People love protagonists with a conflicted past or some problems, like curses and bad omens.
This is quite a common theme in anime and even in literature, as it allows one to represent the growth of the protagonist through adversities.
This listicle ranks the best anime based on our experience.
Table of Contents
11. Kotoura-san
A slice-of-life anime with a supernatural twist. The story follows Haruka Kotoura, a girl who has been cursed with the power of reading minds since childhood.
Haruka lost a lot of friends and destroyed her family because of her innate capability, which is not the most ideal power to have.
Despite being constantly bullied at school, she meets Manabe Yoshihisa, a boy who is not scared about mind-reading power.
10. Tokyo Ravens
This anime from 2008 is set in a version of Japan that endured an event called the Great Spiritual Disaster. This was related to the use of Onmyoudou magic and which plagues Tokyo even today.
The Onmyou Agency was established to avoid other spiritual disasters.
The protagonist Harutora is born into a family without the ability to use magic so he decides to live a normal life.
When a prominent member of the Onmyou Agency attempts to recreate the same experiment which led to Japan’s downfall, he decides that his time to fight has finally come.
9. The Seven Deadly Sins
The Seven Deadly Sins is a popular anime aired between 2014 and 2015.
The plot is set in Britain where Elizabeth, daughter of the King, sets out on a journey to find the Seven Deadly Sins, intending to recruit them and take back her recently fallen kingdom due to a coup.
The titular Seven Deadly Sins are seven extremely powerful warriors, capable of great things if brought together.
The protagonist Elizabeth will find out to be the reincarnation of a high-ranked member of the Goddess Clan, who was cursed to reincarnate as a human and lose her memories, dying over and over again.
8. D.Gray-man
Millennium Earl possesses the ability to create powerful weapons known as Akuma by trapping the souls of dead people inside them.
The only way to set these souls free is by exorcising them with Anti Akuma weapons called Innocence.
The protagonist Allen Walker is part of the Black Order, an organization with the task of stopping Millenium Earl.
Allen Walker can count on a cursed eye that can see the suffering souls within an Akuma and also an arm that acts as his Innocence. They will be useful for the quest to stop the evil plans of Millenium Earl.
7. Owari no Seraph
This is an anime that aired in the spring of 2015 and it is set in a world where a mysterious virus is starting to appear.
This disease begins to kill every human above the age of 13 so mankind is enslaved by a vampire race that promise to protect the survivors in exchange for donations of blood
Yuuichirou and Mikaela Hyakuya are two orphans who get sick of living under the vampire’s reign of terror so the two of them try to escape the orphanage but Mikaela ends up dying in the process.
Yuuichirou is found many years later, now a Japanese Imperial Demon Army member determined to take revenge on the creatures that slaughtered his family.
6. Ancient Magus Bride
Ancient Magus Bride a 24-episode fantasy anime series that premiered in 2013.
The protagonist of the story is young Chise Hatori, a girl who loses her entire family and decides to sell herself off at an auction to change her life.
She will be purchased by a man who stands out mainly because of his tall height and head shaped like a canine skull to make her a magician.
Chise will soon be cursed by her meeting with a dragon, that grants her extreme strength and enhanced senses.
5. Natsume’s Book of Friends
An underrated slice-of-life genre anime with supernatural elements released in 2008 in 13 episodes.
Natsume, like her grandmother Reiko, has the gift of being able to see spirits.
The woman used to propose a variety of challenges to them, and if they were defeated, she would take possession of their name by writing it on what she called the Book of Friends.
Now that Natsume has inherited it, a new adventure begins for him, among spirits who want revenge.
4. Howl’s Moving Castle
One of the best Studio Ghibli productions ever and an everlasting classic of the genre.
The story is set in a fictional kingdom that takes the best of magic and 20th-century technology, currently at war with another kingdom.
The protagonist Sophie will make the acquaintance of the wizard Howl, a young charming man at the service of the king.
The girl will be cursed by the Witch of the Waste to become an old lady so she will begin her adventure to restore her youth.
3. Dororo
Born at the hand of legendary master Osamu Tezuka, it has recently received a remake in 2019.
The plot revolves around Hyakkimaru, a boy with a body made of prosthetics, who fights demons. When he was a child his impoverished father sacrificed the child to demons to seek prosperity.
These demons now possess his body parts and senses, so Hyakkimaru will have to seek them out and defeat them to regain his lost body.
He will do this together with Dororo, a child that is keeping him company during the journey.
2. Bakemonogatari
The story follows Araragi, a generous and brilliant guy who has his life changed after a meeting with a vampire that almost kills him.
He survives the vampire attack thanks to Meme Oshino, a strange man living in an abandoned building.
The boy manages to retain his human form, except for a few side effects such as superhuman healing abilities and enhanced vision.
When a classmate of his will suffer an accident he will have to act fast and call for the help of the strange man who helped him before.
1. Berserk
A masterpiece of the dark fantasy and sword and sorcery genres that came out in 1997.
Few other works can match this one due to the complexity of its characters and for starring two incredible personalities: Gatsu and Griffith.
This work has irreversibly influenced every media outlet that has approached fantasy from a horror perspective.
The murderous and bloody fury of the protagonist and his opponents remains one of the strong points of this anime
Gatsu has been cursed all of his life by an entity who lives inside himself and he always tries to fight with it and keep it under control.
He also has to use this curse to become more efficient during battle so the conflict between his authentic self and his dark side is an overbearing presence during all of his adventures
