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15 Anime Where Everything Goes Wrong

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Nazarii Verbitskiy

TV Shows & Movies - July 31st 2026, 20:30 GMT+2

School Days 2007 — 15. School Days (2007)

Makoto Itou begins with the sort of problem many harem protagonists would consider a blessing: more than one girl wants him. Unfortunately, he handles affection with the ethical discipline of a raccoon in an unlocked pantry. His lies, cheating, and cowardice turn a routine school romance into a slow-motion social collapse, while Kotonoha and Sekai absorb the damage until neither can pretend everything is normal. School Days earns its infamous ending because the disaster is not random; every terrible choice has been carefully stacking up. | © TNK

14. Hellsing Ultimate (2006-2012)

London does not merely have a bad night in Hellsing Ultimate; it is fed into an industrial shredder run by vampires, Nazi remnants, and religious zealots. The Hellsing Organization unleashes Alucard as its monstrous answer to Millennium, only for the conflict to grow into a three-sided massacre once the Vatican joins in. Civilian survival becomes a rounding error, landmarks burn, and nearly every faction mistakes escalation for strategy. The series is gloriously excessive, but beneath the gunfire is a simple lesson: immortal grudges make terrible urban planners. | © Geneon Entertainment

Corpse Party Tortured Souls — 13. Corpse Party: Tortured Souls (2013)

A friendship ritual called “Sachiko Ever After” sounds dubious even before the floor opens and drops a group of students into a haunted elementary school. Corpse Party: Tortured Souls then proves that the name was less a warning than a full confession. Separated inside Heavenly Host, the classmates find vengeful children, rotting corridors, and escape rules designed with outright contempt for human optimism. Its four episodes race from one mutilation to the next, sometimes sacrificing depth for shock, yet the basic nightmare lands: they wanted to stay friends forever, and the universe took that request literally. | © Asread

Lucy from Elfen Lied — 12. Elfen Lied (2004)

Elfen Lied announces its intentions with an escape sequence that turns a research facility into red confetti. Lucy, a Diclonius armed with invisible vectors, reaches the outside world only after a head injury produces the childlike Nyu personality, placing her in the care of Kouta and Yuka. That fragile domestic calm is surrounded by experimentation, buried trauma, and an institution determined to recover its weapon. The gore made the anime notorious, but its nastiest idea is quieter: nearly every act of cruelty creates the conditions for the next one. | © Arms

Gantz anime — 11. Gantz (2004)

Kei Kurono and Masaru Kato die while trying to save a man from an oncoming train, which should at least qualify them for a peaceful afterlife. Instead, a black sphere drafts them into timed alien hunts, hands them advanced weapons with barely an explanation, and fills each mission with strangers who range from heroic to spectacularly useless. Gantz treats death as paperwork and survival as a points program, stripping away any comforting idea that decency will be rewarded. Even victory feels provisional, because the next assignment is already loading. | © Gonzo

10. 86 (2021-2022)

The Republic of San Magnolia has solved war by removing human soldiers from the battlefield—at least according to its propaganda. The supposedly unmanned Juggernauts are actually piloted by the persecuted Eighty-Six, teenagers pushed beyond the city walls and quietly sent toward extinction. Lena’s attempt to command the Spearhead Squadron with basic human empathy runs into a state built to treat them as disposable equipment. 86 is not misery for decoration; every casualty exposes how clean language, distant screens, and administrative euphemisms can make an atrocity feel comfortably routine. | © A-1 Pictures

9. Another (2012)

Class 3-3 has a sensible plan for surviving its annual curse: pretend one student does not exist and refuse to explain anything clearly to the new transfer. Astonishingly, this system has flaws. Koichi’s interest in the ignored Mei Misaki coincides with a chain of grotesque accidents, turning umbrellas, staircases, and ordinary school architecture into potential murder weapons. Another works best before the answers arrive, when every strained conversation suggests the whole classroom is hiding a body. Its later excesses become almost comic, but the atmosphere never stops feeling terminally unlucky. | © P.A. Works

Re Zero — 8. Re − Starting Life in Another World (2016–)

Subaru Natsuki receives one useful power after landing in another world: when he dies, time rewinds to an unseen checkpoint. The catch is that dying still hurts, remembering it is his burden alone, and the save point has no customer-service desk. Re turns a convenient isekai mechanic into psychological torture as Subaru watches friends perish, tests solutions through repeated failure, and gradually cracks under knowledge nobody else shares. His victories matter precisely because the series makes him earn them across timelines littered with versions of events that ended horribly. | © White Fox

7. Banana Fish (2018)

Banana Fish begins as a gangland mystery and keeps discovering deeper basements beneath the first one. Ash Lynx’s investigation into the phrase his damaged brother keeps repeating leads to a drug, a political conspiracy, and the criminal network of Dino Golzine, the man who abused and groomed him. Eiji offers Ash a glimpse of tenderness beyond survival, which only gives the story something more precious to threaten. The anime never confuses suffering with weakness; its tragedy comes from watching an extraordinarily capable young man find that competence cannot undo what powerful adults built around him. | © MAPPA

6. Made in Abyss (2017-2022)

The Abyss is the prettiest terrible decision in anime: a vast hole filled with impossible creatures, ancient relics, and scenery that practically begs children to descend into it. Riko accepts the invitation with Reg, hoping to find her mother, while the Curse ensures that climbing back up can mean sickness, mutilation, or worse. Made in Abyss weaponizes its storybook designs against the audience; round faces and soft colors make each new cruelty feel even less forgivable. Exploration usually promises discovery, but here every answer comes attached to a biological invoice someone must pay. | © Kinema Citrus

Higurashi when they cry 1 — 5. Higurashi: When They Cry (2006-2021)

Hinamizawa’s cotton-drifting festival arrives with food stalls, games, and an unnervingly dependable body count. Keiichi’s new friends seem harmless until paranoia, old grudges, and the village’s buried history start rearranging them into victims and killers. Higurashi: When They Cry repeatedly resets its nightmare, showing familiar scenes from altered angles until apparent madness becomes a puzzle with rules. Its best trick is letting one tiny suspicion spread through a close-knit community until friendship begins to look like evidence and innocence becomes an impossible alibi. | © Studio Deen

Devilman crybaby 2018 — 4. Devilman Crybaby (2018)

Akira Fudo merges with the demon Amon to fight an inhuman threat, retaining the compassion that makes him both humanity’s best defense and its easiest scapegoat. Ryo Asuka later tells the world demons are real, a disclosure handled with all the care of throwing a grenade into a crowd. Social media panic, fear, and tribal violence accomplish what claws cannot, pushing civilization toward an apocalypse powered by ordinary people. Devilman Crybaby is merciless because the final catastrophe depends less on demonic strength than on humans being given an invisible enemy and immediately turning on one another. | © Science SARU

3. Akira (1988)

Neo-Tokyo is already held together by riot police, biker gangs, corrupt officials, and postwar concrete when Tetsuo acquires psychic power. Giving an angry teenager the force of a natural disaster would be enough; the military responds by treating him as both test subject and bomb, while Kaneda charges after him with a motorcycle and heroic overconfidence. Akira makes collapse look astonishingly beautiful, but the spectacle is rooted in abandonment and resentment. The city was built over an old catastrophe, then everyone responsible behaved as though foundations never remember. | © Tokyo Movie Shinsha

2. Berserk (1997–1998)

Guts finally finds something resembling a home with the Band of the Hawk, which in Berserk is the narrative equivalent of placing a vase near the edge of a table. Griffith’s ambition lifts the mercenaries from muddy battlefields into royal favor, but his inability to accept Guts’s independence triggers imprisonment, torture, and one of anime’s most infamous betrayals. The Eclipse does not merely kill characters; it poisons every earlier victory by revealing the price attached to Griffith’s dream. No triumph survives, no loyalty goes unpunished, and destiny arrives wearing a smile. | © OLM

1. Texhnolyze (2003)

Texhnolyze opens by taking an arm and a leg from underground prizefighter Ichise, then somehow treats that as the optimistic portion of his week. Fitted with experimental prosthetics, he becomes entangled in the factions fighting over Lux, a subterranean city whose political order is decomposing faster than its machinery. There is no grand villain to defeat, only exhausted systems, shrinking possibilities, and people accelerating a collapse they can already see. Plenty of anime visit the end of the world; Texhnolyze studies the population that has stopped believing tomorrow deserves to be saved. | © Madhouse

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The average anime hero gets punched through a mountain, unlocks a suspiciously convenient new power, and saves the day before the credits. The characters below apparently missed that meeting. These 15 anime where everything goes wrong pile bad decisions, cruel timing, and genuine catastrophe onto people who were already having a difficult week. From doomed romances to civilization-ending mistakes, they make failure far more gripping than another perfectly timed victory.

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The average anime hero gets punched through a mountain, unlocks a suspiciously convenient new power, and saves the day before the credits. The characters below apparently missed that meeting. These 15 anime where everything goes wrong pile bad decisions, cruel timing, and genuine catastrophe onto people who were already having a difficult week. From doomed romances to civilization-ending mistakes, they make failure far more gripping than another perfectly timed victory.