The trick of Chainsaw Man was never the blood. It was the whiplash. One scene is a crude joke about a boy who has never touched anyone, the next is a corridor full of bodies, and both land because Denji's wants are so small and so sad that every act of violence costs something. A list of anime like it therefore cannot just be a gore ranking. Each series below does at least two of the three things Fujimoto's story does so well: it puts appetite and loneliness at the centre, it flatly refuses to protect its cast, and it changes register hard enough to leave a bruise. We left out the shows that are only mean, because grimness with nothing underneath is the cheap knock-off of this exact appeal. The first half is the modern wave that grew up alongside Chainsaw Man. The back half reaches for the older, rawer ancestors that made it possible, with one recent outlier at the end that is stranger than all of them.
- 01
The obvious neighbour and the friendliest way in. Cursed spirits here are born from the ugly feelings people leak every day, much as Fujimoto's devils are born from what humanity fears, and the show is every bit as willing to remove a beloved character mid-arc. Where Chainsaw Man is a gutter-level fever dream, this is the polished version: more training, more structure, more shonen scaffolding wrapped around the same darkness.
Where to Watch → - 02
If the appeal is beauty and cruelty sharing a frame, this is your next watch. A condemned shinobi who refuses to stay dead and the young executioner assigned to him hunt an elixir on an island where the flowers are lovely and the wildlife wears human faces. Serene and hideous by turns, with that same knack for making horror look like a painting. Bring a strong stomach and an appetite for myth.
Where to Watch → - 03
Dandadan
8.3The purest inheritor of the tonal whiplash. Aliens and yokai, a mouth that never stops running, animation that goes completely feral the moment a fight starts, and then, with no warning, a scene tender enough to reframe everything you just laughed at. It is less nihilistic than Chainsaw Man and far more openly romantic, which makes it the pick for anyone who loved Denji's hopeless yearning more than the carnage.
Where to Watch → - 04
Chainsaw Man's bloodline runs straight through this one: a gentle boy fused with a demon in a world that turns on itself faster than anybody can stop it. The animation is elastic and hallucinatory, the sexuality is explicit rather than implied, and the final stretch is genuinely devastating instead of merely violent. The most upsetting thing on this list and the one I would defend hardest. Go in rested, not casually.
Where to Watch → - 05
The series that built its reputation on one blunt promise: nobody is safe. A village kid joins a band of assassins gutting a rotten empire, and the show cheerfully feeds its own cast into the machine. It shares those comedy-to-tragedy pivots, though it plays them broader and with less finesse, so expect big melodrama rather than sly cruelty. Great fun if you can forgive a death that has not quite been earned.
Where to Watch → - 06
Tokyo Ghoul
7.6Hunger is the theme here too, only literal. An ordinary student is remade into something that can survive on nothing but people, and spends the story negotiating with what he has become. The early stretch is mournful, gorgeous urban horror carried by a superb performance of a mind coming apart. It is more tortured and much less funny than Chainsaw Man, and the adaptation frays as it goes, so the opening act is the real prize.
Where to Watch → - 07
Berserk
8.4The root system for almost everything grim in modern anime. A mercenary with an absurd slab of a sword, a charismatic friend with terrible ambitions, and a slow march toward one of the medium's great tragedies. The animation belongs firmly to its era and moves stiffly, and it stops exactly where the story hurts most, but the writing has never been bettered. Watch it and Chainsaw Man's doomed loyalty reads differently.
Where to Watch → - 08
Pair a man who cannot die with a woman whose touch brings ruin on anyone who cares about her and you get a romance built out of mutual self-destruction, which is a very Chainsaw Man sort of joke. It is crude, loud, and then abruptly gutting, with a rules-lawyer power system driving increasingly unhinged escalation. Messier and sillier than its neighbours, and the show people either adore by the third episode or quietly abandon.
Where to Watch →
FAQ
Tone control above everything. The show can be funny and horrifying inside a single scene without either mode cancelling the other, and it pairs that with real consequences and a lead whose desires are humble enough to hurt.