Tired of brainless slugfests between overpowered characters? Bored by high school love confessions in coming of age romance? Sick of watching yet another slacker get isakai’d away to a fantasy world where his most perverse desires come true? It sounds like you need something smart, a “thinking man’s choice” of anime. What you need is a psychological thriller – heart-pounding cat and mouse games between brilliant minds. The punches thrown here are intellectual, not physical! Enemies aren’t outmatched through strength, but outmaneuvered through wit! In these anime, it’s the nerdy ones that get ahead! These are the ten best psychological thriller anime ever made – your IQ will rise at least five points with every episode you watch.
Death Note
The poster child of psychological thriller anime, Death Note is a dark academia death match between teen geniuses. Brilliant but bored high schooler Light Yagami stumbles across a mysterious notebook on campus, and after touching it, he’s visited by a gloriously goth god of death. The shinigami Ryuk tells Ligth that any person whose name is written in the notebook will die, and Light takes it upon himself to go on a criminal killing murder spree – all to become god of a new, perfect world. Though Light believes that the ends justify the means, Japanese law enforcement is less convinced, so they deploy an equally intelligent teenager to track him down. Watching Death Note is like having a front row seat in the mind of child prodigies, Light and his rival L are each attempting to stay twelve moves ahead of the other – most are lucky if we can stay one step ahead of ourselves.
Perfect Blue
Perhaps the greatest psychological thriller anime film ever made, Satoshi Kon’s Perfect Blue depicts the downward spiral of a Japanese pop idol. After quitting her music career to become an actress, the young Mima Kirigoe becomes convinced that she’s being hunted by a stalker. As her paranoia rises, lines between reality and nightmare begin to blur in Mima’s mind. Are the apparitions visiting her actually real? Or all they all just in her head? What’s worse, being actually stalked by a crazed fan? Or going so insane that you just think you are? There are no easy answers for Mima, and figuring out the hard ones threaten to shatter the poor girl’s psyche for good.
Monster
Monster is the story of Kenzo Tenma, a man who once had it all. He once worked in one of Germany’s most prestigious hospitals, and was engaged to the director’s gorgeous daughter – then he made a decision that cost him everything. After saving the life of a child instead of a prominent politician, Kenzo saw his job and relationship crumble. But hey, at least he did the right thing, right? Wrong. The child that Kenzo saved grew up to be the one of the deadliest serial killers Germany has ever known, and so the disgraced Kenzo takes it upon himself to eliminate the monster he created. Deeply philosophical, Monster is an existential dive into evil itself. Serial killer Johan Liebert is an abyss straight out of a Nietzsche quote. As Kenzo stares into it, he feels a void opening up inside himself as well.
Psycho-Pass
Psycho-Pass is a cyberpunk thriller set in a world where crime has been nearly eliminated due to an advanced surveillance system that monitors peoples’ minds. Every citizen is given a “crime coefficient” – a numerical value that indicates their likelihood of breaking the law. If that number rises too high, the person deemed a “latent criminal” and greenlit for arrest or even elimination. The plot follows Akane Tsunemori, a young police officer assigned to carry out the will of the system with the help of government sanctioned latent criminals used as human bloodhounds. But what happens with a serial killer appears whose crime coefficient never rises above psychologically healthy levels? Big problems, that’s what. A mediation on morality and free will, Psycho-Pass is part detective thriller and part ethical experiment. Semi-ethical, at least.
Serial Experiments Lain
Serial Experiments Lain is a dive into the fragile psyche of Lain Iwakura, a middle schooler detached from both her family and her peers. Her eggshell mind threatens to crack entirely when she begins getting emails from a classmate. What’s weird about that? This classmate committed suicide not long ago. The emails claim that the not-so-dead girl’s consciousness has been uploaded into “The Wired” – a dark doppelgänger of the internet. According to the girl, she’s not alone in The Wired. In fact, she has found God deep within the digital realm. A darkly spiritual journey through cyberspace, Serial Experiments Lain provides a new meaning for the phrase deus ex machina – God in the machine. But is this a benevolent God worthy of worship? Or an Old Testament force of annihilation? Lain will surely find out.
Mononoke
A psychological detective series disguised as fantasy, Mononoke follows a mysterious man known as “The Medicine Seller” through a technicolor interpretation of Edo period Japan. This world is plagued by mononoke, spirits of deceased humans that have become malevolent in the afterlife. In order for the Medicine Seller to purge the spirit, he must first learn the details of its death. After understanding its motives, he can perform an exorcism – but first he’ll need to tease out the circumstances of its demise from those still living. It’s a haunting series about buried secrets and skeletons in the closet, where the true antagonists aren’t the mononoke themselves, but the still-breathing humans responsible for their creation.
The Promised Neverland
The Promised Neverland takes place in a picturesque orphanage where adorable children are trained in problem solving, then left to spend the rest of their day in pastoral bliss. What’s the problem with that? The problem is that the place isn’t an orphanage, it’s a farm. After the three oldest and most intelligent children figure out that they’d not being raised for adoption, but consumption, they use their problem solving skills to hatch a plan to escape. The result is a cat and mouse game between the kids and their adult caretakers, who intend to feed their intelligent brains to flesh eating demons. While the second season goes completely off the rails, the first season is psychological thriller perfection. Watch season one and then start in on the manga, you won’t be sorry you did.
Code Geass
Code Geass is essentially sci-fi Death Note, the story of a genius teen with a questionable relationship to morality. In an alternate future world where Japan has been conquered by the Holy Britannian Empire, a Britannian prince becomes involved in a revolution after being granted a mysterious power. Able to use the power of “Geass” to make a person perform any one command, Lelouch Lamperouge uses his considerable intellect to help the resistance movement overthrow the royal family. It’s a cyberpunk chess match where mech suit pilots are the pieces, and Lelouch is a young prodigy soon to become a grand master. But as Lelouch’s power grows, his relationship to ethics becomes tenuous at best. Will he lead the world toward freedom? Or become the very sort of tyrant he seeks to overthrow? Signs are pointing to the latter.
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Who would have guessed a series about teenagers using giant mech suits to battle Godzilla-sized aliens would be so intellectual? Neon Genesis Evangelion is a different breed. In a world where invading superbeings called “Angels” are laying waste to the planet, the Japanese government has come up with a solution: putting emotionally labile middle schoolers in skyscraper sized robots made out of repurposed Angel parts. Is this really the best idea? Depends on who you ask. For psychologically fragile pilot Shinji Ikari, the answer is a resounding “no.” A sci-fi coming of age drama, Neon Genesis Evangelion is a transcendental dive into higher realms of consciousness – though Shinji’s mind might not survive the trip.
Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor
When you think of plot devices that fit the psychological thriller genre, “gambling” isn’t the first word that comes to mind. Mull it over for a minute though, and you’ll see that it’s a perfect fit. Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor is the story of Kaiji Itō – a slacker who gambled away what little he had and now lives in poverty. One day, Kaiji is visited by a loan shark who presents him with both a problem and a solution: Kaiji owes a lot of money, but if he takes part in a high stakes gambling event on a private boat, he might be able to make his debt go away. After stepping onboard, his discovers the boat is filled with cash-strapped gamblers just like him, ready to risk it all in a series of games… with dire consequences. If you think this series is a rip off of Squid Game, you’re wrong – Squid Game is a rip off of Kaiji. Kaiji Itō was hemorrhaging money in the late 2000s, long before Seong Gi-hun was a glint in a loan-shark’s eye. Credit where credit is due – credit is all Kaiji’s got.
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