Yay, it’s finally here! The trick-or-treaters are knocking, the candy is flowing, and the Castlevania sound track has been playing in a repeating loop all day long. It’s Halloween! And what better way to spend your Halloween night than with some friends and fam and some really great anime. But with so many great options in the spooky anime world, and so many people to please at your Halloween party how do you choose what to watch? Well, here’s a few suggestions that are fun for any level of fright. There’s anime for the scaredy cats (like me) that don’t want to be frightened at all and just want some Halloween themes, all the way to anime for those hard core fright-o-philes that are really looking to be chilled to their bones!

For the Scaredy Cats (me included)

Phantom of the Idol

Phantom of the Idol is about a lazy, low energy male idol named Yuya that’s really thinking of quitting show biz. He only got into being an idol because he thought it was easy money, but he’s found out the hard way that it’s a lot of work, and he is definitely not interested in that! It’s also an anime about a female idol named Asahi, and she lives for the job! There’s nothing that fills her with more joy and energy than being on stage and seeing the smiling faces of all of her fans. Unfortunately, Asahi passed away over a year ago and now she lingers around her old stage as a ghost, and no one can see her. No one but a certain male idol that totally wants to quit show biz!

Oni Pan

Oni Pan is an adorable anime about three little demon girls that are sent from the demon world to the human world to improve the image of demons, and the only tool they have to help them with their mission is some magical underwear! So episode by episode they do good deeds, like returning a lost toy to a small child, to bring joy to the community and to show humans that demons really aren’t scary at all!

The Demon Girl Next Door

Demon Girl Next Door is another cute anime about a teen girl named Yuko that wakes up one morning and finds that she has horns growing out of her head! Her mother explains that they are actually from a family of demons and the only way to improve their impoverished life is to defeat the magic girl. So the demon girl goes out looking for this magic girl that is causing her family so much grief, and surprise! the magic girl was actually a lot closer than expected. In fact they go to the same school! There’s just one little problem, Yuko finds out quickly that because she was raised in a poor household and was chronically malnourished, the magic girl is much bigger and stronger than her, not to mention that the magic girl has magic! Defeating the magic girl is not going to be an easy task.

For the Ones that are Up for a Little Thrill

Mushi shi

Mushishi is a slower anime that has an almost slice-of-life feel to it. Though Mushishi definitely has a darker leaning and is considerably less light-hearted. This anime is about a traveler named Ginko that journeys across Japan from village to village solving the local’s problems with the supernatural. This might sound a bit like the anime Tactics, but the two series similarities are pretty superficial. Mushishi is much more grim and Ginko rarely takes the yokai’s side of things. More often than not Ginko is there to exterminate the spirit causing problems than to just try to make everyone get along. Likewise the monsters in this series aren’t really interested in being friends with humans, they are much more interested in eating them!

Toilet Bound Hanako Kun

Nene Yashiro has no luck getting a boyfriend. She carefully coif her hair and tries her best to look cute, all to get the attention of her crushes. Unfortunately, every boy she confesses her feelings to doesn’t feel the same and she often gets rejected because they don’t like her “daikon” (giant radish) legs. Well Nene isn’t about to let vegetable limbs get in the way of her love, so she knocks on the door of Hanako san, one of her high school’s mysterious seven wonders. Hanako san is supposed to be the spirit of a little girl that haunts a stall of the girl’s bathroom and will grant your wish for the right price. But when Nene knocks on Hanako-san’s stall door what appears is not Hanako chan, but rather Hanako kun! And to make matters worse, one thing leads to another and Nene doesn’t get her wish for love granted but instead is bound to Hanako Kun to be his assistant, and clean the bathroom he dwells in, and if she doesn’t she will turn into a fish!

Vampire Princess Miyu

Vampire Princess Miyu OVA is a four episode anime about a vampire with the form of a teen girl that travels around 1990’s Japan hunting down, and exterminating demons that are trying to possess humans. Her mysteriously masked and caped demon assistant Larva, helps her teleport and whisks her away when things get a little too dangerous. Oddly enough, though the story centers around the vampire Miyu, the main character and the viewers point of view is from a woman named Himiko, who is a spiritualist. Himiko has made it her mission to track down and stop Miyu, because though the girl is doing some good, Miyu is still a vampire and does feed on humans and doesn’t always put human’s welfare first when she is trying to stop the evil demons.

For the Hard Core Fright-O-Philes

Shiki

Shiki is an anime that is definitely in the horror genre. It’s about a small, rural town in Japan called Sotoba and an epidemic of strange deaths that seemed to spread like wildfire one summer. It started with a family of strange foreigners moving into a huge mansion just outside of town and the death of one high school girl named Megumi Shimizu. There is a lot of mystery in this series so I won’t tell you much more, but if you like Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot or the movie 30 days of Night, you’ll probably like this one. And if you’re familiar with Salem’s Lot or 30 Days of Night, you probably already know what the bad guys are.

Another

If you like ghost stories with a little bit of mystery and a lot a bit of murder, than Another is a great anime for you. The anime Another is about a haunted class of high school students. It all started after the death of one of the students. The other students in the class chose to leave the deceased’s desk and chair empty as a kind of memorial. This small kind act was enough to encourage a ghost to join the class! From that simple beginning, mayhem and death ensues. It’s a mystery against time as the students try to figure out who is the ghost before the ghost murders the students of the class one by one. So if your looking for a good creepy haunting, check out Another!

Blood -C

There’s no sugar coating the anime Blood-C, it’s a gory series. There’s a lot of people getting messily eaten by monsters, and there’s a lot of monsters getting chopped up. But there’s a lot more to Blood-C than a gore fest too. The anime is about a cheerful high school girl named Saya. The pretty visuals are all thanks to Clamp, which gives the whole anime a very dreamy slice-of-life look. But Saya’s after school job is anything but cute or slice-of-lifey. Her job is to hunt down and kill demons that are plaguing the small rural town where she lives. It gets bloody! As the series progresses, more and more mysteries pop up, like where are the demons coming from, why are they attacking the town, and why can’t Saya remember her past very well? So if you’re a fan of creepy psychological thrillers and don’t mind some gore Blood-C is a great anime for you. Or if you love a gore fest, and don’t mind some mystery thrown in for flavor, than this anime is also for you!