Interest Stacks

A landmark show that's philosophical, psychological, dark, and weird. It certainly deserves a watch

Dark, contemplative, and at times outright hostile to the viewer, but with a well-defined environment and a deep double-dose of that atmosphere.

A philosophical and dark road trip, with all the held stares and dark secrets you'd want out of a show in this bracket.

What at first appears to be almost an anthology of tangentially-connected paranormal stories comes together into a spider's web dripping with the long shadows and impersonal menace that best defines this stack

Cleaner and clearer than its predecessor, the 2019 Boogiepop loses some of the atmosphere, but in turn gives a story (or series of stories) that's a little easier on the viewer. A good way to ease into the material.

Consider this to stand for the whole Garden of Sinners franchise. Unlike Tsukihime (which in its anime form is just incredibly lame) or Fate (which focuses more on epic battles), Garden of Sinners is a take on Nasu's urban fantasy multiverse that's as bleak and tortured as the title would suggest. The third movie, Remaining Sense of Pain, may not be the most twistedly atmospheric of the lot, but it's quite good and can almost certainly be watched on its own.

Famously strange in its animation for a famously strange source material, Bakemonogatari is supported by equal parts text, close ups of everybody's cornea, wordplay, and conceptual abnormalities. The presentation pushes it over the edge in to this list, coming across more as psychological horror than as the school harem affair an imitator might be.

Often slow-paced and usually quiet, the Mushishi series deals with various supernatural cases and the attempts to solve them.

Even more than its predecessor Evangelion (which almost made the list), RahXephon maintains a melancholic mood and atmosphere that supports its talk of philosophy, identity, and mistrust.

If you want your dark, quiet, and sometimes brooding atmposphere to be punctuated by ye olde ultra violence, Blood-C is the show for you.

Less depressive than many shows on this list, Gunslinger Girl deals with the harsh realities of cyborg assassins made to fight terrorists. There's less combat than you might expect, with a heavy emphasis on the psychology of the girls in question

Though usually a mecha brawler in the end, The Big O earns its entry with its heavy film noir inspiration and beautiful shots of a desolate world.

This is one where you can tell the studio that did Bakemonogatari was at it again. The sometimes disjointed nature of the story and its themes also lead to increasing the sense of strangeness in the world.

In a sense this can come off as Diet Miyazaki, and overall that's how I regard it, but the focus on death, grieving, loss, and time is what gives it what little claim it might have against its greater conceptual sires.

It's the end of the world, and two girls travel onward, seeking to move through the quiet wreck of civilization. The slight "cute girls doing cute things" aspect helps take the edge off what would otherwise be an extremely grim afair, and unlike typical CGDCT this one will entertain very heavy talks about meaning, death, and other existential topics that fit perfectly with the quiet road trip.