Halloween is just around the corner, so time to get into the right mood.
If you haven't started decorating your house yet, start with the content you consume. There are lots of gothic-themed anime — they let you feel this festive spooky vibe and get engulfed by it.
These are our picks for that.
The Wallflower (Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge)
The main character in this romantic comedy, Nakahara Sunako, accepts the dark aesthetic and enjoys some stuff that her housemates, four handsome boys, can't stomach. She has a few skeletons in her room, a medical mannequin with organs on display, she enjoys gory horrors and often talks seriously about death, magic, and dark rituals, sending chills down the spines of those who witness it. Also, the high school that the main characters attend has frilly gothic lolita uniforms for girls.
Trinity Blood
The destruction of the world brought with it some vampires, and that split humanity in two: one side allied with them and the other decided to fight them. This story relies heavily on gothic aesthetics, crosses and frills and architecture, while also exploring the intricate politics of the disturbed and broken world.
More vampires! But here the plot is centered not around politics involving them, but around mystery and bloody horror, adding a bit of suspense and detective component. Shiki, however, doesn't romanticize vampires — or shiki, as they are called in the series; instead, it offers a deep plot with a certain philosophy and nods to European vampire tales and aesthetics.
Vampire Hunter D
A mix of western and sci-fi, this show follows a traveling half-vampire who hunts his own kind, those who commit atrocities against humans around them. It's gritty and dark, the main gothic elements in this one are the castles and the characters, all embracing the vampire tales in a very interesting way.
It's in the name. Gosick's plot is based on the events unfolding in a boarding school in Southern Europe in the 1920s, hence the gothic architecture and vibe. It's a detective story that adds a bit of mystery and romance to the equation, creating a narrative where supernatural stuff doesn't feel as supernatural as it can be. Music also adds to the gothic feeling, the classical and orchestral grandness supporting the visuals.
Castlevania
Never enough vampires. This story adapts a videogame Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse and follows Trevor Belmont, Alucard and Sypha Belnades who try to defend the nation of Wallachia from Dracula and those he recruited as his minions. Though not technically an anime, as it was produced by an American studio, the team includes some Japanese animators and uses some stylistic choices seen in anime, adapting them to the gothic-inspired story.
xxxHolic
This show is about Kimihiro Watanuki, who can see spirits and other supernatural creatures, and he's not a fan of that. Then a woman comes into the equation, one that promises to free him of this ability if he agrees to work in her store — a place that grants wishes to people. Overall mysterious mood and certain design choices make this an interesting story that mixes funny moments with creepy ones.
Vampire Knight
There's a school that has two types of students: regular human ones study in the daytime, the vampire ones — at night. It's the only place in the world where vampires and humans cohabit somehow peacefully, but it all changes when our heroine arrives and brings a lot of trouble by being too curious and sometimes too rash in her decisions. The style, however, is a staple in terms of gothic-themed anime: the architecture, the uniforms, and the general design of everything is filled with this aesthetic.
This fits a more modern gothic aesthetic and embraces the urban fantasy genre in terms of style and story, talking about flesh-eating ghouls blending into the human population and feeding off of it. The plot follows Kaneki Ken, who ends up as a weird ghoul-human hybrid and now has to learn how to balance these parts of him and survive the government's onslaught on ghouls. It's a gory and bloody series, one that was sadly poisoned by fumbled production, but the vibes are right.
The story revolves around Ganta, who was wrongfully accused of murdering his whole class on the trip to the prison that sometimes serves as an amusement park and ends up as a convict in the same prison. Ganta, however, learns that he has a weapon that is always with him — his blood, so now he has something that would help him survive in these circumstances. Gothic feels come from the general nightmarish situation Ganta ends up in and the overall design of the prison. Horror elements and literal pools of blood also help to set the mood.
Halloween is just around the corner, so time to get into the right mood.
If you haven't started decorating your house yet, start with the content you consume. There are lots of gothic-themed anime — they let you feel this festive spooky vibe and get engulfed by it.
These are our picks for that.
The Wallflower (Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge)
The main character in this romantic comedy, Nakahara Sunako, accepts the dark aesthetic and enjoys some stuff that her housemates, four handsome boys, can't stomach. She has a few skeletons in her room, a medical mannequin with organs on display, she enjoys gory horrors and often talks seriously about death, magic, and dark rituals, sending chills down the spines of those who witness it. Also, the high school that the main characters attend has frilly gothic lolita uniforms for girls.
Trinity Blood
The destruction of the world brought with it some vampires, and that split humanity in two: one side allied with them and the other decided to fight them. This story relies heavily on gothic aesthetics, crosses and frills and architecture, while also exploring the intricate politics of the disturbed and broken world.
More vampires! But here the plot is centered not around politics involving them, but around mystery and bloody horror, adding a bit of suspense and detective component. Shiki, however, doesn't romanticize vampires — or shiki, as they are called in the series; instead, it offers a deep plot with a certain philosophy and nods to European vampire tales and aesthetics.
Vampire Hunter D
A mix of western and sci-fi, this show follows a traveling half-vampire who hunts his own kind, those who commit atrocities against humans around them. It's gritty and dark, the main gothic elements in this one are the castles and the characters, all embracing the vampire tales in a very interesting way.
It's in the name. Gosick's plot is based on the events unfolding in a boarding school in Southern Europe in the 1920s, hence the gothic architecture and vibe. It's a detective story that adds a bit of mystery and romance to the equation, creating a narrative where supernatural stuff doesn't feel as supernatural as it can be. Music also adds to the gothic feeling, the classical and orchestral grandness supporting the visuals.
Castlevania
Never enough vampires. This story adapts a videogame Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse and follows Trevor Belmont, Alucard and Sypha Belnades who try to defend the nation of Wallachia from Dracula and those he recruited as his minions. Though not technically an anime, as it was produced by an American studio, the team includes some Japanese animators and uses some stylistic choices seen in anime, adapting them to the gothic-inspired story.
xxxHolic
This show is about Kimihiro Watanuki, who can see spirits and other supernatural creatures, and he's not a fan of that. Then a woman comes into the equation, one that promises to free him of this ability if he agrees to work in her store — a place that grants wishes to people. Overall mysterious mood and certain design choices make this an interesting story that mixes funny moments with creepy ones.
Vampire Knight
There's a school that has two types of students: regular human ones study in the daytime, the vampire ones — at night. It's the only place in the world where vampires and humans cohabit somehow peacefully, but it all changes when our heroine arrives and brings a lot of trouble by being too curious and sometimes too rash in her decisions. The style, however, is a staple in terms of gothic-themed anime: the architecture, the uniforms, and the general design of everything is filled with this aesthetic.
This fits a more modern gothic aesthetic and embraces the urban fantasy genre in terms of style and story, talking about flesh-eating ghouls blending into the human population and feeding off of it. The plot follows Kaneki Ken, who ends up as a weird ghoul-human hybrid and now has to learn how to balance these parts of him and survive the government's onslaught on ghouls. It's a gory and bloody series, one that was sadly poisoned by fumbled production, but the vibes are right.
The story revolves around Ganta, who was wrongfully accused of murdering his whole class on the trip to the prison that sometimes serves as an amusement park and ends up as a convict in the same prison. Ganta, however, learns that he has a weapon that is always with him — his blood, so now he has something that would help him survive in these circumstances. Gothic feels come from the general nightmarish situation Ganta ends up in and the overall design of the prison. Horror elements and literal pools of blood also help to set the mood.
