Horror Anime With The Most Death
Descriptions
Major character deaths and mass murders of entire communities are practically a tradition in horror anime. Having memorably gory kills plus a high casualty rate that doesn't spare named characters are surefire ways for a horror anime to gain fame or notoriety. Notable anime, however, went the extra mile.
Instead of simply killing more than one important character and a classroom's worth of background characters at most, these anime slaughtered countless people by the thousands—at the very least. Most of these mass deaths were typical horror anime kills, but ramped up in brutality and scale. Others even transcended time and space.
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Death Toll: 1,300 people at most
In Shiki, the rural village of Sotoba was besieged by the Shiki (or vampires). The village's population of around 1,300 was slowly but surely decimated by the Shikis' nighttime attacks. But when the townspeople had enough, they sparked a brutal all-out war against the Shiki that left few if any survivors on either side.
By Shiki's end, nearly every named character was killed horribly. It was also safe to assume that Sotoba's unnamed villagers and the other unidentified Shiki died as well. The death and destruction were so severe that Shiki ended with Sotoba being burned to the ground. Anyone unfortunate to have survived wished they were dead instead.
9 Death Note
Death Toll: 269,889 people
Death Note's villainous protagonist Light Yagami is undeniably anime's most famous serial killer. As "Kira, God of the New World" and with the power of the Death Note, Light killed 135,412 people in the name of justice — regardless of whether they were actually evil or not. That said, Light wasn't the only mass murderer in Death Note.
Using their own Death Notes, Light's followers like Kiyomi Takada and Teru Mikami racked up horrifyingly large body counts of their own. In total, the evil Light and his disciples killed approximately 269,889 people around the world. This death toll doesn't include the significantly lower number of people killed either intentionally or not by the police.
8 Hellsing Ultimate
Death Toll: 11,000,000 people (minimum)
Hellsing Ultimate climaxed with The Major fulfilling his promise to Millennium by leading the attack on London. The Last Battalion (numbering 1,000 at most) killed most (if not all) of London's nearly 9 million residents in one night. If the Nazi Vampires didn't kill them, they and other named characters were killed by the Vatican's forces or Alucard.
The Last Battalion's massacre paled in comparison to Alucard, since he single-handedly killed more than 3 million people. This included those he killed in London, and those he killed eons ago. Although it wasn't shown on screen, Alucard killed the 3 million souls he hoarded to resurrect. In total, the superior Hellsing Ultimate reboot killed at least 11 million people.
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Death Toll: Most of humanity
Attack on Titan toed the line between being fantasy and horror for most of its lifespan, but fully embraced the latter during Attack on Titan: The Final Season. Using the Attack Titans' full might, Eren Yeager unleashed The Rumbling. Colossal Titans trampled on everything beyond Paradis' walls, leaving nothing in their wake.
Attack on Titan's death toll will only be finalized when The Final Season wraps up in November 2023, but it's safe to say that the world is pretty much over. The Rumbling destroyed countries and continents in a few steps, and killed billions around the world. It's unlikely that anyone could survive this apocalypse, nor want to.
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Death Toll: Most of humanity
The Genocyber OVAs cemented their reputations as gory nihilistic horror anime by inching closer to the end of the world with each story arc's ending. The first two arcs (Episodes 1 to 3) ended with the complete destruction of a country and its populace. Hong Kong was first, then it was followed by the fictional state of Karain.
Episodes 4 to 6 skipped decades ahead to reveal that the eponymous Genocyber didn't stop after destroying Karain. Genocyber killed most of humanity and civilization, only stopping short of total annihilation. Genocyber was stopped again during their second rampage, but only after they killed most of what few survivors were left.
5 School-Live!
Death Toll: Presumably most of humanity
School-Live! wasn't the first horror anime to have a zombie apocalypse decimate humanity, but it was one of the few that emphasized how lifeless and empty such a world would be. As far as the School Living Club and viewers were concerned, everyone outside the school was dead or undead. There were no signs of life elsewhere.
This was a major departure from the School-Live! manga, which gradually revealed other survivors and even communities waiting to be discovered. Since the anime only adapted the first arc, it had no reason to foreshadow these signs of hope. In doing so, it really felt as if the School Living Club were the last living people in Japan and Earth.
4 Blue Gender
Death Toll: 99% of humanity
There is good reason why Blue Gender is regarded as one of the most nihilistic horror anime ever made. When Yuji Kaido woke up from his cryogenic slumber, the world was already overrun by giant bugs known as "Blue." While he was asleep, most of humanity was killed by the bugs. The few survivors went into hiding, or space.
Humanity's extinction was all but assured when Gaia, the Earth's spirit, killed the survivors on the space station Second Earth. With not enough people left to repopulate the Earth, humanity was as good as dead by the anime's end. For some odd reason, Blue Gender bafflingly depicted humanity's slow death as a happy ending.
3 Higurashi: When They Cry
Death Toll: 2,000 people at most across multiple time loops
Higurashi: When They Cry became one of the most (in)famous horror anime of the 2000s by repeatedly killing its cast and everyone in the village of Hinamizawa across its seasons. It was only near the anime's end when it was revealed that this was the case because everyone in Hinamizawa was trapped in a time loop.
Hinamizawa's population of 2,000 people almost always died in every time loop. The dark Higurashi had many time loops both on and off-screen. It's impossible to calculate the exact number of deaths, let alone how many times one person died. That said, it could be estimated that Higurash's death toll would be somewhere in the hundred thousands.
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Death Toll: 99% of the cast plus 32,767 parallel Earths
Bokurano brutally deconstructed empowering super robot anime by showing the death and destruction that giant robots would wreak on Earth, and across the known universe. Besides people dying amidst a giant robot duel's collateral damage, it was revealed that an entire alternate Earth was annihilated when an enemy robot died.
Bokurano's darkest twists were that anyone who piloted Zearth died, and that the giant robot fights were part of some twisted multiverse "game" that put a pilot's planet and species on the line. While Kana Ushiro was spared from piloting Zearth at the last second and Earth was saved, billions of people from countless realities were still massacred.
1 Devilman Crybaby
Death Toll: Everyone on Earth and Hell across multiple time loops
The only thing worse than Devilman Crybaby ending with the Biblical end of the world was the revelation that it was doomed to happen over and over again. Worse, this cycle of death and destruction will continue for eons to come. This was all to punish Satan, who was imprisoned in Earth's time loops by God as punishment for his rebellion.
When Akira Fudo's friend-turned-nemesis Ryo Asuka remembered he was Satan, he declared war on humanity and killed every living soul on Earth until he was the only one left alive. It was only then he realized the folly of his evil, and that he was cursed to repeat the cycle. In every loop, billions of people and demons died for Satan's ego.
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