Every week, the Fandom Post community suggests and votes on a new Top 5 list about something in anime, most often from the current season. It’s our way of highlighting something fun or interesting or strange—or even meaningful—about what’s airing now, or about anime in general.
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As in most robust literary cultures, Japan loves mystery, from crime to horror, and it filters into most other genres and all mediums. In manga and anime it’s always played a strong part. Some of the early alternative manga from the late 60s was often based in crime, where a shocking reveal would solve some morbid affair. Long before Detective Conan/Case Closed, there was Ozamu Tezuka’s Black Jack medical mystery, beginning in the early 70s, and still spawning anime adaptations to this day. Sci-fi manga like the shoujo classic, They Were Eleven, from 1975, demonstrated the appeal and power of the genre in any setting. The second Urusei Yatsura movie, 1984’s Beautiful Dreamer, used mystery to heighten the surrealism of its storytelling. It is present, naturally enough, in any story where suspense is key. While it has always played a key part, after the adventure and sci-fi and fantasy shows of the 80s and 90s character-driven stories dedicated to a central mystery began to define the modern mystery genre.
Here are five mysteries, most from recent years, and two already a decade old. They manage to cover all the ways mystery makes anime work.
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#5: Dusk Maiden of Amnesia
Type: Supernatural Thriller. Also comedy. And…everything else.
Classic Japanese mystery in the light-horror vein, based inevitably on dealing with the ghost of some long-ago murdered soul in the place it’s attached. Like a school, in this case. “Amnesia” is the key here—Yuko, the ghost, doesn’t remember who killed her, or why, or how. But various legendary mysteries in the school revolve around her fate. The kicker being that she’s made herself president of the Paranormal Investigations Club to investigate all of it, with her (mortal) love interest, Teiichi, and the easily frightened Kirie, both of whom can see her, plus the energetic Momoe, who can’t see her. Hijinks ensue. Mysteries solved. Love confessed.
#4: Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
Type: Police procedural, hard boiled cyberpunk style.
In both SAC series, The Laughing Man and Individual Eleven, the principle is the same: Section 9 has to investigate, counteract, hunt down and stop a madman from wreaking havoc. The motives may be different, but through violent action, old fashioned detective work, and of course the hacking of computer systems (and people), the Ghost in the Shell TV series is not so surprisingly a philosophical and psychological mystery as much as straightforward investigation of cyber/political-crime. So much so that it’s not easy to know if you have the right answer to everything in the end.
#3: Paranoia Agent
Type: Good question.
Speaking of psychological mystery, and not having clear answers, Satoshi Kon’s only TV series is very mysterious, even slightly maddening, as you try to sort out who is who and who is doing what, and why. Shounen Bat, a.k.a. Li’l Slugger, an adolescent boogeyman attacking people on the street in seeming randomness looms over much of it, but trying to discover who or what he is—the police procedural side of the tale—only complicates things. The mystery is whether he’s cause or symptom, as each person involved is at a crossroads in his or her life. Paranoia Agent is the least straightforward on the list, but this mystery of the human condition is possibly the most powerful one.
#2: Rokka – Braves of the Six Flowers
Type: Closed door.
A mystery in the classic sense, known also as the “cozy” for appearing most often in old (often British) stories set in some remote mansion with guests over. Except Rokka takes place primarily in a magically sealed swamp, with a temple in its middle that holds the secret of the guests’ imprisonment. And those guests are seven divinely-chosen heroes on their way to save the world, were they not waylaid in this place, and were there not supposed to be only six of them. This is the most recent one on the list, airing in Summer, but it’s also the most unique, even with its classic formula. The reason is that, for the first two episodes, it seems nothing more than a straight fantasy adventure story full of eccentric characters and demon lords. Morphing that into a mystery of “Who’s the Fake” and figuring out how it was done and how to escape it, transforms it into a taut character drama where each person’s life, at one point or another, is at risk. And like those classic mysteries, every detail matters.
#1: Gosick
Type: Thriller/supernatural drama…with the usual relationship dramedy of any anime involving two characters like the above.
Or, Gosick‘s a beloved show for many, combining a rich setting and lively, engaging characters with a deep and dark mystery that pulls everything together even as it pulls the people in it apart. Like Dusk Maiden of Amnesia, this is the modern classic appeal of mystery in anime, with a character-based serial and linear story, where the mystery revolves around a main character’s backstory, and how that mystery affects the other characters around her. Unlike Dusk Maiden, and its light-horror roots, that mystery is not implicit in the beginning—it unfolds in fits and starts as points of character growth and world building. But make that central character a moody and brusque goth-loli, like Victorique, and it’s a sure hit.
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And that’s the Top 5 Favorite Anime Mysteries. Join us next week for a special staff edition Top 5 O’ The Season. To have a say in what makes it on the next list, check out the forum thread, read up on the rules, and join the Fandom Post Anime List Project today!