is that of the interplay between sadism and masochism, but others included are childhood abuse, manipulation and identity disorder. The manga mixes all those together into one of the most brutal, but also most compelling and well-written manga of all time.
It’s a fascinating work, one that succeeds so well not despite, but because of its showcasing of raw violence. The characters in Ichi the Killer aren’t real people. Instead, they are the most depraved members of society, those who mingle in its dark underbelly. It shows them to us, shows us what they will do, how far they go and filters none of it. And all this violence is used to not only tell but also underline the story that’s told.
Ichi the Killer is a brutal, fucked up and often downright disgusting manga. At the same time, however, it’s one of the most well-written manga of all time.
Yasuhisa Hara’s Kingdom is my favorite historical and military manga and I regard it as one of the best and most well-written manga of all time.
Kingdom is set during the Warring States era of China and depicts its unification under the state of Qin. This makes it a work of tremendous scope and even with almost 700 chapters, the story is nowhere near done.
The story begins with a rebellion against the soon to be king of Qin, Ei Sei. During these events, our protagonist Shin, a young servant boy, becomes involved in the matters of state.
From this point onward, we follow Ei Sei on his path to unify China and Shin on his path to become a Great General under the Heaven.
Kingdom is a well-written manga for a variety of reasons. There are the large-scale battles that were common during the Warring States era. Those battles are presented in stunning detail. While they are bloody and full of action, the manga puts a lot of emphasis on outlying the strategies and tactics employed.
While Shin is out fighting large parts of the story, focus on Ei Sei, the power struggles at court and the politics between the Warring States.
A manga as long as Kingdom also features a vast cast of characters. While Shin, our protagonist, is rather clichéd, many others are complex and interesting. There’s Ei Sei, Ryu Fui, General Ou Ki and of course, Riboku.
While Kingdom’s a historical manga, it often takes liberties to dramatize events. The first arc of the manga is by far the weakest. Once we reach the first large-scale battle, however, the manga truly shines.
Overall, Kingdom is the best and most well-written historical and military manga I’ve read.
Manabe Shouhei’s Yamikin Ushijima is a dark manga, one that presents us with the world of illegal money lending. It’s among the best, most well-written crime manga there are.
Our protagonist, Kaoru Ushijima, is a yamikin, an illegal moneylender. He offers loans with an interest rate of fifty percent, which is to be paid back within ten days. One has to wonder who’d accept such outrageous conditions, but if you believe this manga, there are many people who do. It’s those who gave into their vices, are drowning in debt, or who are amongst the dregs of society.
In earlier parts, the manga centers on Ushijima as he makes sure people pay him back and often takes from them all they have, using any means possible.
Where the manga truly shines, however, is in its later parts. When the manga focuses less on Ushijima, but more on the people who come to his office. These stories are as well-written as they are depressing. There’s a sad sort of interest in seeing what ultimately drives people to his office.
Many of the characters in this manga aren’t sympathetic, and one’s hard pressed to feel sorry for them. Some tales, however, are heartbreaking, showing just how quickly can end up in a downward spiral.
Yamkin Ushijima-kun is great because it’s so realistic. Everyone makes mistakes, sometimes we have bad luck, and there are always people out there who are preying on the weak.
It’s a dark, fascinating manga that sheds light on the dark underbelly of society.
While there are a lot of manga centered on crime, few portray the dark side of society and Yamikin Ushijima-kun. It’s a dark, depressing but extremely well-written manga.
I enjoy mind game manga and Shinobu Kaitani’s Liar Game is amongst the best the medium offers.
The story centers on Kanzaki Nao. She’s an incredibly honest girl. One day, she finds herself a contestant in the Liar, a game of deceit with stakes in the hundreds of millions.
Before long, Nao is tricked, but soon finds help from the genius swindler Akiyama.
The reason I think Liar Game is such a well-written manga is because of the games. They start out simple, but as the manga progresses, they get more and more complex.
While the games themselves are interesting, it’s the many tricks, ploys and strategies characters use that make them so great. It’s a delight to watch them out-play each other repeatedly over their course.
This was most prevalent during the Contraband Game and the Musical Chairs game. These two were absolutely outstanding. This, of course, wasn’t merely because of the games, but also because of the characters.
Most characters in Liar Game are there to represent a certain character type and to be out-played by Akiyama. During the Contraband Game, however, we’re introduced to Yokoya and during Musical Chairs, Harimoto. Both of them were a match for Akiyama, and the games featuring them were interesting and reached new levels of suspense.
Overall, Liar Game is an absolutely brilliant and well-written manga. It features a variety of complex games, strategies and characters. It’s well worth reading and probably the best mind game manga out there.
Bokutachi ga Yarimashita is one of the darkest and most well-written manga I ever read.
It tells the story of Tobio Masubuchi and his three friends, Isami, Maru and Paisen. When Maru gets beaten up by the delinquents of a neighboring school, the friends hatch a plan for revenge.
What was planned to be nothing but a prank turns into deadly reality and their normal, average lives end.
It’s fantastically well-written manga that centers on a variety of psychological themes, but the most prevalent is that of guilt and redemption. The reliance on these themes makes Bokutachi ga Yamashita one of the darkest and most depressing manga I ever read.
It’s an entirely unique manga, unlike anything I ever read before. The plot is ripe with tension, but more than that, it makes you uncomfortable on a deeply psychological level.
The story-telling and plot are great, the pace is fantastic, but what makes this manga so good are the characters. Bokutachi ga Yamshita is a work that’s entirely character driven. And yet, the characters in Bokutachi ga Yamshita aren’t heroes. Instead, they are normal, everyday people. They are immature, weak, and never thought about the consequences of their actions.
It’s extremely interesting to witness how they handle the events taking place in that manga, but more so to see the psychological and emotional toll it takes on them.
It’s a realistic tale that shows that in real life there are no magical endings. No, life goes on and you’ll have to live with the consequences of your actions.
Bokutachi ga Yamashita is a fantastically dark, suspenseful and well-written manga. It presents us with a deep look into the human psyche.
Freesia by Jiro Matsumoto is a manga set in a dystopian Japan. In this society, a law has been passed which legalizes retaliatory killings. Should a loved one be murdered, you may take justice into your own hands or hire someone to do it for you.
Our protagonist, Kano, works at an agency that specializes in carrying out retaliatory killings.
Reading this, one might think Freesia a manga bout bloody retaliatory killings. Instead, however, the manga focuses much more on the targets of these retaliatory killings and their personal stories. These stories are often very well-written, make us sympathize with them and their end often tragic.
Freesia’s setting is dark, gloomy and depressing and the manga is populated by a cast of the broken, damaged and mentally ill.
Kano himself suffers from hallucination, memory failure and schizophrenia. What makes Freesia such a well-written manga is the way his mental illness is presented to us. We aren’t merely witnessing how Kano acts. No, we see the world through his eyes. It makes the entire manga incredibly surreal and weird. Often, you might wonder just what’s going on and what’s real and what isn’t.
And yet, Kano isn’t the only character who suffers from mental problems. Many others suffer from delusions or hallucinations in their own right. As with Kano, many of these distorted views of reality are presented to us at face value. It’s only when reality’s revealed to us we truly understand what’s going on.
Freesia is nothing short of brilliant. It’s a dark, depressing work, but also an extremely well-written manga. It showcases mental illness in a way I’ve not seen before.
You sometimes come upon certain works that contain glimpses of absolute brilliance. One such tale is Kenji Tsuruta’s adaptation of Shinji Kajio’s story, Omoide Emanon.
The story centers on a young man who’s returning home from his travels and a beautiful young woman he meets on a ferry. She introduces herself as Emanon and the two of them hit it off.
During dinner, she tells him her story, a story that’s unbelievable.
I don’t know what it is about this manga that makes it so great. There’s this warm, solemn atmosphere about it, the way our characters meet and how they talk that’s just so natural.
I don’t know what makes this manga so great. It might be the warm, solemn atmosphere, the way the characters meet, or the reason the young man returns home. It’s a mixture that’s strangely fitting and relatable.
And yet, Emanon stands out. She’s a realistic, yet beautiful character. She’s charismatic, yet ominous. Her portrayal is simply perfect.
The reason I consider Omoide Emanon such a well-written manga is the emotional impact it conveys in its few chapters. I’ve read many other manga, much longer than Omoide Emanon, but few impacted me similarly.
Omoide Emanon doesn’t tell much of a story. Instead, it merely gives us a glimpse into the life of two characters who met by chance.
And yet, at times, it’s the small things in life that stay with us the longest. Read Omoide Emanon, and it might just become one of them.
Onani Master Kurosawa by Katsura Ise and Takuma Yokota proved to be one of the biggest surprises in the entire manga medium.
Kakeru Kurosawa, our protagonist, is a fourteen-year-old student. Each day, once classes are over, however, he heads to a seldom-used school bathroom and masturbates.
When he notices how his mousy classmate Aya Kitahara is bullied by one of the popular girls, he takes revenge into his own hands by doing what he does best.
It isn’t long before Kitahara figures out he’s behind the incident and blackmails him to do the same to other girls who bullied her.
The earlier parts of Onani Master Kurosawa are more humorous and are often considered a parody of Death Note. In time, however, the manga changes, matures and becomes an inspiring coming-of-age tale.
What makes it such a well-written manga is not only the way the story’s told but also its characters. Kurosawa is one of the best-rounded, believable and eventually likeable characters I’ve ever come upon. While he starts out as an anti-social pervert, he develops tremendously over the course of the manga.
It’s this development that’s incredibly well done. He’s also an extremely relatable character, one we come to get to know intimately. We not only see what’s happening or how he feels, no, we come to understand him. It’s this intimacy and his character development that makes this such a well-written manga. The same is true for many of the side-characters who are as complex and realistic as Kurosawa.
Onani Master Kurosawa is without a doubt one of the best, most well-written manga out there, telling a sweet and complex coming-of-age story.
Shinichi Sakamoto’s The Climber is one of the most beautiful and well-written manga I ever read.
Buntarou Mori, our protagonist, is a lonesome and solitary teenager. When a classmate challenges him to climb the school building, Mori accepts without hesitation. It’s at this moment that his passion for climbing is awoken.
From here on out, Mori climbs more and more mountains.
The Climber is a work heavily focused on dedication and perseverance, showcasing that if you work hard enough, you can do anything.
It’s the story, the presentation that makes The Climber such a well-written manga. One might think it’s a manga about climbing, but it’s one about character. The Climber is hugely character-driven and focuses more on Mori’s development than anything else.
Mori has problems and can’t relate to other people. As he continues to climb and overcome mountains, however, he also overcomes his problems. This dualism is fantastically well done.
The art in The Climber is among the best in the medium. It’s breathtakingly beautiful, presenting us with stunning page-spreads of mountain ranges.
It’s full of glimpses of poetic beauty. Many panels are dedicated to nothing but Mori climbing. There’s no need for dialogue. No, the visuals speak for themselves. It’s a thing of beauty, one that makes The Climber such a fantastic and well-written manga.
And yet, it goes even further. Many pages contain metaphors, allusions and literary passages. It gives the entire work a feeling of profound joy and character. And yet, it never feels pretentious.
The Climber is an outstanding work of beauty. It’s not merely a manga about climbing, it’s a character-driven coming-of-age story. While the manga can be a heavier read, it’s never an unpleasant experience. No, it’s always beautiful.
Akira Hiramoto’s Me and the Devil Blues is a manga that retells the life of Robert Johnson and the American South.
Our protagonist, Robert, is a dabbling musician who wants to learn how to play the blues. He’s not good at it, but one day he hears an urban legend. Should you play at a crossroads at night, the devil will visit you. In exchange for your soul, he’ll make you genius blues player.
When Robert does what the legend says, his life changes forever.
Me and the Devil Blues is an outstanding a well-written manga. It comes with an art style that’s gritty, but very detailed, making it one of the most beautiful manga out there.
The setting of the manga, the American South, during the 1930s is extremely well done. One can see the deep division between white and black, giving the manga a unique, western feeling.
Another fantastic element of the manga is its characters. RJ’s a great protagonist, but he’s a character more thrown into events than choosing them. Clyde Brown is, in my opinion, the best character in the manga. Many of the side-characters are well developed in their own right, but the best among them is without a doubt Stanley McDonald.
The best part about Me and the Devil Blues, however, is the atmosphere. I’ve never read another manga so loaded with tension and as suspenseful as Me and the Devil Blues. There are entire chapters that don’t let you catch your breath. It’s this atmosphere, this tension that makes it such an incredibly well-written manga.
Me and the Devil Blues is a hidden gem and one of the most suspenseful, well written-manga of all time.
Vineland Saga by Makoto Yukimura tells the story of Thorfinn Karlsefni, son of Thors. He’s part of a mercenary group led by a man named Askeladd. It’s revealed that Askeladd is responsible for Thor’s death and Thorfinn only joined his group to get revenge.
After this introduction, we learn that the Danish prince Canute has been taken hostage. It’s here that the shrewd Askeladd hatches a plan, one that should change their lives forever.
Vinland Saga is without a doubt one of the best and most well-written manga of all time.
The manga’s set in the 11th century and focuses on Vikings. While the manga takes some liberties, it feels incredibly realistic and doesn’t shy away from portraying the atrocities of the times.
Vinland Saga is full of brutal battles, featuring gross and gratuitous violence. And yet, the manga isn’t merely a story of brutal wars and battle. It’s the story of Thorfinn. For long parts, the manga tells a calm and gloomy story as it focuses on Thorfinn feelings of guilt and his regrets. It’s these parts I came to enjoy the most.
The reason I consider Vinland Saga such a well-written manga, however, is because of its characters. Thorfinn starts out as a quiet and efficient killer who lives only for revenge. Over the course of the story, however, he grows tremendously and becomes one of the most complex manga characters of all time.
The greatest character in Vinland Saga is Askeladd. He’s amongst the greatest manga characters of all time and if you read Vinland Saga, you will find out why.
At times Vinland Saga is brutal and violent, at others calm and quiet, but it’s always a well-written manga and a fantastic read.
Takehiko Inoue’s Vagabond is based on the novel Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa. It tells a romanticized version of the life of Musashi Miyamoto.
The manga centers on Shinmen Takezou. After joining the battle of Sekigahara, Takezo is declared a wanted criminal. After a long hunt, he’s caught, strung up at a tree and left to die. Before long, he’s freed by the monk Takuan, who gives him a new name, that of Musashi Miyamoto.
From here on the manga focuses on his travels and his pursuit of the sword to become ‘Invincible under the Heavens.’
Vagabond is absolutely gorgeous to look at and features some of the best art in the entire medium.
Since Vagabond’s a samurai manga, it features a lot of stunning battles. While they are gory, blood and disturbing, the violence is never glamorized and rendered in stunning detail.
The reason I consider Vagabond such a well-written manga is because of its characters. Musashi starts out as a demon child, but develops tremendously over the course of the manga. He matures into a calm, philosophical man, one who questions what it truly means to be invincible.
As much as the manga’s the story of Musashi Miyamoto, it’s also the story of Sasaki Koichiro, another brilliant swordsman of the time. Long parts of the manga are dedicated to Koichiro and his life. These parts are as interesting and well-written as those featuring Musashi.
The story-telling in Vagabond is another thing I enjoyed. Over the course of the manga, we often switch from Musashi to Koichiro, or even Matahachi, showing us each character’s unique path.
Overall, nothing much needs to be said about Vagabond. It’s one of the greatest, most well-written manga of all time.
Rest in peace Kentaro Miura, thanks for sharing your gift with the world.
Berserk is one of the greatest, most well-written manga of all time.
It’s a dark fantasy manga telling the story of a man with a sword as tall as himself out on a quest for revenge. That man’s Guts, the Black Swordsman, who s hunting for demonic beings known as apostles.
Berserk might appear a simple story, nothing but the tale of a man fighting monsters. And yet, one couldn’t be more wrong. Berserk is an incredibly complex and well-written manga. This is especially prevalent during its second arc, the Golden Age, in which we learn much more about Guts’ past, but also get to know Griffith.
It’s during this arc, we learn just how complex these two characters and their relationship is. Kentaro Miura did an amazing job at showcasing it, testing and ultimately severing it.
It’s because of these two characters, their interactions, their goals and wishes that I consider Berserk such a well-written manga.
While Berserk is known for its amazing characters, it’s most popular for its art. Kentaro Miura was one of the greatest manga artists of all time. There are scarcely few manga who can compare to Berserk when Kentaro Miura was at its best. There are often more details on a single page of Berserk than in entire chapters of other manga.
What I came to enjoy the most was Berserk’s monster design. The apostles are absolutely gorgeous and terrifying to look at. They are nothing short of beautifully grotesque monstrosities.
Berserk is one of the greatest, most well-written manga of all time. It’s at the peak of the medium and anyone interested in manga should read it.
Hiroaki Samura’s Blade of the Immortal is my favorite manga of all time.
The story centers on Manji, the infamous ‘Hundred Men Killer.’ As punishment for his deeds, an eight-hundred-year-old nun placed bloodworms in his body, rendering him immortal. As atonement for his crimes and to free himself from the curse of immortality, Manji resolves to kill one thousand evil man.
The manga’s story truly starts, however, when Manji meets Rin Asano, a sixteen-year-old girl. She begs him to help her in a quest for revenge against the man who murdered her parents. This man’s Kagehisa Anotsu, the leader of the Itto-Ryu.
From this point onwards, Manji travels with Rin to help her.
The manga’s premise is simple, but becomes more complex over time as various factions are introduced.
The reason I consider Blade of the Immortal such a well-written manga is because of its characters. Both Rin and Manji develop tremendously over the course of the manga, but many other characters are as excellent. Anotsu Kagehisa is one of the greatest, most complex characters in the entire manga, but so are Taito Magatsu, Makie Otono-Tachibana and, of course, Shira.
The biggest testament to the manga’s writing is that there’s no real distinction between good and evil. Every character has their own circumstances, goals and reasons. While Anotsu Kagehisa is the story’s chief antagonist, it’s only because Manji and Rin are our protagonists.
The high point of the manga is the outstanding fights. They are brutal, tense, full of suspense and amongst the best of the entire medium.
Overall, Blade of the Immortal is an amazing samurai manga and one of the most well-written manga of all time.
Over the years, I’ve read countless horror manga, as you can see on my list of the best horror manga of all time.
Yet, there’s something special about the works of Junji Ito. Ever since I first read Tomie a decade and a half ago, I’ve been a fan of his.
His works are full of body horror and often feature phobias, fears and obsessions. It’s often the mundane that gets warped, becomes twisted and ultimately deadly. If you’re interested to learn more about the themes and the style of his work, check out my article on why Junji Ito scares us.
These days, many of his works have been translated into English and are available to a wider audience. For this reason, I created a ranking of all the available Junji Ito books.
Dissolving Classroom is one of the weirdest Junji Ito books out there.
It’s the story of Yuuma and his sister Chizumi. Yuuma’s a weirdo and prone to apologizing to everyone he comes upon for even the smallest of things. His sister Chizumi, on the other hand, is an incredibly creepy child. As we read on, we soon learn, however, that there’s more to Yuuma’s apologies.
Dissolving Classroom, typical for Junji Ito, features a lot of disturbing and disgusting imagery. In every chapter, we witness people’s brains running out of their orifices or them melting away entirely.
And yet, Dissolving Classroom didn’t work for me. First there was Yuuma’s constant apologizing, which felt just plain weird. Second was Chizumi’s character. She was so creepy and psychotic, her character felt overdrawn, almost comical.
Another problem was the formulaic and repetitive way of the stories. From chapter one onward, we knew what would happen to the character’s and why. This trope was slightly diverted in the last chapter, but it wasn’t enough of a payoff for me.
Overall, I consider Dissolving Classroom as one of the weaker Junji Ito books out there. It’s worth reading for any fans of Junji Ito, of course, but that’s about it.
No Longer Human is an adaption of Osamu Dazai’s novel by the same name. It’s a work that deals heavily with topics such as suicide, alienation and depression.
No Longer Human is one of the most popular Japanese novels of all time. It’s a bleak work, centered on a man not fitting into society and his decent into decadence.
Junji Ito’s adaption of the novel is interesting, but it suffers from a major problem. No Longer Human is a character-driven novel, one of internal horror. Yet, if there’s one thing Junji Ito isn’t good at, it’s character work. Many of Junji Ito’s characters are mundane, boring, and even uninteresting. They are only exist as vessels for his stories, for his horrors and for us to witness their demise.
That’s the main reason No Longer Human isn’t working. Junji Ito isn’t able to convey the intricacies of the character, the story, and the internal horror of it. Instead, he turns it outward, showcasing it in his usual style.
While I appreciate the visuals, and love the creepy and eerie mood they create, it wasn’t enough to adapt a work such as No Longer Human satisfactorily.
Once more, I’d say this is a work worth reading for fans of Junji Ito, but fans of the original novel might be disappointed.
Sensor is one of the more recently released Junji Ito books and in comes with one of his most beautiful art to date.
It’s the story of a mysterious woman, Byakuya Kyouko, but is more ambitious than most of Junji Ito’s other works. It centers on such questions as the meaning of life, the meaning of the universe, and the fight between light and dark.
The manga contains a lot of Junji Ito’s usual elements. There’s lots of unsettling imagery, such as people melting, the disturbingly human innards of squishy bugs and even cosmic horror entities.
The biggest problem with Sensor is that those elements were never the focus of the work. Instead, they are pushed aside to tell a grander story. While I enjoyed this strange, deeper story, it wasn’t enough to be truly satisfying.
Sensor’s art is stunning and beautiful and Junji Ito’s imagery is as disturbing as always. And yet, I consider Sensor one of the weaker Junji Ito books.
Rating this Junji Ito book is hard. It’s entirely different from his other works because it’s not a work of horror, but a work of comedy.
It tells the story of horror manga author J who moves into his new home with his fiancée A-ko. Before long, A-ko brings her family cat Yon with her and also adapts Muu, a Norwegian forest cat. The work is, of course, based on Junji Ito’s real life and how he struggled to adapt to living with two cats.
As I said, Junji Ito’s Cat Diary: Yon & Mu is a work of comedy. What makes it interesting, however, is that Junji Ito is presenting it to us in his usual horror style. We witness disturbing facial expression, bulging eyes, and creepy cat faces. It’s this contrast between the art and the mundane, often cute content of the story itself.
And yet, Junji Ito’s Cat Diary: Yon & Mu was too different from Junji Ito’s usual work. I think it’s an interesting experiment and cute as an homage to his cats, but that’s all there is to it. It’s a strange light-hearted read, but one that’s also rather forgettable.
Smashed comprises thirteen of Junji Ito’s stories, the most of the available Junji Ito books out there.
I’m always happy to get my hands on new Junji Ito books, yet I was wary of Smashed.
It contains its share of decent stories, for example, Earthbound, The Mystery of the Haunted Mansion and Bloodsucking Darkness. None of them, however, are outstanding. The rest of the book is taken up by tales that are average at best and forgettable at worst.
Junji Ito’s art is always outstanding and, for that reason alone, his stories are worth reading. Their content, however, can be hit or miss and Smashed contained a few too many misses for me.
While Smashed is not a bad Junji Ito book, it’s far from the best released in English.
Twisted Visions differs from the other Junji Ito books on this list. It’s an art book, not containing stories, but featuring Junji Ito’s stunning and outstanding artwork.
I loved this book, and it has a very special place in my heart. It’s a fantastic experience to see Junji Ito’s detailed work in fine print and spread out over entire pages. The book is a testament to Junji Ito’s mystery of the medium.
What was great was that the book even contained a handful of previously unseen artworks, some from works that were never published. It also contains an interview with Junji Ito that I found highly interesting and a register of all his works.
While Twisted Visions is not a manga and doesn’t contain stories, I still consider it a fantastic work. If you’re a fan of Junji Ito, his visual style and horror art, I highly recommend this book.
Hellstar Remina might be the closest Junji Ito has ever come to true Lovecraftian horror.
It’s the story of Professor Oguro and his daughter, Remina. One day, the professor discovers a wormhole and a planet having entered our universe. He names the newly discovered planet after his daughter Remina, propelling her to stardom.
Soon enough, however, the professor notices strange things about Planet Remina. It moves in random directions without a clear orbit, and all the stars in his vicinity seem to vanish.
Before long, it’s revealed that it’s on a closing in on Earth and we soon witness it destroying or devouring all other planets in the solar system.
From here on out, the story serves to only get weirder and more insane, but also sillier. It made it hard to take the later parts of the story serious.
And yet, one has to give Junji Ito credit for creating a truly unique apocalypse scenario featuring a sentient planet.
While the plot itself might have some weaknesses, Junji Ito’s imagery is fantastic throughout the entire manga. Seeing Planet Remina’s eyes and mouth is terrifying enough, but its surface is truly horrifying.
Hellstar Remina might be one of the crazier Junji Ito books out there, but I still believe it’s a must-read for fans. While the plot might get sillier in later parts, the imagery is absolutely stunning.
Deserter is the newest of the many Junji Ito books available. It comprises twelve stories. While some stories might be rather forgettable, it also features some of his best ones.
The Long Hair in the Attic and Den of the Sleep Demon are both surreal, but incredibly effective horror tales. They also feature some fantastic imagery and great body horror.
My personal favorites, however, are Unbearable Maze and The Bully. The Bully is one of the rare Junji Ito stories that’s entirely grounded in reality. Even though it proves to be one of his most twisted stories. Unbearable Maze centers on two girls who find themselves at a strange meditation retreat in the mountains. It’s a slow, eerie story that proves to only get stranger the longer it goes on and features one of his best and creepiest endings.
Deserter proves to be one of the better Junji Ito books out there and a worthy addition to any collection.
Gyo is the Japanese word for fish. Knowing this, you might think you’re prepared for this manga, but believe me, you’re not. Gyo is one of Junji Ito’s most popular and iconic works, but also one of his weirdest and most absurd.
It’s the story of Tadashi and his girlfriend Kaori. The two of them are on a vacation, but one night, Kaori, who’s sensitive to smells, complains about a terrible, rotten stench. It’s soon revealed that the stench’s caused by a strange fish on robotic legs skittering through their holiday home.
This, however, is only the first of many sea creatures to emerge from the depths.
Before long, the two of them return home to Tokyo. It’s here where the story turns into a full-fledged apocalypse, as millions of sea creatures flood the city, spreading the so-called death stench.
Gyo’s probably the most creative of the many Junji Ito books out there and I’ve read nothing like it. As creative as it is, however, it’s suffers from flaws. The most notable is Junji Ito trying to explain the existence of the strange, robotic legs. Gyo’s, of course, an absurd story, but the explanation given makes it downright ridiculous.
Gyo’s strongest points are Junji Ito’s fantastic art and the outlandish, disturbing imagery. Especially the later parts of the manga are pure nightmare territory. For soon enough, it’s not only fish that wander the fog-ridden streets.
While there are some problems with Gyo, I still have to praise it as one of the most creative Junji Ito books out there. The art is fantastic, and the scenario depicted is nothing short of surreal.
Fragments of Horror was one of the first of Junji Ito books released in English.
It comprises only eight stories and is one of the shortest Junji Ito books. It contains some weaker stories like Wooden Spirit and Magami Nankuse, but also some of his best.
Gentle Goodbye is one of my favorite Junji Ito stories of all time. It centers on a family with a very special ritual, but it’s a beautifully sad study in holding on. Dissection-Chan features one of Junji Ito’s strangest characters to date and also one of his greatest instances of body horror.
Fragments of Horror might not be the most outstanding of the many Junji Ito books out there, but it contains its share of fantastic stories. It’s well worth buying.
Junji Ito’s Frankenstein might be the best adaption of Mary Shelley’s novel to date. All throughout the work, he remains true to the source material, but his outstanding visuals lend themselves perfectly to it.
Junji Ito’s Frankenstein is, however, a collection and contains ten more of his stories. Many of those are centered on another of his reoccurring characters, Oshikiri.
While the character might not be widely known, I consider his stories fantastic. They are incredibly strange and feature some of his most outlandish ideas, including alternate dimensions and disgusting medical experiments. Junji Ito’s style also shines in these tales, and they feature some of his greatest body horror work.
Oshikiri might not be a popular character and many people might not have heard about him, but I think all of his tales are fantastic and amongst Junji Ito’s best works.
Frankenstein is one of the best Junji Ito books out there, and with the addition of Oshikiri’s tales, it’s a must-buy for any fans.
Junji Ito’s Tomie is one of his first works, but proved massively popular. Tomie’s stories span multiple volumes and have spawned a series of live-action movies.
Junji Ito’s art style isn’t as refined as in later works, but even in Tomie’s earlier chapter one can recognize his genius and his twisted imagination.
Tomie’s the story of a gorgeous high-school girl who’s not only dating one of her fellow students but also has an affair with her teacher. When she accidentally dies during a school trip, the class binds together to hide the crime. They dismember her and each student hides a part of her body.
The horror starts the next day, however, when Tomie returns to class as if nothing happened. While this is horrible enough, we soon learn the true horror that is Tomie. She’s not a normal person. Instead, she’s an entity with regenerative powers, able to regrow from even the tiniest bit of her.
And yet, there’s more. Tomie is beautiful, but she has an almost supernatural hold over men. The moment they lay eyes upon her, they fall in love with her, grow obsessed with her and are ultimately driven to madness.
What’s interesting to note is that Tomie’s stories are never about her. They are about the people who encounter her and the men who grow obsessed with her. Tomie herself is more a plot device, an enigma who drives the characters in her story to their demise.
The chapters in Tomie can vary in quality. Some are good, others less so. When Junji Ito’s at his best, however, Tomie’s fantastic and contains some of the most twisted things he’s ever drawn.
While Tomie might have its weaker moments, I still consider it one of the best Junji Ito books out there.
Lovesickness is also known as the tale of the Intersection Pretty Boy. Back in the day, this was one of the first Junji Ito books I ever read, and I absolutely loved it.
It’s a fantastic work, full of mystery, horror and copious amounts of gore and blood.
The book, however, contains five more of Junji Ito’s tales. Two stories center on the strange Hikizuri Siblings, who are some of Junji Ito’s most twisted creations and feature similarly disturbing scenarios.
This Junji Ito book also features Rib Woman, a story I came to love more and more in recent years. It’s an outlandish, almost silly tale about plastic surgery, but features another one of his greatest instances of body horror. The story even inspired one of my own tales, Real Art Always Has a Price.
Lovesickness is one of the best Junji Ito books out there. It contains one of Junji Ito’s longer works, but also several fantastic stories.
Venus in the Blind Spot is one of the more recently released Junji Ito books, but it’s one of the best to date. The book might contain some weaker works, but those are overshadowed by some of Junji Ito’s all-time best.
The Enigma of the Amigara Fault might be Junji Ito’s most popular story of all time and it’s also one of his best. It’s a tale that centers on our fear of the unknown and our compulsive urge to understand that which we can’t explain. Junji Ito presents this to us in one of his most creative and disturbing scenarios to date. Billions Alone is a similarly creative tale, featuring another unexplained phenomenon. The story centers on isolation and feels like a criticism of our current urban society.
Junji Ito’s adaption of Edogawa Ranpo’s story, The Human Chair, is another tale that’s entirely grounded in reality. And yet, it’s one of his scariest, most outlandish works.
The Licking Woman is another fantastic tale in this collection. The idea of being licked by a random stranger is disgusting enough, but Junji Ito makes the incident more than just disgusting. He makes it outright terrifying. His art in this tale is also fantastic and warps the Licking Woman into something that almost not human anymore.
Venus in the Blind Spot is one of the best Junji Ito books out there and I consider it a must-buy for any fans of his work.
Uzumaki is Junji Ito’s magnum opus and an absolute horror masterpiece.
The manga medium is strange, and the works of Junji Ito are amongst the strangest ones out there. And yet, Uzumaki might be the weirdest manga I’ve ever read.
Uzumaki is a three-volume epic set in the small coastal town of Kurouzu-cho which is infested by spirals. The story centers on Shouichi Saito and Kirie Goshima who stumble upon one incident of spiral-related horror after another.
What makes Uzumaki so great, even amongst all the Junji Ito books out there, is not the story, but the creativity that went into it.
Junji Ito’s imagination is always incredible and disturbing, but even here, Uzumaki stands out. We witness copious amounts of gore, blood and body horror as the inhabitants of Kurouzu-cho are warped, twisted and changed until they resemble spirals.
Uzumaki stands out amongst other horror manga because of its unique premise. There are no monsters here, no killers, no feasible antagonist at all. Instead, there’s only the spiral, a concept that lingers over the doomed town of Kurouzu-cho as an omnipresent curse.
Most of Uzumaki’s story is told in episodic fashion and more an anthology than a continuous story. It’s only in the third, and ultimately weakest, volume where Junji Ito ties it all together and brings the story to its Lovecraftian conclusion.
Uzumaki is a horror masterpiece and I consider it one of the greatest accomplishments of the horror manga genre. It’s probably the best amongst the many Junji Ito books out there, and I consider it a must-buy, not just for fans of Junji Ito, but horror manga fans in general.
Shiver is my favorite amongst all the Junji Ito books released in English. It contains a variety of stories, many of which are amongst my absolute favorites.
Fashion Model introduces one of Junji Ito’s most iconic creations, the disturbing model Fuji. The Long Dream is probably Junji Ito’s most creative and original works of all time and centers on concepts such as dreams and death.
Greased and Honored Ancestors are two of his most disturbing stories of all time. Honored Ancestors features a scenario that’s as terrifying as it is bizarre, while Greased features his most disgusting imagery to date. They are both fantastic stories, feature some disturbing imagery and are ripe with horror.
The titular tale Shiver is one of greed and the consequences it brings. It also features heavy instances of trypophobia, brought forth by Junji Ito’s fantastic imagery, making this tale nothing short of disturbing.
My favorite story in Shiver, however, is the Hanging Blimps. It’s without a doubt the strangest, most bizarre apocalypse story I’ve ever come upon. The story centers on the concept of balloons which not only take on people’s likeness but also come to hang them. While it’s a strange and bizarre story, it’s one hiding a deeper meaning. It’s first a criticism of Japan’s idol industry, but also a representation of the ‘Death Drive.’ Yet, one doesn’t have to look for deeper themes for this story to work. Even taken at face value, it’s an incredibly creepy and unsettling tale that features one of Junji Ito’s best final panels.
Shiver is a collection of fantastic short stories and it’s probably the best of the many Junji Ito books released in English. If you want to read Junji Ito at his best, Shiver should be your first choice.
Ever since I read my first Junji Ito story a decade and a half ago, I’ve been a fan of his work. There’s just something about his weird stories, his disturbing imagery and the sheer bizarreness of his world.
In my opinion, Junji Ito is the greatest Japanese horror artist and amongst the greatest horror artists of all time.
His works are full of body horror, phobias, fears, but also stranger things, including cosmic horror.
For this article, however, I wanted to have a look at his short story collections available in English. While I’m always happy to see a new Junji Ito collection available and own all of them, I have to say that some are better than others.
For this article, I will, however, exclude his longer, volume or multi-volume works like Uzumaki, Tomie, Gyo and Hellstar Remina.
So, I want to present you with my personal ranking of all the available Junji Ito collections.
Dissolving Classroom by Junji Ito might be one of his weirdest work yet, and, in my opinion, not in a good way.
It tells the story of Yuuma and his younger sister Chizumi. Yuuma is a strange character, who always apologizes to everyone while his sister Chizumi is an incredibly creepy child. It soon becomes clear that Yuuma’s constant apologizing has a sinister side to it.
Dissolving Classroom comes with a lot of disturbing and disgusting imagery. Each chapter features people melting away and their brains running out of their orifices. It’s nothing short of horrifying.
And yet, the manga just felt plain weird. Yuuma’s constant apologizing was a strange trope. Chizumi, on the others hand, was constantly acting psychotic to the point of being comical. The stories, too, became repetitive. From the first story onward, we already know what’s going to happen to characters. This is diverted in the last chapter, but it felt too little, too late. It’s a good ending to a mediocre series.
The Dissolving Classroom features to more tales, but both are no longer than a handful of pages and rather forgettable themselves.
Overall, I’m not a big fan of Dissolving Classroom and I think it’s one of the weakest Junji Ito collections out there. It’s still worth reading for fans of Junji Ito’s works, but that’s about it.
Sensor is one of Junji Ito’s newer works. It’s presented in his usual fine art is one of his most beautiful works to date.
It’s an ambitious work, one that begs questions about the universe itself, the meaning of life and the fight between light and dark. All of this is connected to a mysterious woman known as Byakuya Kyouko.
Sensor features a lot of Junji Ito’s usual elements. We bear witness to disturbing body horror, lots of horrific imagery like melting people or the innards of disgusting, squishy bugs and some deeply unsettling cosmic horror. Given that, I should love Sensor.
However, these typical elements are few. They are pushed aside by the grander story that’s being told, one of meditation and becoming one with the universe. While I enjoyed this story, it wasn’t enough to hold this Junji Ito collection together.
While the art is beautiful and features Junji Ito’s typical disturbing imagery, I consider Sensor another one of Junji Ito’s weaker works. That, of course, doesn’t mean it’s not work reading, just that there’s better works by Junji Ito out there.
With thirteen stories, Smashed features the most of any Junji Ito collection.
While I’m always happy to see official translations of Junji Ito’s works, I’m divided on Smashed.
It features some decent stories with Bloodsucking Darkness, The Mystery of the Haunted House and Earthbound, but none of them are outstanding. The rest of the collection, however, is taken up by barely average and forgettable tales.
While Junji Ito’s art is always fantastic and outstanding, his stories themselves can be hit or miss. Smashed, as bit a collection as it is, contains a few too many misses for me.
It’s still a good Junji Ito collection, but far from the best released in English.
Deserter is the newest Junji Ito collection by VIZ and contains twelve of his stories. While it contains its fair share of forgettable tales, it also contains some of his best ones.
Den of the Sleep Demon is a short, surreal, but incredible effective horror story. The Long Hair in the Attic is similarly creepy and brings forth some great body horror.
The two best stories in this collection, however, are Unbearable Maze and The Bully. Unbearable Maze tells the story of two young girls who end up at a strange meditation resort in the mountains. It features one of Junji Ito’s creepiest and greatest endings. The Bully, on the other hand, is one of the few Junji Ito stories that’s entirely grounded in reality. And yet, it proves to be one of his scariest, most twisted stories.
Overall, Deserter is a good collection, featuring some great stories.
Fragments of Horror was the first Junji Ito collection released in English. Before, only his longer, multi-volume works Uzumaki and Gyo had been released.
With only eight stories, it’s the shortest Junji Ito collection out there. While it features some weaker stories, like Magami Nankuse and Wooden Spirit, it also features some of Junji Ito’s best work.
Gentle Goodbye is one of the greatest stories he ever penned. It’s a sad, emotional work, a study of holding on and features a very special family ritual. Dissection-Chan, on the other hand, showcases one of Junji Ito’s most interesting characters with one of the most bizarre mental disorders ever. It also features one of his best body horror work of all times.
While Fragments of Horror is not an outstanding Junji Ito collection, it contains some fantastic stories and is well worth buying.
Junji Ito’s retelling of Frankenstein is nothing short of fantastic and the best adaption of Mary Shelley’s classic I’ve come upon. His style and imagery lend itself perfectly to the story and push it much further into the horror genre than Shelley’s original.
The collection also includes ten more of his stories, most of which are centered on another of his reoccurring characters, Oshikiri.
Oshikiri’s tales are strange, even amongst Junji Ito’s works, and feature some of his most outlandish ideas. It’s tales about hallucination and psychosis, about alternate dimension and disgusting medical experiments. All of those are presented to us with some of Junji Ito’s greatest and most disturbing body horror.
While Oshikiri’s not one of Junji Ito’s popular characters, I think his tales are as fantastic as they are outlandish. I’m more than happy to see them finally published in English.
Frankenstein is a fantastical collection, not only for Junji Ito’s adaption of Shelley’s classic, but also the tales of Oshikiri. This Junji Ito collection is a must-buy for any fans.
Ah, Lovesickness, the tale of the Intersection Pretty Boy. This was one of the first works by Junji Ito I ever read, and I absolutely loved it.
While I’m sure there’s a fair bit of nostalgia influencing me, it’s still a fantastic tale. It features copious amounts of gore and bloody mystery and its fair share of insanity.
Apart from this tale, however, the collection features five more stories. The Strange Hikizuri Siblings might be amongst Junji Ito’s most twisted creations, and both stories feature twisted and disturbing scenarios.
The collection also includes one more of Junji Ito’s tales I came to love. As outlandish and silly as The Rib Woman can be, it features another one of Junji Ito’s most twisted instances of body horror. The Rib Woman even inspired one of my own stories, Real Art Always Has a Price.
Overall, Lovesickness is a fantastic collection, containing one of Junji Ito’s longer works, and a share of fantastically disturbing stories.
Venus in the Blind Spit is another, more recent Junji Ito collection, but it’s a fantastic one. While it features some shorter, weaker stories, those are made up for by some of Junji Ito’s all-time best.
Anyone who’s heard of Junji Ito knows about The Enigma of Amigara Fault, which is one of his all-time classics. It’s a story about the unknown and our compulsive urge to understand the unexplainable. All this is brought forth by one of Junji Ito’s most disturbing scenario. In a similar vein, Billions Alone is another creative story featuring an unexplained phenomenon. It’s a story that criticizes our current urban society and discusses isolation.
The Human Chair is a fantastic adaption of Edogawa Ranpo’s original story. It’s another tale grounded in reality, but describes another scary and outlandish scenario.
I also want to mention The Licking Woman. Being licked by a random stranger is disgusting enough, but Junji Ito’s art brings forth the terror of it. The story also features some amazing body horror which warps the Licking Woman into something truly disturbing.
Venus in the Blind Spot is another fantastic Junji Ito collection. While it features some weaker stories, it also contains some true classics.
Shiver is my all-time favorite Junji Ito collection, containing some of my absolute favorites.
It contains Fashion Model, which is the story of one of Junji Ito’s most iconic and disturbing creations, the model Fuji. The Long Dream is a story revolving around the concept of dreams and death. It’s without a doubt one of his most creative and original works ever.
Honored Ancestors and Greased are amongst his most disturbing stories of all time. While Honored Ancestors features one of Junji Ito’s most grotesque and bizarre scenarios, Greased is probably his most disgusting story to date. Both are, however, outstanding, ripe on horror and feature some of his best imagery to date.
Shiver itself is a tale of greed, and one high on trypophobia. Junji Ito’s art is outstanding in this tale, making it nothing short of disturbing and unsettling.
The last story I want to talk about is Hanging Blimps, my favorite Junji Ito story of all time. It’s the tale of the strangest sort of apocalypse I’ve ever come upon. One day, mysterious balloons appear, take on the face of people and come to hang them. It’s not only one of Junji Ito’s most bizarre ideas, but also a showcasing of the ‘Death Drive’ and a criticism of Japan’s idol industry. Even without these deeper themes, however, and taken at face value, it’s a fantastically creepy and unsettling tale.
Shiver is the best out of all the Junji Ito collections out there, featuring some of his best, most ionic stories of all time.
Kazuo Umezu is one of the biggest names in manga. He’s often called one, if not the most influential horror manga artist of all time.
His works, including God’s Left Hand, Devil’s Right Hand and The Drifting Classroom, are vastly popular. While many of them are weird, bizarre and outlandish, none of them are as weird as Fourteen. It’s a manga that’s defined by the word weird and is one of the most surreal and outlandish works I’ve ever come upon.
Fourteen is a manga set in a twisted and futuristic version of Earth. Our protagonist, at least for the first part, is Chicken George. He’s a hyper-intelligent chicken mutant who grew in a chicken production factory.
He declares he’s going to take revenge on humanity for their abuse of not only nature, but also animals.
As weird as this premise sounds, the manga itself is far, far weird and utterly ridiculous. Fourteen is one of the strangest, most surreal apocalypse stories I ever read. Sure, there’s Chicken George, but the manga’s full of so many strange things. He seems almost normal in contrast. The mange features green babies, a T-Rex-shaped space ship, all plant life dying and being replaced by props and even an alien invasion.
Kazuo Umezu presents all of this madness in his typical art style. It’s old-fashioned, simple and even ugly. Yet, it also shines, especially in the depiction of the strange futuristic earth or when disaster strikes.
Fourteen is an insanely bizarre and weird manga. It’s a surreal, almost nonsensical experience. And yet, I had a blast reading it, if only for how creative, surreal and stupid it was.
Go Nagai’s Devilman was released in the early seventies and is the oldest manga on this list. It’s a strange dark tale and one of the weirdest manga I ever came upon.
The manga tells the story of Akira Fudou. After his friend Ryo Asuka learns of the existence of demons and the danger they present, he hatches a plan. He reasons that a human with a good heart might not only be able to control the demon possessing them, but might also use its power to fight them. The plan succeeds, Akira becomes possessed by the powerful demon Amon and can now transform into Devilman.
Given its premise, one might assume Devilman to be a simple, straightforward manga, but it’s much, much weirder. It centers on a variety of topics and soon shows that not only demons can commit evil.
The story of Devilman is weird. The tone and themes change markedly throughout the manga. While it starts off simple, the plot goes completely overboard in its later half. It’s a strange, beautiful mess that’s all over the place. It makes it almost apparent that even Go Nagai wasn’t sure what he wanted Devilman to be.
The weakest point of the manga is the art. It’s old-fashioned and cartoony. While this strange style can shine in certain regards, it’s never truly good.
In the end, Devilman is a weird manga, one of the weirdest I ever came upon. For all its faults, however, I still consider it a classic, one any manga fan should read.
If you’ve looked at my list of the best manga of all time, you notice that I’m a big fan of the works of Manabe Shohei. Dead End is a surreal and weird manga, but it’s for those reasons I love it so much.
Shirou, our protagonist, is a construction worker leading a simple life. All this changes when he stumbles upon a mysterious, naked girl named Lucy. Tragedy strikes when he introduces her to his friends. After leaving the apartment for a few minutes, he finds Lucy missing, his friends dead and a mysterious man standing amongst the carnage.
Before Shirou can react, the man safes him from an explosion and urges him to flee into the sewers. Down there, Shirou meets another strange man. From here on out, the story starts, as Shirou gathers a rag-tag group of characters he supposedly knows from his past.
Dead End’s premise might sound strange, but the manga gets progressively weirder the longer it goes on. While it starts out as more of a thriller, it slowly introduces more fantastical elements before becoming downright surreal.
Manabe Shohei’s art style adds a lot to the strange feeling of this manga and can be best called unique. While backgrounds are gritty and detailed, his characters stand out for a different reason. They look much more realistic, but this design makes them also appear somewhat ugly. It takes a while to get used to this style, but it’s not bad.
Dead End is one of the most surreal and weird manga I ever read. If you’re a fan of raw, gritty and surreal works, this manga won’t disappoint.
While many of his works can be described as weird, Gyo is his weirdest.
Gyo is the Japanese word for fish. If you think you’re prepared for what’s coming, you couldn’t be more wrong. It’s one of the most absurd and weird manga I ever came upon.
Tadashi, our protagonist, goes on a vacation with his girlfriend, Kaori. She’s extremely sensitive to smells and one day complains about a disgusting, rotten smell. It isn’t long before the two of them find the source. It’s a fish, skittering through the apartment on robotic legs.
This fish is only the first of many other sea creatures, including sharks, to emerge from the depths.
When the two of them return to Tokyo, the manga’s story turns into a full-fledged apocalypse. Millions of sea creatures on robotic legs flood the city and spread the so-called death stench.
Gyo is a story like no other and one of the most creative works I’ve come upon. And yet, the manga has its flaws. The biggest is Junji Ito trying to explain the origin of the strange, robotic legs. While Gyo is an absurd story, Junji Ito’s explanation makes it downright ridiculous, almost silly.
The strongest points about Gyo are the fantastic art and the outlandish visuals. Especially the later parts of the manga are a horrific delight when bloated, disfigured humans shuffle through fog-covered streets.
While I have my problems with Gyo’s story, its sheer creativity and fantastic artwork make it worth reading for any fan of surreal and weird manga.
Franken Fran is another fantastically weird manga. At times it can be disturbing, at others more satirical, but each chapter is weird.
The plot of the manga follows a girl named Fran. She was created by a brilliant surgeon and after he vanished, she’s taken over his work.
Franken Fran is an anthology of short, disturbing tales all involving Fran. Each chapter features another strange and unique incident she gets involved in.
Given that Fran’s a surgeon, most chapters depict medical and surgical procedures. These are presented to us in all their detail and are disturbing and unsettling to look at. What makes this even worse, however, are the results, which are often nothing short of horrific.
While Franken Fran is a horror manga, quite a few of its chapters are more satirical or humorous in tone. Yet, even those chapters are full of disturbing imagery.
Franken Fran is a weird manga, one that can be quite disturbing. Some of the manga’s chapters can be weaker, but when Franken Fran is at its best, it’s an outstanding work.
Lychee Light Club is not only a disturbing but also an extremely weird manga. It’s reminiscent of the erotic gore work of Suehiro Maruo, and thus it’s full of explicit imagery and gore.
The plot of the manga tells the story of the members of the Lychee Light Club. Over two years, the club’s members created a robot called Lychee, which they programmed to bring them young girls.
The club, however, is anything but normal and its members have no problem committing many atrocities, including torture, mutilation, and even murder. Things get out of hand when their leader Zero becomes increasingly paranoid. This sets into motion a set of events that should lead to the club’s dire end.
Lychee Light Club is a manga that features a lot of disturbing imagery, copious amounts of gore, but it’s also an extremely weird manga.
The entire atmosphere of the manga’s surreal, the behavior of the characters almost comically psychopathic and there’s, of course, Lychee, the robot.
It’s a great read for those who are looking for a weird manga featuring lots of unsettling imagery and gore.
Chainsaw Man is one of the most brutal and weird manga I ever read. It’s created by Fujimoto Tatsuki, who’s also known for his work, Fire Punch, an equally weird manga.
Chainsaw Man tells the story of Denji. He’s a simple young man who lives in a shack with his pet devil, Ponchita. He earns a living killing other devils for the yakuza. Devils are demons who escaped from hell and who wreak havoc on Earth.
When he’s killed by the yakuza, Ponchita fuses with his body to keep him from dying. This also allows him to transform into Chainsaw Man.
Before long, he catches the eye of the Public Safety Bureau and becomes an official devil hunter.
Chainsaw Man can be stupid, even ridiculous, but it’s also one of the most unique and creative manga I ever read. It’s full of strange imagery and brutal fights featuring violence galore and some of the best action I’ve ever seen.
What makes it such a weird manga is its characters and the various devils that appear throughout the story. They are as outlandish as they are scary to look at. Each one features a unique design and comes with powers that are as strange as they are terrifying.
Chainsaw Man is without a doubt one of the most creative manga I ever read. It features a unique, yet beautiful art style, fantastic action and a story that’s both weird and gripping. It’s a fantastical read and I recommend it to anyone.
I don’t know what it is I like so much about Keep on Vibrating by Jiro Matsumoto. It’s the only adult themed manga on this list and features sex, violence and a lot of surreal imagery.
Keep on Vibrating comprises only seven chapters, but they are all unique. The very first chapter of the manga is one of the weirdest and most surreal pieces of work I’ve ever witnessed. It’s the perfect introduction to the style and works of Jiro Matsumoto.
What makes Keep on Vibrating such a weird manga is the sheer surreality of the scenarios depicted in it. One chapter centers on a naked artist who might or might not hallucinate a man with a horse head. Others follow children wearing gas masks as they are playing in a shoddy, warn-torn world, a police officer trying to find a serial killer or a bizarre rendition of a Groundhog Day scenario.
All of this is presented in Jiro Matsumoto’s unique art style. It’s gritty, almost sketchy, but helps to bring forth the strange atmosphere of his world. There’s a strange contrast prevalent in Keep on Vibrating. While the imagery, the world and what’s happening are often disturbing, the dialogue is as mundane as it can be. It only serves to increase the surreal and unique feel of this work.
Keep on Vibrating is without a doubt an extremely weird manga. It’s different from anything else I’ve read, but there are glimpses of genius to be found here.
MPD Psycho by Eji Otsuka and Shouu Tajima is a complex psychological manga featuring copious amounts of shocking imagery.
It’s the story of a detective named Kazuhiko Amamiya who suffers from multiple personality disorder. Over the course of the first chapters, we witness as Amamiya investigates various sick murder cases.
In time, however, it turns into a truly weird manga when a complex, at times confusing, overarching plot is introduced. This plot is not only related to Amamiya, but various other characters and involves an ominous woman known as Lucy Monostone.
While the manga is full of shocking imagery, it’s also a highly psychological thriller.
What makes it such a weird manga is not only the plot but also Amamiya’s unique condition. While the manga’s always interesting and full of suspense, keeping up with his different personalities and their aims can be hard.
Even though I enjoyed this manga. It’s a sick, twisted and dark manga, but it features one of the most complex and interesting plots I’ve come upon. If you’re a fan of weird manga and dark thrillers, read MPD Psycho.
You sometimes come upon a piece of work that makes you wonder what you just experienced and why you enjoyed it so much. This statement fits Soil by Atushi Kankeo to the point. It’s an incredibly weird manga, most likely the weirdest on this entire list.
The story of the manga centers on Soil New Town. When a family vanishes without a trace, two detectives are called to investigate. They are quite the special characters to say the least. At first, the case appears a routine one, but as the manga continues, the story becomes nothing short of surreal.
Soil is a manga that’s as different as it is refreshing. The manga’s so full of weird ideas and surreal imagery, one can’t help but be impressed by it. Yet, this weirdness is also one of Soil’s biggest problems. The manga’s more an exercise of the surreal than a coherent story. This becomes especially prevalent in the latter half when the manga’s strangeness goes completely overboard.
Soils art is as unique as the manga itself. At first it might appear simplistic, even amateurish, but after a while one can see it as what it is, different and unique. This art especially shines in the depiction of the weird and surreal place Soil New Town becomes.
Soil is an incredibly weird manga, but it’s worth picking up for this exact reason. There are few manga as surreal. The only thing that comes close to the sheer random madness of Soil is Uzumaki by Junji Ito.
If you’re looking for a surreal and weird manga, you won’t be disappointed by Soil.
Hotel by Boichi is one of the greatest collection of one-shots I ever read.
Each chapter of this weird collection features Boichi’s outstanding and beautifully drawn art. While the individual stories vary in quality, I enjoyed all of them.
While none of the stories in this manga are related per se, one can still find some thematically links about all of them.
The first chapter featuring the titular Hotel and the AI controlling it is already weird enough. Things get out of hand in chapter three and four. They feature some stellar visuals, but the stories depicted are as weird and surreal as they can get.
Yet, all those chapters are rendered in beautiful detail. Chapter five stands out especially. While it doesn’t feature much of a story, it’s drawn in stunning full color.
Apart from Keep on Vibrating, Hotel is the only other collection of one-shots on this list of weird manga.
It’s a fantastic experience. Some stories in Hotel are emotional while others are more surreal or even funny. They are, however, all interesting.
Hotel is a weird manga, a quick read, but well worth the time spent because of Boichi’s outstanding art.
Jagaaaaaan by Muneyuki Kaneshiro and Kensuke Nishida is another strange and weird manga.
It tells the story of Shintaro Jagasaki. He leads a normal, boring life and works as a police officer. One day, when escorting home a drunk on a train, he bears witness to an office worker growing increasingly madder. Eventually, the man turns into a monster and beings mauling the train’s other passengers. Jagasaki’s able to take out the creature by shooting a beam from his hand. He soon learns that not only the office worker, but he too is a fractured human. From this point onward, Jagasaki uses his new powers to hunt down and take out other fractured humans.
Jagaaaaaan is a weird manga, one full of outlandish characters, disturbing scenarios and grotesque monsters.
What makes this manga stand out is the fantastic art by Kensuke Nishida. It’s most prevalent in the many fractured humans we see throughout the series. Their design is as outlandish as it is creative.
Yet, Jagaaaaaan is such a weird manga for a variety of reasons. First are its characters. Jagasaki is a weird, but so are many other members of the cast. They include a fun-loving, psychotic nihilist, a man obsessed with justice who wants to be a hero and a young man who transforms into and takes over the life of a young girl.
Jagaaaaaan is as strange and weird a manga as it sounds, but it’s also a lot of fun. It’s full of action, features lots of gore, but also many other unsettling events.
There’s an atmosphere to this manga, an air surrounding it that makes it so surreal and unique. Jagaaaaaan is a fantastic manga, one I truly enjoyed.
Gantz is one of the most insane and weird manga of all time and I love it.
It’s the story of Kei Kurono. One day, he and his childhood friend Masaru Katou die in a tragic train accident. This, however, is only the start of the story because soon after the two of them awaken in what appears to be a Tokyo apartment. In there they find a group of other people, but also a black sphere called Gantz. It soon informs them that their lives are over and they are now tasked with hunting down aliens who live hidden amongst humans. Soon after, they are teleported outside and the first of many brutal missions begins.
Gantz is a gritty and brutal story full of glorified gore and fluid action. It depicts an extremely weird scenario, one underlined by the often outlandish aliens.
The greatest part about Gantz is the fantastic art. Each mission is action-packed and fights are rendered in stunning and beautiful detail. These missions are always brutal. Many of the participants don’t know what’s going on and become nothing more than cannon fodder. They are torn apart, shredded to pieces and even devoured by aliens.
Yet, it’s not only the premise that makes Gantz such a weird manga. Gantz’s entire world and the events depicted are nothing short of crazy. We bear witness to severe bullying, rape, a mass shooting, and even vampires. It’s nothing short of beautiful madness.
While the manga can be ridiculous at times, the plot nonsensical, it’s one of the greatest action manga of all time featuring a set of fantastic characters.
Anyone familiar with the works of Q Hayashide knows her manga are weird, extremely weird. Dorohedoro is no different. No, it’s without a doubt one of the weirdest manga I ever read.
While it’s set in a grim dark world full of gore and graphical violence, it’s also full of humor. There’s an air of lightheartedness about the carnage we witness that makes reading Dorohedoro an entirely surreal experience.
It’s the story of Kaiman, an amnesiac with the head of a reptilian. He lives in the derelict city of Hole which is connected to the Sorcerer’s World. The inhabitants of this world are magic users and often visit Hole to test their powers. As a result, many of Hole’s inhabitants are transformed, mutilated or even murdered.
Kaiman believes a magic user caused his condition and thus hunts them down relentlessly to figure out who he is.
As weird as this premise sounds, the manga itself proves to be even weirder. Describing the plot of Dorohedoro is a thing of impossibility because of the sheer creativity and originality that went into it. It’s a work of surreal madness.
The same is true for the characters. Be it the transformed inhabitants of Hole or the outlandish characters populating the Sorcerer’s World, they are all weirdos in their own right.
Yet, as weird as Dorohedoro is, it’s also beautiful. Both the surreal Sorcerer’s World and the run-down city of Hole are rendered in stunning detail.
Dorohedoro is a weird manga, one full of beautiful art and brutal, graphical violence. It’s a dark and twisted story, one full of increasingly disturbing events, yet presented in almost comedic lightheartedness.
Not much has to be said about Dorohedoro. It’s a surreal masterpiece.
Homunculus is an extremely weird manga by Hideo Yamamoto, the creator of Ichi the Killer. While Ichi the Killer is disturbing, Homunculus is nothing short of surreal.
Susumu Nakoshi is a young, homeless man living in his car. One day, he encounters a young medical student, Manabu Ito, who researches the process of trepanation. When asked, Nakoshi agrees to become his test subject and undergoes the procedure.
As if this premise wasn’t weird enough already, the result of the operation proves even weirder. When Nakoshi looks at people with only his left eye, he sees distorted versions of them. These versions soon become referred to as homunculi.
Over the course of the manga, the story becomes progressively weirder. There are, of course, the homunculi who’re weird in their own right. What makes the manga even weirder, however, is the story itself and the many psychological themes it features.
Homunculus’ plot can almost be called unpredictable. It’s more a character study than a story and slowly turns into a man’s descent into madness.
Hideo Yamamoto’s art is fantastic. It features many disturbing scenes, yet others which are surreal, almost abstract. The greatest part about this manga, however, is the grotesque homunculi.
Homunculus is one of the most surreal and weird manga I ever read. It features two extremely complex characters, an entirely unique scenario and an unrestrained narrative.
It’s a surreal, and creative masterpiece, one any fan of weird manga should read.
Freesia is the second manga by Jiro Matsumoto and it’s an even weirder manga than Keep on Vibrating, yet for different reasons.
It’s set in a dark, dystopian version of Japan where a law is passed which legalizes retaliatory killings. Should a loved ones be murdered, you may take justice into your own hands, or hire someone who does it for you.
Kano, our protagonist, works for an agency which specializes in retaliatory killings. One might assume Freesia’s a bloody manga about retaliatory killings, but it focuses more on the personal stories of the targets than action. This makes us sympathize with them, and their end a tragedy in its own right.
Freesia’s Japan is a dark, gloomy place, one filled with a perpetual feeling of depression. It’s a story that’s populated by nothing but broken, damaged and mentally ill people.
This is more than true for Kano. He suffers from schizophrenia, hallucination and memory failure. What makes Freesia such a weird manga is how it presents this to us. We don’t merely see how Kano acts. Instead, the manga shows us the world he sees. It’s a surreal world, one that makes no sense and makes us wonder just what we’re seeing.
Yet, Kano isn’t the only member of our cast who suffers from mental problems. Many others seem to suffer from delusions of their own. Similar to Kano, these are presented to us as real and it can often cause confusion. It’s only when we understand what’s going on that things become clear to us.
Freesia is a brilliant work, one that showcases mental illness different from any other manga I’ve read. It makes it a surreal, irritating and weird manga, but also one I loved reading.
Onani Master Kurosawa by Katsura Ise and Takuma Yokota can be translated as Masturbation Master Kurosawa. As you can tell from the title, it’s a weird manga, one I loved reading.
When I first heard about it, I was intrigued by the title, but assumed it would be nothing but a big, perverted joke. Instead, it turned out to be one of the greatest, most heartfelt stories ever.
Kakeru Kurosawa, our main character, is an anti-social loner. What makes him special is a peculiar habit. Once classes are over, he retreats to a seldom-used bathroom at school and masturbates.
When he witnesses the bullying of his timid, mousy classmate Aya Kitahara by one of the popular girls, he takes revenge into his own hands, by doing what he does best.
It’s this scenario, this idea that makes Onani Master Kurosawa such a weird manga. Yet, while it starts out as a humorous, perverted tale centered on masturbation-based justice, it gradually evolves and becomes more serious.
It turns from a perverted tale into a sweet, inspiring coming-of-age story that tackles a variety of topics.
Another reason I love it so much was Kurosawa himself. While he starts off as a rather perverted individual, he turns into one of the most likeable and believable characters ever.
Onani Master Kurosawa is, without a doubt, a weird manga, but it turned out to be one of the biggest surprises ever. By now, I consider it one of the best manga I ever read.
Kamisama no Iutoori and its sequel by Kaneshiro Muneyuki are two of the weirdest manga of all time, but some of my absolute favorites.
It’s a death game manga, and one of the best the genre offers.
The story begins with Takahata Shun. He’s a normal high school student and is incredibly bored with his life. This boredom ends when his teacher’s head explodes, a Daruma doll appears, and the very first death game in the series begins.
As the manga continues, we’re introduced to a set of fascinating characters and bear witness to a variety of incredible weird death games.
Yet, it’s not only the games who are weird, many of the characters featured in this manga are weird as well. The two most notable examples are Amamiya and Ushimitsu.
What I loved the most was how the manga handled its characters. It was never shy about killing them and does so at the most unexpected moments. It’s often the case that we’re introduced to a new character only to witness their demise soon after. There’s this unforgiving atmosphere to the manga, but also a strange sense of humor.
While the art in the first part isn’t the greatest, it improves vastly in the second part. Near the end, many of its panels and page spreads are absolutely gorgeous to look at.
Overall, I had an absolute blast reading this weird manga and enjoyed it immensely. It might not be for everyone, given how weird and surreal it can be, but if you like death games, this magna is as good as it gets.
With a title like that, one can already expect that Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure by Hirohiko Araki is a weird manga.
While Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure was always a weird manga, featuring vampires, Aztec super humans and Nazi cyborgs, things became truly bizarre when stands were introduced.
They first appeared in its third part, the much-beloved Stardust Crusaders. It’s here, where stands first appear. They are a manifestation of a person’s life force, take on the form of an ethereal figure and possess superhuman powers.
One might assume that so-called stand-users are akin to superheroes, but one couldn’t be more wrong. The powers of stands are as weird as the manga itself. They can take on the form of game consoles, transform people into snails or even turn back time, amongst other things.
While all parts of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure are weird to a degree, Part 6: Stone Ocean has to be the weirdest.
The story follows Jolyne Cujoh, the daughter of Joutarou Kuujou, the protagonist of Stardust Crusaders. After she’s framed for murder, she’s sent to Dolphin Street Jail. It soon becomes obvious that a disciple of Dio Brando framed her, and her incarceration is only a small part of the man’s true plan.
Jojo’s Adventure Part 6: Stone Ocean features an assortment of weird characters, enemies and stands, but its ending is by far the weirdest event in the entire manga.
Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is a fantastic series of weird manga. It’s one of the longest running manga of all time, but also one of the best. Any fan of weird manga and manga in general should check it out. It’s well worth reading.
Reading Ultra Heaven was an experience like no other. It’s a psychedelic manga and one of the most stunning works in the entire medium.
The manga’s set in a dystopian future. In this world, feelings can be artificially created and be consumed as drugs.
Kabu, our protagonist, is addicted to these types of drugs. Before long, however, he learns of a new illegal substance, one called Ultra Heaven. When a man offers to sell it to him, Kabu accepts.
What follows is one of the craziest, most creative depictions of a trip I’ve ever seen. The visuals, the art and the presentation are unlike anything I’ve ever witnessed.
What makes Ultra Heaven such a great, but also weird manga, is the art. We’re presented with a gritty setting and detailed characters, but that’s not what makes it special. It’s the way it showcases drug usage and the hallucinations that come with it.
Most manga are presented by usage of organized, rectangular panels. Not so Ultra Heaven. No, it breaks this convention entirely. When Kabu suffers from an altered mind, be it by drugs or later meditation, the shapes of panels distort, similar to his mental state. Organized panels turn into twisting spirals, start running into each other or become nothing but pure chaos. It gives the entire manga a disorienting, surreal, and almost crazy feeling, but perfectly showcases what’s going on.
While the first and second chapter are weird enough, things go absolutely crazy in the third chapter. Before, the manga focused on drugs, drug usage and the resulting trips. In chapter three, the manga focuses on meditation and the mind altering effect it can have.
Ultra Heaven is a manga like no other. It’s without a doubt an incredibly weird manga, but also a visual masterpiece.
Horror is one of the most popular genres and so are horror manga, as you can see in my long list of the best horror manga of all time.
It’s the mixture of often terrifying and unsettling visuals and general scary-storytelling that makes them such a delight to read.
Yet, while some horror manga feature more on story-telling, on plot or psychological themes, there are also those which focus on violence, brutal visuals and gore.
For this list, I want to present you with 13 of the most brutal manga of all time.
Kazuo Umezu is a name anyone interested in horror manga is familiar with. He could be called the godfather of the horror manga genre and has influenced it tremendously.
While he’s most popular for his work, The Drifting Classroom, his most brutal manga has to be God’s Left Hand, Devil’s Right Hand.
It’s often called an ultra-violent manga and features outlandish, disturbing and bizarre incidents. He always presents them with copious amounts of gore and body horror.
Those incidents are all witnessed by or related to a young boy Sou. He is, however, not responsible for them, instead he’s plagued by visions before they happen and tries to prevent them.
God’s Left Hand, Devil’s Right Hand features a variety of themes. While some stories are more based on reality, and feature serial killers or murders, others are as outlandish as they can be.
Yet, every single part of this brutal manga is full of violence.
Kazuo Umezu’s style can take some time getting used to. Some people might call it simplistic, others old-fashioned, and some downright ugly. God’s Left Hand, Devil’s Right Hand is no different. While the art isn’t the best, it never disappoints in showcasing the violent events depicted.
God’s Left Hand, Devil’s Right Hand, is one of the most brutal manga I ever read, but also one of the strangest. It’s, however, a great read if you’re looking for strange, violent incidents and lots of gore.
Lychee Light Club by Usamaru Furuya is reminiscent of and inspired by the erotic gore work of Suehiro Maruo. It is, however, a much more brutal manga.
The manga details the activities of the Lychee Light Club. The members of the club created a robot named Lychee who they program to bring them beautiful girls.
As the story progresses, however, the club leader Zera grows paranoid and things get out of control. This sets into motion various, disturbing incidents which end dire for many members of the club.
Lychee Light Club is a brutal manga, featuring copious amounts of gore, scenes of brutal murder and other unsettling ideas.
It’s a great read for anyone who’s looking for a weird, unsettling and especially brutal manga.
Parasyte is a manga, as the title says, about parasites. These strange, worm-like creatures infest humans, take over their bodies and transform them into twisted monsters.
Our protagonist, Shinichi, gets infected by one such parasite, but can keep the creature from digging into his brain. Instead, the creatures can only infect his right hand.
From then on, they are trapped in the same body. As if this situation isn’t weird enough already, things turn much worse when other parasites come after them.
Before long, Shinichi learns that these other parasites prey on and devour humans and decides to fight back.
Parasyte can be an incredibly brutal manga. The author doesn’t shy away from presenting us the results of the parasites’ attacks in all their details. We witness people being shredded to pieces, torn apart, or mauled beyond comprehension.
It’s a fantastic, older manga, one with a unique story and setting, great creature design and lots of gore.
Chainsaw Man by Fujimoto Tatsuki is one of the weirdest manga on this list, but also one of the most brutal manga of recent years.
Denji is a simple man. He lives in a small shack and kills of devils, demons who escaped from hell, with his pet devil Ponchita. When he’s killed by the yakuza, Ponchita fuses with Denji’s body to keep him from dying. This gives him the powers of the chain saw devil and allows him to transform into Chain Saw Man.
He soon catches the eye of the official devil hunters who force him to work for the Public Safety Bureau.
The manga can be stupid, at times even ridiculous, but it’s one of the most unique and creative reads I ever had.
The plot might sound simple at first hand, but becomes more interesting as the manga goes on. What makes it such a brutal manga are the many fights. They present us with blood and violence galore, as one can imagine considering the nature of our protagonist.
Another fantastic part about chainsaw man are the many devils. They are as outlandish as they are scary, all have their own unique design, and the results of their powers often result in massive casualties.
Chainsaw Man is a unique piece of work, one that can be best described as beautiful madness. The unique art, the beautiful, yet gritty detail all help to bring forth the unique atmosphere of this brutal manga. If you haven’t read Chainsaw Man, I highly recommend it. It’s a fantastic manga.
MPD Psycho by Eiji Otsuka and Shouu Tajima is another strange and brutal manga. I first started reading it when it was relatively new, but it stayed on my mind for a long time because of its graphic imagery.
It’s a complex and confusing psychological story that features copious amounts of shocking violence.
MPD Psycho is the story of a man named Kazuhiko Amamiya. He suffers from multiple personality disorder.
The first chapters of the manga are more episodic and feature Amamiya or one of his other personalities solves various sick murder cases.
In time, however, an overarching, complex plot is introduced. And as it progresses, we realize that it’s related to Amamiya’s past and a mysterious woman named Lucy Monostone.
As mentioned before, the manga is ripe with shocking imagery. Many of the cases Amamiya is working on are sick and disturbing murders, and they are rendered in stunning detail. Looking at them can make you quite uncomfortable.
While MPD Psycho is a brutal manga, it’s no pure slaughter fest full of mindless gore. Instead, it’s a highly psychological series featuring a deep, albeit confusing plot. If you’re interested in complex mysterious and don’t mind the gracious violence, you’ll love this manga.
Battle Royal is one of my favorite movies of all time. The manga adaption of Koushun Takami’s novel by the same name is one of the most disturbing and brutal manga of all time.
The manga is a retelling of the novel, but often takes liberties to make certain events more dramatic. It also explores the backstory of each individual student, providing us with many additional details about them.
The story of Battle Royal is simple. Each year a single class is selected to take part in the titular program. The students are then brought to a remote area and are forced to kill each other until a sole survivor is left.
Shuuya Nanahara, our protagonist, decides against killing his classmates and instead makes it his goal to get off the island.
Battle Royal’s setting is one of the most disturbing I ever encountered and the manga doesn’t sugarcoat things. Instead, it showcases the insane situation in all its glory and with copious amounts of gore, at times almost a bit too much of it. We witness students mutilating and stabbing each other, heads exploding, disembowelments and a lot more disturbing imagery.
As mentioned before, the manga has some flaws. The first is the depiction of the various characters. While they are all in the same class and of the same age, some look like adults in their thirties while others look no older than ten. Another problem is the rather formulaic story-telling. The concept is simple. We are introduced to a new student. We witness their backstory and ultimately, their demise.
And yet, I can’t help but recommend Battle Royal. It’s a great story, a psychological one, but also an incredibly brutal manga. If you’re a fan of the movie or of manga featuring death games, I highly recommend it.
Jagaaaaaan tells the story of a young police officer, Shintarou Jagasaki. One day, he’s forced to escort home a drunk on the train. As he does, he witnesses an office worker growing mad before he turns into a monster and begins tearing the other passengers apart. Jagasaki eventually defeats the creature by shooting a beam from his hand. Before long, he learns that the office worker was a fractured human, like he himself is. From this point onwards, Jagasaki hunts down other fractured humans.
The story of Jagaaaaaan is crazy, featuring a lot of outlandish characters, scenarios and monsters.
One of the high points of this seriously brutal manga is the art. Kensuke Nishida is a fantastic artist and his art helps to bring forth this manga and the strange story it tells.
It’s especially prevalent in the design of the fractured humans. Many of them are extremely creative and outlandish, turning into twisted monstrosities. They go on rampage the moment they transform, resulting in copious amounts of gore and carnage, making Jagaaaaaan an incredibly brutal manga.
Many of the characters in Jagaaaaaan are as weird as the story itself. Some are more normal, like Jagasaki’s love interest, while others, especially the fractured humans, are crazy and deranged.
Overall, Jagaaaaaan is a great and brutal manga featuring its fair share of explicit content. There’s violence and gore, but also nudity and other, more depraved scenarios.
If you’re interested in weird and brutal manga, read Jagaaaaaan.
Q Hayashida’s Dorohedoro is an extremely weird manga. It’s a brutal manga set in a dark and grim world, but it’s full of humor.
The story begins in the derelict city of Hole which is connected to a world populated by magic users, the Sorcerer’s World. These magic users often visit Hole and use it as a testing ground for their powers. Because of them, mutilations, transformations and various other atrocities have become a daily reality.
Kaiman is one such inhabitant of Hole. He’s an amnesiac with the head of a reptilian and immune to magic. He believes himself another victim of magic users and hunts them down relentlessly to learn who he is.
While the premise of Dorohedoro sounds weird enough, the manga gets only weirder and as the story goes on.
Dorohedoro is a brutal manga, it’s full of death and carnage. This violence, however, is depicted with an air of lightheartedness and a certain humor. It makes reading Dorohedoro an almost surreal experience.
Near the end, however, when the story reaches its climax, the events depicted become much more outlandish, gruesome and horrific. It’s especially for the latter parts I consider Dorohedoro one of the most brutal manga ever created.
The greatest part about Dorohedoro is the art. It’s as outlandish as it’s beautiful. Be it the outlandish Sorcerer’s World or the run-down derelict city of Hole, both places are stunning to look at and ripe with detail. The same is true for the many strange characters populating the world of Dorohedoro.
Overall, Dorohedoro might be a brutal manga, but anyone should check out. It’s one of the most original and unique experiences I ever had. It’s a horrific, weird and surreal masterpiece.
Shigurui is probably the most brutal manga in the samurai genre I’ve ever read.
The manga’s based on the first chapter of Norio Nanjo’s novel of the same name. The plot centers on a proclamation of the twisted daimyo Tadanaga Tokugawa to hold a martial arts competition featuring fights to the death.
Two of the contests are Gennosuke Fujiki, a one-armed man who fights against the blind and lame Seigen Irako. The manga doesn’t show us the result of their fight right away. Instead, most of the manga details the backstory of these two contestants.
Shigurui is an absolutely beautiful manga and features some of the best art I’ve seen. Many of the panels and page spreads in Shigurui are stunning to look at.
What makes Shigurui such a brutal manga is, of course, first the violence. The manga’s ripe in gore and brutality. We witness people being mutilated, disemboweled, or torn to pieces.
Yet, there’s more, it’s the depiction of samurai culture. While it’s often depicted as honorable and even romanticized, Shigurui doesn’t shy away from showing us how brutal and unforgiving it was.
Shigurui is a grim, dark story, one filled with an almost feasible air of depression. You won’t find happiness here, and neither a happy ending. It’s a story that shows what a life by the sword drives people to do and the lives that are lost because of it.
Yet, Shigurui is a fantastic and brutal manga. It’s a piece of art, one that shows us a much more realistic and unforgiving view of samurai culture.
Ichi the Killer is one of the most depraved, sick and brutal manga I ever came upon. Yet, it’s also one of my absolute favorites.
It tells the story of two characters. The first is Ichi, the titular killer, the second is the twisted and insane yakuza Kakihara. When Kakihara’s boss vanishes, he begins a brutal search for the man that brings him not only in conflict with other yakuza groups but also leads to a confrontation with Ichi.
While Ichi the Killer features copious amounts of violence, including mutilation, torture, rape and murder, it’s no mere gore fest. It’s a deeply psychological story about the interplay of sadism and masochism, manipulation, identity disorder and childhood abuse. It mixes all these themes together into one of the most compelling and brutal manga of all time.
Ichi the Killer is so fascinating and works so well, because of all the raw violence it showcases. Its characters aren’tnormal people. No, they are the most twisted and depraved inhabitants of society’s underbelly. It presents those people to us, shows us their depravity, how far they will go and filters nothing. It’s as sick as it is satisfying.
A word of warning though, Ichi the Killer is not for the faint of heart. It’s a fucked up and brutal manga, downright sick and disgusting. At the same time, however, it’s one of the greatest psychological manga of all time.
Gantz is one of the most insane and brutal manga of all time, but that’s why I love it so much.
Our protagonist Kei Korono and his childhood friend Masaru Katou are killed in a tragic train accident. Soon after, however, the two of them wake up in a Tokyo apartment. There, they find not only a group of other people but also a large black sphere. It’s called Gantz and tells them to hunt down aliens living amongst humans. Before they can do anything, they are teleported outside and the first mission begins.
Gantz is a gritty, brutal manga about people hunting down aliens full of glorified gore and fluid action. Over the course of the manga, the stakes are constantly rising. While the first mission features only two aliens, later parts feature massive amounts of outlandish and dangerous creatures.
The greatest part about Gantz are the action and the amazing art. The action is always fluid, rendered in beautiful detail and stunning to look at. This is also true for the aliens. Gantz features some of the greatest creature design in all of manga.
Many of the missions in Gantz are brutal. Often, many of the people sent to hunt down aliens are nothing but cannon fodder. We watch them being torn apart, shredded to piece or being devoured.
One reason I love Gantz is the protagonist Kurono. While he starts out as an unlikeable and egoistic teenager, he develops tremendously as a character. It’s fantastic to watch him mature and grow and eventually become the leader of the Gantz team.
As you might expect, the world of Gantz is dark. This is not only true for the missions, however. Over the course of the manga, we witness severe bullying, rape and even a mass shooting.
Even though Gantz is an amazing, action-packed and brutal manga like no other. It’s a weird, insane, gory mess. It might be nonsensical at times, but it features some of the greatest action I’ve ever seen in a manga.
Many of Junji Ito’s works are disturbing and brutal, as you can see in my list of the best Junji Ito stories.
While you could add many of his works to this list of the most brutal manga, I think Tomie stands out amongst them.
While Uzumaki and Gyo are outlandish, twisted and unsettling, Tomie,
Many of his stories feature outlandish, twisted and unsettling scenarios and are full of blood and gore. Tomie, however, might be the worst of those.
Tomie tells the story of a high school student. She’s gorgeous and is not only dating one of her classmates, but also has an affair with her teacher. When she dies during a school trip, her class bands together to hide the fact. They dismember her body and get rid of it.
This, however, is only where the story of Tomie begins. The very next day, she shows up to class as if nothing had happened.
Soon, the true horror of Tomie is revealed to us. What we assumed to be a normal student is instead an entity with regenerative powers, able to regrow herself from even the smallest parts.
This, however, isn’t all. Tomie is not only gorgeous, but has an almost supernatural hold upon man. Every man she meets falls for her, grows obsessed with her and is eventually driven mad. This madness always leads to them reenacting Tomie’s first death, mutilating and killing her and disemboweling her body.
That’s what makes Tomie such a brutal manga. It’s these scenes of carnage, of unbridled violence and their results that Junji Ito presents to us in all their gory and disgusting detail.
While some chapters in Tomie are better, others are worse. Some chapters are fantastic and contain some of Junji Ito’s most horrific imagery. Yet others are almost forgettable.
Overall, though, Junji Ito doesn’t disappoint. Tomie is an unsettling and brutal manga that’s definitely worth reading.
Rest in peace Kentaro Miura, thanks for sharing your gift with the world.
Berserk is the one of the greatest manga of all time, but also one of the most brutal.
It’s a dark fantasy manga that tells the story of Guts, the Black Swordsman. He’s a man carrying a sword as tall as himself and is out on a quest for revenge. Over the course of the manga, he fights his way through demonic beings known as apostles and humans alike.
At first, Berserk might appear a simple story, but one couldn’t be more wrong. During Berserk’s second arc, The Golden Age, the manga truly shines. It is here we learn more about Guts, but also get to know the man known’s as Griffith.
Kentaro Miura was an amazing artist. Berserk almost transcends the manga medium and many of its pages, especially in later parts, are nothing short of art. Almost no other manga artist could compare to Kentaro Miura when he was at the top of his game.
He was never shy to present to us the horrors of his world in all its glory. Berserk’s world is a dark and horrible place. It’s full of war and brutal battles, but also many other atrocities. We bear witness to the darkest depth of humanity. We witness rape and torture, ritualistic sacrifices and religious fanaticism, but also senseless slaughter.
The same is true for the many battles. It doesn’t matter if it’s the many battles during the Golden Age or Guts battling apostles. They are always brutal, feature glorious violence and copious amounts of gore.
Yet, the most disturbing and brutal of all those events is without a doubt The Eclipse, the event that concludes the Golden Age arc. It’s without a doubt one of the most brutal, unforgiving and disturbing events ever depicted in manga.
There are also the apostles. They are equally gorgeous and grotesque to look at and whenever they appear, brutal violence will follow. Their victims get shredded to pieces, torn apart and even devoured.
And yet, Berserk might be one of the most brutal manga of all time. It’s also a masterpiece. It’s one of the greatest, if not the greatest, manga ever created.
