T5W#270-Top 5 Scariest Scenes in Anime

Ah October, the months of ghouls, goblins, Michael Jackson’s Thriller being played on loop and Cosplayers treating the holiday like any other day…cause everyday for a Cosplayer is Halloween.  Anime is chalk filled with the scariest of the scary, the most nightmare inducing imagery you could ever imagine, probably why I consider the Japanese true masters of the horror genre.  Once you catch even a glimpse of these terrors, it’s impossible to forget them, no matter how hard you might try.  So, for today’s Top 5 Wednesday, I’ll be counting down the Top 5 Scariest Scenes in Anime.  BE WARNED: I haven’t seen all of these but know enough to go into detail about all of them and some of these are pretty squeamish.  So this is your warning going forward (man I don’t think ive ever done that for a Top 5 before, crazy).

#5-Tetsuo’s Transformation (Akira)

By far one of the best scenes in Akira and one of the most iconic transformation sequences of all time, this moment sees Tetsuo’s powers finally grow beyond control and thus he grows beyond his own control as a result.  It’s tough to describe just what he turns into.  It’s like a giant newborn baby made up of literally everything you could possibly think of.  The look on Kaneda’s face, backed by those chill inducing vocals from the Geinoh Yamashirogumi sum up such a sight perfectly.  You thought Tetsuo was a terror before hand…wait til you get a load of him now and pray he doesn’t accidentally swallow you in the process.

 

#4-Demonic Shish Kabobs (Blood-C) 

Blood-C is on the review docket for 2021 (it might even be next October’s Horror Anime of Choice, wink wink).  I wont spoil too much but while this scene feels over the top in terms of content, the actual carnage is enough to make anyone lose their last meal.  As dozens of weird giant bunny creatures pounce through a town, everyone is literally getting torn apart in some over the top fashion, including being grinded together like a blender or sucked from a stick like Shish Kabobs.  It’s very, very tough to watch and it might not make Blood-C one of my all time favorite Anime…but we’ll get to that next year, don’t worry.

 

#3-The Eclipse (Berserk)

This is a finale so brutally horrific, it’s made me not want to touch Berserk in the slightest.  But I know the stories and caught the teeniest of glimpses of this infamous Series Finale to understand why this was a gut punch to Anime fans worldwide.  With his body and spirit broken by torture, Griffith strikes a deal with the God Hand to become their missing finger and attain Demonic Godhood.  The price: Sacrificing his loyal soldiers.  It’s the definition of a hopeless battle with main characters getting slaughtered left, right and center and some suffering fates far worse than death. It’s a miracle that Guts survives the bloodbath at all.  Scarier yet is that’s where they left the original TV Anime.  Only Manga fans would get to proceed with Guts’ understandable quest for revenge…until we got that God awful sequel Anime a couple decades later.

 

#2-All of Midori (Midori)

Sure Berserk’s cast getting mercilessly killed by demons is a tough watch…but at least US fans got to see it.  1992’s Midori is allegedly a film so intense, disgusting and just plain crazy that is has been banned from our shores.  I first heard about this one at an Otakon horror panel a couple of years ago and the small segment I saw was only a taste of the insanity Midori was capable of unleashing.  Then again, you take a premise involving an orphan girl getting taken in by a Carnival Rob Zombie would love to bring to the big screen and show a scene of what happens to said girls only friends (a pack of puppies)…and you don’t wanna know what happens next.

 

#1-Hiroshima (Barefoot Gen)

 No fantasy creatures or insane carnies in this one.  No, this horrifying scene is straight from the history books.  The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are eternal tragedies and the only thing more horrifying than knowing they happened is experiencing the event from the eyes of someone who miraculously survived.  The destruction, the devastation, the images of a population wiped out in a sea of fire.  That’s Barefoot Gen and the actual Hiroshima bombing is no joke, one of the saddest Anime sequences I have ever seen.  Sometimes, the true monster is Human, plain and simple.