Summary
- Dark shojo anime offers a unique twist on traditional genres with sullen themes and complex relationships.
- Shojo anime often delves into darker subjects, challenging the traditional light and fluffy reputation.
- Toxic relationships, intricate family dynamics, and gothic romance are prevalent in many dark shojo titles.
Shojo anime has a reputation for being light and fluffy, with likable protagonists, swoony love interests, and plots that revolve around friendship and self-development. While those are all wonderful aspects of shojo anime, there are many shojo titles that have darker aspects to them. Some shojo titles are so dark that they toe the line between shojo and seinen.
Many audiences debate what makes a shojo anime, but the consensus tends to be stories that are marketed toward a young female audience, from middle grade to adolescent-age. Some adolescent viewers prefer to read manga and watch series that go a bit beyond their grade level, though, and that’s where dark shojo comes in. Other dark shojo anime are fluffy anime that have surprisingly sullen themes.
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10 Miyo’s Family Is Abusive in My Happy Marriage
The Powers in My Happy Marriage Come at a Heavy Price
Miyo comes from the Saimori family in My Happy Marriage, and their family line is known for their exceptional psychic gifts. The series takes place in an alternate, supernatural version of the Taisho era. Miyo’s younger sister, Kaya, is terrified when she first realizes her psychic gifts, because she can see woeful and strange spirits. Miyo’s family rejects her because not only is she from her father’s first marriage, she doesn’t demonstrate a single drop of the Saimori psychic gift.
The Saimoris are exceptionally cruel to Miyo, and Kaya even goes so far as to kidnap and torture Miyo before Miyo’s fiancé, Kiyoka Kudo, finds them. Kudo also comes from a psychically gifted family, and he has a rather grisly job as the Commander of the Anti-Grotesquerie Unit. Grotesqueries are terrifying, fiendish spirits with malevolent intent. Not all is doom and gloom and grotesque in My Happy Marriage; Miyo’s romance with Kudo is the bright spot of the story.
9 Yuki, Zero, & Kaname Have an Infamous Relationship in Vampire Knight
Yuki Can’t Choose Between Two Toxic Loves
Shojo may focus on romance, but not all romances are healthy. Vampire Knight‘s central romance is notoriously toxic. Yuki Cross is a vampire who is in love with two guys: Zero and Kaname. She has one of the most ridiculous love triangles in all shojo anime, because she never makes up her mind between the two of them.
Zero is an emotionally tortured vampire hunter, and from moody emotional exchanges to blood-sucking bites, he has a fraught relationship with Yuki. Yuki’s other romantic option, Kaname, is arguably worse than Zero’s moodiness. Kaname loves Yuki romantically, but he is also her cousin. Many Vampire Knight audiences still balk at the details surrounding the dark romance in the series.
8 Yui Meets One Terrible Vampire After Another in Diabolik Lovers
Diabolik Lovers Only Gets Darker & Darker
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Diabolik Lovers is a mid-2000s anime series based on a video game of the same name. Yui is a human girl who goes to live with a coven of vampire brothers. All the vampire brothers are varying shades of toxic. None of them are particularly kind to her; most of them insult her and even feed off of her blood without permission.
The vampires in Diabolik Lovers didn’t become so evil on their own, either. Their backstories are arguably darker than their current behavior. They take their trauma and rage out on Yui, who is oddly passive throughout the series. Diabolik Lovers isn’t meant to be a healthy example of a romance, and it has none of the classic shojo coming-of-age themes. It’s a gothic romance with all the hallmarks of a proper gothic: from a crumbling mansion to sordid family history to creepy bridegrooms.
7 Vampire Princess Miyu Is an Eerie Ode to ’90s Gothic Romance
Vampire Princess Miyu Has a Moody, Slice-of-Life Tone
Vampire Princess Miyu is a dark take on a magical girl anime. Miyu doesn’t transform into a starry-eyed superhero, though, she awakens as a Guardian tasked with hunting down Shinma. Shinma are demonic gods who terrorize the world. Miyu’s story is very romantic, but it also has a melancholic tone.
Miyu doesn’t just send Shinma back to the darkness, she also longs for the darkness, herself. Larva is her trusted bodyguard who wasn’t always on her side. When they first meet, Larva feels compelled to kill her so that she doesn’t descend into darkness. Larva changes his mind, and falls in love with Miyu, but falling in love with her comes with a price.
6 Lu Shouxue Is a Psychic Introvert in Raven of the Inner Palace
Shouxue Exorcises the Dead
Lu Shouxue is trying to hide from a grisly fate in Raven of the Inner Palace. She’s the Emperor’s Raven Consort, but she also comes from a doomed family line. She risks losing her head if anyone were ever to discover her true identity.
Shouxue passes her days not serving the Emperor like a normal consort, but serving the spirits of the palace. She exorcises dead spirits, uncovering their tragic mysteries and sending them on to the next world. Raven of the Inner Palace has a sweet romance and friendship plots, interwoven with creepy and sad ghost stories in every episode.
5 Erika Bites Off More Than She Can Chew in Wolf Girl & Black Prince
Kyoya Is Incredibly Scummy
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Wolf Girl and Black Prince can barely be called a romance. It’s another infamous shojo anime that follows an incredibly toxic relationship. Erika asks the popular boy in school with a glowing, gentlemanly reputation to pretend to be her boyfriend to cover for an impulsive lie she made to other girls at school.
Erika and Kyoya don’t have a sweet fake dating relationship, though. Kyoya agrees to her request, but he shows his true colors swiftly. He cares far more about humiliating Erika than helping her. Alarmingly, Erika goes along with Kyoya’s demands. The fact that they have a Happily Ever After doesn’t really make up for how repulsive Kyoya is to Erika for the entire story.
4 Requiem of the Rose King Is a Moody Royal Tale
King Richard III Is a Tortured Protagonist
Requiem of the Rose King has very few of the regular shojo hallmarks. It’s a historical story, and it does have some romantic relationships, but it’s by no means a romance. It follows the young and tragic King Richard III, his complex political world, and his fraught family relationships. The series is a dark fantasy with a unique protagonist, haunted by visions of the dead saint, Joan of Arc.
The War of the Roses is a very interesting and complex period of English history, and there are many works of historical fiction surrounding it. Most of those fictional works aren’t anime. Requiem of the Rose King gives it the shojo treatment, and adds some fantasy-adjacent elements.
Requiem of the Rose King
The war for the throne of England, as seen through the eyes of the deformed anti-hero Richard III.
3 Puella Magi Madoka Magica Is Far Darker Than Most Anticipated
Puella Magi Madoka Magica Explores Power Dynamics
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Puella Magi Madoka Magica has a very shojo-worthy art style. It’s a magical girl anime with fluffy pink, hyper-feminine character design, and celestial magic. Fans often cite how deep the magical girl anime’s themes go, exploring the nature of good, evil, sin, and sacrifice.
Madoka Kaname ultimately sacrifices herself to be a redemptive figure for other magical girls. Puella Magi Madoka Magica explores themes in many magical girl anime, taking them to their final conclusions. Magical girls are known for being powerhouses, and Madoka’s story asserts that that absolute power would ultimately corrupt a magical girl, turning them into “witches.”
2 The Sohma Family Have a Toxic Dynamic in Fruits Basket
Tohru, Yuki, & Kyo All Need Healing
Fruits Basket is a shojo romantic comedy that follows Tohru Honda, a sweet-as-pie and optimistic protagonist who works hard at school and at her jobs. She meets the Sohma family and discovers their secret: that they turn into animals of the Zodiac if they ever come in contact with the opposite sex. Tohru and the Sohma family curse is just the tip of the iceberg.
The Sohmas are a very toxic family; they’re removed from others because of their curse, and they’re overseen by an abusive and controlling family matriarch, Akito. Kyo and Yuki Sohma suffer the brunt of their family’s dysfunction. Fruits Basket seems fluffy on the surface, but it’s really about grief and the cycle of abuse.
1 Maomao Solves Medical Mysteries in The Apothecary Diaries
Maomao Has a Forensic Eye
The Apothecary Diaries is technically a seinen, but the anime is marketed towards (and very popular with) a shojo audience. The art style is stunning, and there are many humorous moments. The love interest, Jinshi, is particularly beautiful and funny. The series takes place in a complex, and sometimes cut-throat, world, though.
Maomao’s forced to work as a servant at the Emperor’s palace, and the court eunuch, Jinshi, notices that she’s a very talented apothecary. Maomao unravels medical mysteries — poisonings, in particular. Some episodes are rather sad because she can’t save everyone. The courtly world may be glittering and elegant, but there are consequences for every move a person makes in the palace.