10 Anime Series All Horror Fans Need To Watch

You think Hannibal Lecter is twisted? How about Norman Bates from Psycho? Think again, they've got nothing on some anime creations.

Anime isn't just big-eyed girls, screaming musclemen and fan-service: it's a medium, filled with many genres for many different audiences. There's dark crime series, supernatural stories, aliens, coming of age stories, medieval fantasies, magic, technologically advanced dystopias... Many even have a combination of several of those elements and more besides. There's something for everyone, and hundreds of launch-points for new fans.

And if you enjoy a good psychological horror but have never actually watched anime before, there are plenty of excellent and entertaining series to watch that'll keep you on the edge of your seat and cater to your tastes. They will satisfy the exact same tastes as good intellectual horrors, leaving the same marks and returning to you late at night. You want scares? You got 'em.

Many of the characters in these series are as complex and disturbing as the greatest horror movie icons and exhibit the same moral grey areas to make you feel conflicted and confused.

Giving a whole new meaning to those creepy Internet urban legends, Hell Girl first premiered in 2005, and centres around a website known as the Hell Correspondence. The site can only be accessed at midnight by those who are aware of the urban legend and nurse a powerful grudge.

They enter the name of the one they want sent to hell and they're soon contacted by Ai Enma, the Hell Girl. She gives them a straw doll, and if they pull the red thread the person whose name they entered will be sent to Hell, with the caveat being that the person who entered the name will also be sent to Hell when they die.

Each episode focuses on the life of someone who contacts Hell Girl, from a high school girl being relentlessly stalked and kidnapped to a girl whose dog is killed because she might have accidentally stumbled upon a paranoid neighbor's dark secret. The individual stories are stressful to watch, yet they remain crucially relatable.

Officially classified as horror fiction, Hell Girl possesses all the elements of horror: it's creepy, it's supernatural and there's a compelling mystery behind it all. And on top of that, there's also a complex psychological element integrated into the horror.