10 Most Shocking and Disturbing Anime Endings That Left Fans Reeling

A joyous, satisfying conclusion is something most fans envision for the characters when starting on a journey with a new anime series. However, far from every story is destined to end on a high note, and not every anime hero gets to be rewarded at the end of their strenuous adventure. Happy endings are, undeniably, gratifying. Yet, there is a place in anime for finales much more tragic and shocking, sometimes to the point of deeply disturbing the audience.

A cathartic culmination that leaves behind more despair than happiness is often much more memorable and impactful than a predictable storybook ending. If executed well, a disconcerting, unsettling finale can be just as perfect for a series, especially one that tackles heavier themes. From all-time best cruel endings to frustratingly unexpected dark finales, these are anime’s most shocking final cataclysms.

Shiki Ends With Neither Side of the Vampire-Human Conflict Winning

A vampire horror-mystery that pits supernatural monsters against the villagers of a rural Japanese town, Shiki might seem like an ordinary horror flick, yet it develops into something much more harrowing. When the townsfolk’s hatred and paranoia peak, a brutal witch hunt against the vampires plummets the village of Sotoba into madness in the series’ final act.

The massacre at the end of Shiki is not just bloody and hard to stomach — its most devastating part hides in the implications of the villagers’ actions. As Sotoba descends into chaos, viewers come face-to-face with humanity at the limit of its savagery. And, while Shiki’s vampires are hardly innocent heroes, fans can’t help but feel sympathy for them as Sotoba becomes a war-ravaged wreckage filled with bodies of guiltless and culpable without distinction.

Space Runaway Ideon Has a Classic Apocalyptic Finale

The creator of the Gundam franchise, Yoshiyuki Tomino, has earned a humorous nickname, “Kill ‘Em All Tomino,” for his affinity for tragic finales. However, even the master of dark mecha anime outdid himself in Space Runaway Ideon. At first, the anime appears rather generic, chronicling humanity’s struggle against a violent alien race, the Buff Clan.Yet, the series’ old-school mecha charm doesn’t hold up till the end.

Space Runaway Ideon culminates in a shockingly bleak manner, with Ideon annihilating humanity and the Buff Clan. The alternate conclusion presented in The Ideon: Be Invoked movie’s alternate ending covers the same basic plot points, yet manages to be even more harrowing and cruel. Confusing, abrupt, yet infinitely impactful, Space Runaway Ideon’s finale was so despairing, no wonder it inspired Hideaki Anno in the creation of his own dark mecha classic, Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Berserk 1997’s Finale Adapts One of the Most Catastrophic Calamities in Anime History

Revered as one of the most acclaimed dark fantasy epics ever created, Berserk is a bleak story throughout. The 1997 version of Berserk, however, while having its fair share of soul-crushing moments, covers one of the happiest parts in Guts’ ruinous journey, the Golden Age Arc. Regrettably, the simple joys Guts enjoyed with the Band of the Hawk make the anime’s finale that much more harrowing.

Broken and desperate, Griffith activates the Crimson Behelit, offering his friends as a bloody sacrifice for his rebirth as Femto. The Band of the Hawk perishes in agony, while Guts and Casca undergo such intense physical and psychological torture, neither of them ever recovers from Griffith’s betrayal. The ending of Berserk 1997 is so disturbing, it could’ve ranked way higher on this list, if not for the fact that the Eclipse is, in fact, just the beginning of Guts’ cruel and violent story.

Grave of the Fireflies’ Ending Is Utterly Devastating

Studio Ghibli is an anime powerhouse known primarily for its magical, family-friendly fantasy movies. Yet, Grave of the Fireflies, a grounded and tragic war drama chronicling two siblings’ fruitless attempts to survive in the war-ravaged Japanese countryside, is an outlier in Ghibli’s uplifting film catalog. Grave of the Fireflies is one of the most gut-wrenching anime films ever made, the harrowing impact of its story not even lessened by the fact that viewers know Seita and Setsuko’s fate from the start.

Regardless of how desperately the siblings try to withstand the horrors of cruelty, hopelessness, and starvation, both of them are doomed, with Setsuko succumbing to illness first, and Seita starving to death shortly after. The experience of watching these innocent kids fall victim to war’s indifferent brutality is tormenting, yet the film itself provides extremely valuable commentary on war and its consequences.

Texhnolyze Is the Most Nihilistic Anime Ever Made

Texhnolyze is cruel and hopeless not just at the end — the entire anime is notorious for its excruciating bleakness and nihilistic thematic core. Narrating the gradual self-destruction of a violence-torn underground city of Lux, Texhnolyze is a surreal, convoluted philosophical meditation on the darkest aspects of human nature, and its plot only gets bleaker as it progresses.

Predictably, Texhnolyze doesn’t have a joyous ending, culminating with Lux’s destruction and the death of most of its inhabitants, including Ichise, the protagonist. From visuals to character arcs to story, everything about Texhnolyze has an eerie, disturbing feel to it, yet all of its despondence serves a purpose — if not for the characters, then for the audience, who are challenged to find meaning in Texhnolyze’s esoteric, anguish-filled finale.

Devilman Crybaby’s Climax Sees the World Completely Destroyed

Manga author Go Nagai is revered as the master of apocalyptic fiction, the most impactful in his impressive catalog of bleak works being Devilman. The disturbing finale of Devilman is iconic, influencing many similar apocalyptic ends in anime and manga. Yet, it hasn’t been brought to screens in its full cathartic glory until Masaaki Yuasa’s 2018 Devilman Crybaby reimagining of the original series.

The tale of the titular Devilman, Akira Fudo, and his fight against demonkind ends in an unprecedentedly mortifying fashion, with Akira’s best friend, Ryo, revealing himself as Satan and obliterating all life on Earth in his fight against Devilman. Most devastatingly, after their world-destroying, calamitous battle ends, Satan realizes that he has killed Akira too late, his final moments spent in overwhelming despair.

The End of Evangelion Is the Most Harrowing of Evangelion’s Many Endings

Hideaki Anno’s Neon Genesis Evangelion is a series that haunts all of its fans, of whom there are many. An experimental deconstruction of the mecha genre that gets progressively more distressing the more viewers see the characters’ psyches and the world around them crumble, Evangelion is a kind of anime one can’t watch without being emotionally affected.

The original TV anime ending, for all of its convolutedness and controversial surreality, was cathartic but somewhat hopeful. The same, however, does not apply to The End of Evangelion movie. Showcasing the Human Instrumentality as it occurred outside of Shinji’s mind, the film concludes with all of humanity merged into a single amorphous existence. At the end, only Shinji and Asuka survive, hopeless in the face of the world coming to an end.

Saikano’s Budding Romance Is Doomed to End in Tragedy

Saikano starts off rather innocently, with a timid girl, Chise, entering her first serious relationship with her antisocial classmate, Shuji. However, the bliss of getting through the awkwardness of blooming love doesn’t last for Chise and Shuji, as the girl is revealed to have been turned into the “ultimate weapon” — a war machine destined to gradually lose her humanity.

Saikano is a depressing series that gets only more soul-crushing the more hopeful and sweet moments between the main characters viewers witness. Yet, the ending of this already devastating story could crush even the most stoic fans. Predictably, Saikano culminates in tragedy, with the whole world being annihilated, including Chise, while Shuji, in the cruelest of mercies, is left alive to, without a doubt, perish in a slow and agonizing way.

School Days’ Shocking Finale Is the Entire Reason the Anime Became a Hated Classic

While School Days would appear to unassuming viewers as nothing more than a mediocre romance series at first glance, most fans are aware of it as the controversial title-holder of anime’s most shocking twist ending. School Days develops rather normally for its entire run, only to, at the last moment, turn into a gory bloodbath.

The series’ central love triangle is resolved in the most radical way imaginable — blinded by jealousy, one of the love interests, Sekai, murders the protagonist, Makoto, only to later be killed by her rival, Kotonoha. Such a twist left most first-time viewers oblivious to the anime’s reputation baffled and disturbed. Yet, over the years, School Days turned into something of a notorious classic, with some fans genuinely finding its appalling finale genius.

Midori Is Rightfully Regarded as the Most Disturbing Anime of All Time

Midori, also known as Shojo Tsubaki, is an anime film of significant infamy. A passion project of a single creator, this low-budget movie is a disturbing work of horror banned in multiple countries. The story of little orphaned girl Midori, who is coerced into traveling with a freak show troupe, is as off-putting as anime gets, with the heroine’s life as a part of the troupe consisting of nothing but physical and psychological torture, sexual abuse, and unimaginable cruelty.

A film as appalling as Midori, obviously, ends in a fittingly horrific way, with the girl failing to escape her awful fate at the last moment, thinking herself abandoned by the only person she trusted and succumbing to a despairing mental breakdown. Watching Midori is torturous from start to finish, yet the cruel ending truly seals it as the most disturbing anime of all time.