Hello and welcome back to 13 Days of Otakutober! Can. You. Believe. That we have made it this far? Like gosh darn we are already on day twelve of 13 Days of Otakutober, which means Halloweeb is nearly upon us! I’m not going to talk too much in the intro here, and get straight to it since I’m sure we all have spooky things planned for this weekend. So last year we talked about candy pop horror anime, but today–today I’m going to share with you some anime about ghosts that are actually scary. Without further ado, let’s get into it!
So when it comes to horror–I don’t find it all that scary. Now, when I say that, I mean horror in all forms. Books, movies, anime, podcasts, webtoons–it’s hard for me to find something that is actually terrifying to me. For this reason, I don’t tend to watch a lot of ‘horror’ labeled things, because I’ve just been done so wrong that like–what’s the point? Naturally though, by not watching a plethora of horror, I am clearly self-fulfilling my own prophecy here. But still, with what limited knowledge I do have–here are the horrors I actually find to be kind of scary for once.
So the first thing is I feel like I should mention in this kind of post is Ghost Hunt. Ghost hunt is maybe not as scary as my other choice, but I think it’s really creepy. This series is about a high school girl who ends up a paranormal investigator’s assistant (okay but also like the dude she’s being an assistant to is also a high schooler). They hunt ghosts and investigate paranormal happenings along with some interesting characters (including a monk and a shrine maiden–I think it was a shrine maiden?). The thing that really gets me here, is that Ghost Hunt does a great job of setting up the investigations to actually be unsettling. When I first watched it, circa like 2007/2008, only a few sequences actually gave me nightmares. Still, it is certainly one of the more “scary” ghost stories in anime that I have watched.
But of course when talking about actual, scary anime, there’s no way we can’t talk about the absolute legend himself Junji Ito and lucky for us all, there is an anime called the Junji Ito Collection. Which, yes. Is scary. It’s actually very scary. Honestly, Ito never disappoints when it comes to his stories. Per the name, this is a collection of shorts and not a cohesive story that starts and ends. I mean, every individual episode is a story that starts and ends (sometimes stories last two episodes), but there are no overarching themes. I honestly feel like when it comes to creepy anime — or manga for that manner, Junji Ito has to be my go-to for recommendations, and my go-to for the spooky season. In particular, I like a dolls hellish burial as well as scarecrows. But of course I feel like this is a cop our for ghost stories, simply because Ito doesn’t work solely on ghost tales. No, he explore other horrific and scary phenomenon for his shorts. Each is different though, and each is good.
To be honest, that’s all I got. There’s not a lot that scares me (again perhaps I need to watch more), or even creeps me out. But I am always looking out for something to give that effect. If you have an anime similar in creep factor to either one of these anime, please let me know! And I def didn’t use day 12 as a way to gather spooky anime recommendations. But if you have em, drop em in the comments below! And don’t forget to join us tomorrow on Halloweeb for the FINAL day of 13 Days of Otakutober!
Stay weebtastic
xoxo
Luna
P.S. my photos for the banner did not want to imbed properly, so expect me to correct this tomorrow! Thanks for reading
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