Anime to Watch if You Love Shows with Unexpected Dark Turns

It is not strange for anime to suddenly take an unexpected turn. There are a number of shows that begin in a cute and non-threatening manner but become much darker later on as the story progresses. It is now becoming common to subvert the audience’s expectations to surprise the viewers with completely unanticipated twists and turns. Although there is no shortage of such anime, today we look at some of the shows that became notorious for their sudden dark turns and deceptive appearances. All of the shows listed below are great, but they are certainly not for the faint of heart.

Higurashi When They Cry

The protagonist of Higurashi When They Cry is a teenager named Maebara Keiichi, who lives an ordinary life in a rural village called Hinamizawa. Although most series on the list don’t give a prior warning before taking a dark turn, this series is unique since the viewers are warned in the first episode. The vicious baseball bat murder at the start of the episode points to the abnormalities of Keiichi’s life. For the rest of the episode, the protagonist, the protagonist is shown to be living a normal life as he adjusts to his new school and friends. But as the story progresses, Keiichi gets to know about the curse of Oyashiro-sama.

The curse of Oyashiro-sama is the reason for the murder of a person and another’s strange disappearance. The series finally takes a much darker turn when two girls try to kill Keiichi using a needle in his food. Strangely, someone else tries to run him down with a van on the same day. From this point, the series gets darker and darker as characters savagely murder each other as they lose their sanity.

School-Live!

The series School-live introduces viewers to the happy and preppy protagonist, Yuki Takeya, a school who lives an ordinary life. However, her ordinary and mundane life is an intelligent cover for the harrowing things that are about to happen. The protagonist lives in the school since she is part of the School Living Club. In the first episode, Yuki, along with her friend Miki, looks for her bag that she left behind in a classroom. The viewers are tricked into believing that they are just normal teenagers living an ordinary life. However, soon it is revealed that all is not well, and whatever impression the viewer might have had of Yuki’s life is wrong.

It is revealed that Yuki’s happy life is just her imagination as she has been deluded into believing that she lives in a normal world. But, in reality, her world is, in fact, a post-apocalyptic hellscape that is overrun by zombies. The School Living Club is just an invention of a group of girls worried about the effect that truth will have on Yuki’s fragile psyche. The show suddenly becomes a survival series as the girls struggle to survive in the hostile world of zombies while protecting Yuki from the truth.

The Promised Neverland

The series follows three orphans, Emma, Norman, and Ray, who live in Grace Field House. The orphanage seems like a great place to live for the children. They have a beautiful garden, delicious food and spend most of their time playing around the house. Isabella, the house mother, is an intelligent and caring human being who is always there for the children. In the first episode, the children get excited when they know that Conny is getting adopted. At the same time, they know that he won’t live with them anymore, but they are happy since he will have a family that loves him.

However, after Conny leaves, the children find out that he has forgotten to take his toys with him. When they run to give it to him, they find Conny’s dead body at the exit, and the dark truth about the orphanage is finally revealed. It turns out that most of the kids there are just being raised as meat for the monsters who will eventually devour them. Unfortunately, even Isabella is with these monsters, and the series then focuses on the children who try to escape after they get to know the dark truth of Grace Field House.

Yuki Yuna is a Hero

The Sanshu Middle School’s Hero Club is committed to helping the needy. The protagonist, Yuki, and his friends are part of this club as they contribute to the greater good of society. Their world is turned upside down when one day they receive a mysterious message before they get transported to a new magical world. They are then told that they have been selected by Shinju, who need their help to fight the evil monster named Vertex. They have to protect Shinju and thus the world from the dark forces. The powerless girls surprisingly get the ability to transform themselves into powerful heroes using their phones.

But the series takes a dark turn when the girls realize that they are facing several medical issues such as loss of hearing and sight. The Hero System’s dark reality is finally revealed when they meet a girl in the hospital who tells them their transformation into powerful heroines, which eventually leads to a decline in bodily function. So, the girls are just a sacrifice for Shinju. The girls then struggle with the truth as they learn to come to terms with their life.

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