There is no shortage of wholesome romance animes with themes like fairy tales and happy endings. On the other hand, there are a handful of mature dark romance anime. Dark anime romances revolve around themes like uphills of life along with romance, mental health, love loss, and adult sexual desires. In some cases, dark romance animes follow scary characters and horror kind of storylines that come together with romance.
If you’re a hardcore anime fan and want to avoid even minimalist fanservice of romance animes, below mentioned dark animes list is recommended for you. Be ready to ride on the rollercoaster of psychologically disturbed dark romance animes that will leave you in despair of loss.
7: Domestic Girlfriend
If you’re fond of watching a psychological thriller together with fan service and an in-depth story, domestic girlfriend will be a worth-watching anime for you. It’s surely an enjoyable anime series with a storyline that will keep you on your toes till the end. This tale’s darker side features forbidden love along with dual tone ending “happy and sad”. The reason why it’s a mature dark romance anime is the adult emotions that are heavily repressed under the personification of forbidden love.
A high school student who loves his teacher in the school but feels hopeless about ever confessing to her. Meanwhile, he ends up having sex with a spoiled school which is the younger sister of his love. On top of this, his father tends to marry both girl’s mother and they have to live in a single house together. Things become complicated as the boy has still feeling for her teacher while teacher’s younger sister fell for him.
6: Elfen Lied
Elfen Lied is a renowned dark anime series of 2004 for its brutal animations, dark dialogues, and sadistic storyline. If you’re into dark and horror anime with fan service, Elfen Lied will satisfy you to the utmost with its explicit content such as people’s heads peeling off, limbs ripping out and in some cases, people ripped wide open. However, it also depicts a romantic plot with tragic backstories and slow pace character developments. In conclusion, Elfen Lied is a gruesome and violent maturesome dark romance anime of the 2000s.
The story starts with a mutant girl named “Lucy”. After setting free from the experimental lab, she brutally murdered lab members with unfathomable powers. As a result of injury, a new persona is born within this mutant who is totally innocent and unaware of everything. A boy Kota rescues her to his home, and our dark, sad, romantic, regretful, and jealousy-based story begins.
5: Your Lie in April
Your Lie in April is one of the most famous dark romance anime for matures that come together with a slice-of-life genre. Its basic theme is set around music, and it’s a quiet slow-paced anime. However, this anime deals with grief and regret in a unique way along with piano and string music that leaves anime otakus in tears. With a sadistic storyline, Your Lie in April stands tall within the list of top sad slice-of-life animes.
Your Lie in April follows the story of a piano prodigy, who has lost the ability to play piano after suffering a tragic event in his past life. His fate begins to change after crossing paths with an eccentric violinist Kaori Miyazono. A little lie draws these youngsters closer to each other as Kaori is trying to fill Kaouse’s life with colors.
4: Scums Wish
If you ask for anime that represents the inner core of the humans’ selfish persona, Scum’s Wish will be the right choice. The darker side of this romantic anime is how its characters use each other to fill the gaps in their unrequited love. This might be a complex story with multiple love triangles and hard to accept ending. You can probably say, this anime holds a quite mature romance storyline neglecting the stereotypical theories related romance animes.
The story follows a high school girl Hanabi who is in love with his teacher since childhood. She went into despair after knowing that her teacher fell in love with another teacher who is the love interest of Mugi, her schoolmate. Now to fulfill the gaps in their unrequited love, both Hanabi and Mugi find romantic and sexual comfort in each other. They do look like ideal couples to other, however, they’re using each other for one’s sake.
3: Dusk Maiden of Amnesia
The title of this anime itself reveals the dark horror theme. Of Course, it’s dark romance anime where our protagonist makes a relationship with a ghost and is flirted by her through the entire series. Ultimately in this anime, our protagonist embarks on a journey to solve the mystery of his love interest’s ghost.
The anime follows the story of Teiichi who after enrolling in Seikyou Private Academy fell in love with Yuuko and soon find that she was a ghost without memories. He can’t blame himself for his feeling, throughout the anime he makes a club at school specifically finding out the mystery of Yuuko the ghost.
2: The Flowers of Evil
If you prefer animation quality before the storyline, The Flowers of Evil can be quite difficult to watch with its bizarre and lousy animation quality. Nevertheless, these lousy animations fit perfectly with the mature dark romance theme of this anime.
The story follows a high school student who is super obsessed with poetry and the author of a book “The Flowers of Evil”. He mistakenly forgot the copy of his favorite book at school, which prompted him to go back and get it from school. While retrieving his book, he lost hold of his pervy instincts and ended up stealing the garments of a model he admires. Unfortunately one of his classmates, a social outcast, happened to see his dirty stealing.
1: School Days
2007 released The school days is a very famous romance anime series, probably for its insanely darker or shameless plot. Where our main protagonist is a kind of antagonist. That is an average high school student but a shameless person. Resisting its dark plot is only for adults who can bear such a tragic storyline.
The storyline follows the life of 3 teenagers who are trying to navigate their lives through their romantic desires. At first, it clearly looks like some tragic love triangle but while following the storyline, you will eventually know why it’s best considerable for a mature dark romance anime list.
