AniClipse: mystery, psychological and dark-fantasy anime, and where to watch them

The AniClipse design

The design is measured from the archived aniclipse.com home page and its two style sheets, captured in August 2026. The site was built on a popular set of interface tokens, and those tokens give AniClipse its palette. The page is a deep black, #0A0A0A. Panels sit a whisker lighter at #0C0C0E and #111114, cards at #171717, and borders are a quiet #262626 or a faint white glow. Text is almost white, #FAFAFA, and secondary text a calm grey, #A3A3A3. The primary buttons are pure white with near-black lettering. Corners are gently rounded, four pixels for buttons and chips and twelve pixels for panels.

The On Deck panel adds a handful of warm and cool accents, each measured from the original: amber #E49335, orange #E46B28, sky blue #28BBE4 and a pale lime #D6E4A1, used as thin coloured borders on the left of each case row and on the lime chip that heads the side card. A soft indigo, #5865F2, colours the guide strip beneath the hero, in the spot where the original invited visitors to its community. The typeface is Inter for text and headings, with a monospaced face for episode numbers, dates and the big counter, just as the original used for its clocks and countdowns.

The original wordmark lived in an image that the archive left out, so AniClipse has an original logo in the same black-and-white spirit: a bright crescent, like a moon in eclipse, beside the name in heavy white letters. The favicon is that crescent alone.

The header

The header is slim and sticky, a band of translucent black with a gentle blur that stays at the top of the window. On the left sit the logo and a small Explore pill, which opens the full A to Z. Next come the main links: Series, Films and Cases, the last opening the collections page. A wide search pill takes the centre of the bar, with a small key hint on its right edge in the monospaced face, echoing the keyboard shortcut badge of the original. On the far right, a rounded square button with a small figure opens My List. On a phone, the links and search move into a menu button, and the bar keeps only the logo and My List.

Cozy mysteries

The Cozy mysteries collection gathers gentle puzzles and kind detectives, ideal for a relaxed evening. The Case Files of Jeweler Richard follows an elegant British jeweller in Tokyo and his student assistant, who solve the human stories behind each gemstone brought to the shop. Haruchika – Haruta & Chika follows two childhood friends in a struggling school band who solve small campus mysteries while recruiting new members. Woodpecker Detective's Office imagines the poet Takuboku Ishikawa as a detective in 1900s Tokyo, with his friend, the young linguist Kyosuke Kindaichi, as his long-suffering assistant.

Heaven's Memo Pad follows a shut-in girl detective who solves cases from her room, surrounded by stuffed animals and bottles of soda, while her friends gather clues across the city. Dr. Ramune: Mysterious Disease Specialist follows a doctor who cures strange illnesses caused by human emotions, with a sharp tongue and a kind heart. The Case of Hana & Alice is a charming rotoscoped film about two schoolgirls investigating the legend of a murdered classmate, which turns out to be something much sweeter.

Mysterious worlds

Some of the best mysteries on AniClipse begin in unfamiliar places. The Lost Village follows a busload of young people who move to a remote village to start new lives, only to find that the village reveals their deepest fears. Island follows a young man who washes up on a remote island with his memory gone and meets three girls tied to its secret. Sagrada Reset takes place in a town where nearly everyone has a special ability, and follows a boy with perfect memory and a girl who can rewind the world by three days. Kokkoku: Moment by Moment follows a family able to freeze time, drawn into a battle with a cult in the stopped world.

Four decades of mysteries

The era shelves trace the genre through time. The 1984 to 2005 shelf holds the classics: Sherlock Hound, Kindaichi Case Files, The Twelve Kingdoms, Princess Tutu, Haibane Renmei and Witch Hunter Robin. The 2006 to 2014 shelf brings Mononoke, Ghost Hunt, Penguindrum, Durarara!!, The Tatami Galaxy and Eden of the East. The 2015 onward shelf is the largest, with JOKER GAME, Princess Principal, Land of the Lustrous, ACCA: 13-Territory Inspection Dept. and GNOSIA. The Top rated shelf gathers the mysteries that audiences love most.

Reading the signs

Mystery anime rewards viewers who pay attention to the language of images. Colour is often a clue: a character's clothes might shift from warm to cold tones as their mood changes, or a single red object might appear in scene after scene until its meaning becomes clear. Framing matters too. Directors of psychological stories love reflections, doorways and windows, placing characters behind glass or split by the edge of a mirror to hint at a divided mind. Repeated shots, such as a train passing a crossing or a clock on a classroom wall, often mark the passing of time or the approach of a turning point.

Sound design carries clues as well. A melody that returns in a different key, a silence where you expect music, a background voice that seems out of place: these small touches are placed with care. Watching with good headphones or a decent speaker can bring out details that are easy to miss on a phone. Many fans find that once they start noticing these signals, every new series becomes a richer puzzle.

From page to screen

Many mysteries on AniClipse began as novels, manga or games. The Kindaichi stories started as a long-running manga packed with fair-play puzzles, The Twelve Kingdoms grew from Fuyumi Ono's celebrated novels, and Joker Game adapts Koji Yanagi's spy fiction. Game adaptations such as the Persona series and Ace Attorney translate interactive puzzles into television, and the Detective Conan films continue a manga that has run for three decades. Reading the source after watching, or watching after reading, is a lovely way to deepen a favourite story, since each medium reveals details the other leaves in shadow.

Some anime also pays tribute to the great writers of the genre. Sherlock Hound retells Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie's Great Detectives brings Poirot and Marple to Japan, Trickster borrows from Edogawa Rampo, the father of Japanese detective fiction, and Woodpecker Detective's Office imagines real Meiji-era writers as sleuths. These series make a charming introduction to the literary classics behind them.

Pacing a binge

Mysteries are tempting to binge, and the On Deck panel's binge-time counter shows how long a series will take from start to finish. A twelve-episode series usually runs about four and a half hours, perfect for a rainy Saturday. Longer shows are best enjoyed an arc at a time: Kindaichi Case Files and Ace Attorney tell cases in two to four episodes, so each case makes a satisfying evening. For psychological dramas, a slower pace often helps, giving each episode time to settle before the next twist arrives. My List keeps your place, so you can return to a story whenever the mood strikes.

Seasons for a mystery

Mysteries suit every season. Autumn evenings are made for ghost stories like Ghost Hunt and Mononoke, winter nights suit the slow unfolding of Haibane Renmei and The Twelve Kingdoms, spring is a fine time for the bright puzzles of Haruchika and Jeweler Richard, and summer holidays invite a big binge of Durarara!! or Kindaichi. Whatever the weather, there is a case waiting for a curious detective.

Studios with a taste for mystery

A handful of studios return again and again on AniClipse. Production I.G, known for its detailed, cinematic style, made Joker Game, Ghost Hound and Real Drive. Toei Animation brought Kindaichi Case Files, Mononoke and the 2018 Kitaro series to the screen, each with a distinct look. J.C.Staff produced Ghost Hunt, while Brain's Base gave Durarara!! its vivid Ikebukuro streets. Science SARU made The Heike Story with its delicate watercolour touch, and Madhouse, Bones and Shaft each appear with atmospheric series of their own. Type a studio name into the search to see all its mysteries together, a fine way to discover a new favourite from a team you already trust.

Voices behind the mysteries

Voice acting is central to mysteries, where a single pause or a change of tone can reveal a liar. Many titles on AniClipse feature celebrated Japanese performers whose voices define their characters: the cool drawl of a genius detective, the nervous stammer of a reluctant witness, the warm narration that frames a ghost story. Each title page lists the main voice cast, and a search for a performer's name brings up every mystery on the site in which they appear. Following a favourite voice from series to series is a surprisingly rewarding way to explore, and it often leads to hidden gems.

For newcomers

If you are new to mystery anime, start with self-contained stories. Joker Game tells a complete spy tale in almost every episode, Sherlock Hound offers light and lively cases for all ages, and Ghost Hunt arranges its hauntings into arcs of a few episodes each. Once you enjoy the rhythm of clues and reveals, move on to longer puzzles such as The Twelve Kingdoms or Durarara!!, and then to the symbolic, dreamlike storytelling of Penguindrum or Haibane Renmei. The collections make it easy to find the next step, and My List keeps track of everything you want to try.

For seasoned fans, AniClipse is a map of the less travelled corners of the genre: short series that slipped past many viewers, older classics that shaped today's hits and films that extend favourite stories. Wander through the shelves, follow a studio or a director, and let one mystery lead to the next.

Endings worth waiting for

Part of the joy of a mystery is the ending, the moment when every scattered clue clicks into place. Anime has produced some remarkable finales in this genre: quiet revelations that recast an entire series, climactic confrontations in which a detective lays out the truth, and gentle codas that leave a lingering glow. Because many series adapt finished novels or tell complete original stories, their endings are carefully planned, and watching the last episode often sends viewers straight back to the first to spot what they missed.

To enjoy endings fully, it helps to avoid spoilers. Keep discussion threads and comment sections at arm's length until you finish, mute key words on social media and watch the final episodes in one sitting when you can. Then, once the credits roll, dive into reviews and fan theories with the whole picture in mind. A great mystery is a gift that keeps giving: the second viewing, with every secret known, is often even richer than the first, as you notice how carefully the creators set the stage.

Mysteries for the family

Several titles suit younger detectives too. Sherlock Hound, Mysterious Joker, Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva and the Detective Conan films are bright, lively and full of puzzles that children love to solve alongside the characters. They make an ideal introduction to the genre, and many adults who grew up with them still return for comfort viewing. Each service shows its own age rating, so families can choose with confidence.

Younger viewers often become the sharpest sleuths in the room, spotting a clue on a background poster long before the adults do. Invite them to guess the culprit before the final scene, and a quiet evening turns into a lively family game.

The craft of a good mystery

A great mystery anime is a feat of planning. Writers lay out the solution first and then hide its pieces across the story, so that the final reveal feels both surprising and inevitable. Directors choose where the camera lingers, what sits in the background of a shot and which lines are delivered with a slight pause. Composers write themes that hint at danger or calm. When all of these work together, a second viewing becomes a new experience, as clues that slipped past the first time suddenly stand out in plain sight.

Many viewers enjoy keeping a notebook while they watch: a list of suspects, a timeline, a few odd details. Some pause before the final episode of a case to write down a theory, then compare it with the answer. Others watch with friends and argue over the culprit. However you play, mystery anime invites you to take part, and that is much of its charm.

Atmosphere and style

Mood matters as much as plot in this corner of anime. Mononoke layers textured paper over every frame, Penguindrum fills Tokyo with bright pictograms and subway signs, Land of the Lustrous makes light shimmer through crystal bodies and The Tatami Galaxy rushes its narration like a runaway train. Music carries much of the atmosphere too, from the jazz of JOKER GAME to the classical ballets that shape Princess Tutu. Turn the lights down, turn the sound up and let the style draw you in.

A mystery evening

For a mystery evening, pair a short series with a film. Start with the first arc of Mononoke, then enjoy Sherlock Hound: The Movie for a lighter finish. For a weekend of wits, binge Kokkoku: Moment by Moment and follow it with Case Closed: Zero the Enforcer. For a quiet night, Haibane Renmei and The Case Files of Jeweler Richard make a thoughtful pair, and for a ghostly Halloween, Ghost Hunt is the perfect companion.

Any screen

AniClipse works in any modern browser on phones, tablets and computers, with a menu button on small screens. Official services have apps for smart TVs and streaming sticks, so browse on your phone and watch on the big screen. Apps and devices has more tips.

Free and legal options

Some services stream anime free with ads in some countries, and JustWatch labels those options with Free. Public libraries in some regions lend anime through apps such as Hoopla and Kanopy. Free mystery anime explains where to look.

Watching safely

Official apps protect your account and support the studios behind every episode. Keep your browser and apps updated, give each service its own password and turn on two-step sign-in. Streaming safely gathers the essentials.

The official AniClipse

The real AniClipse is easy to recognise: the crescent logo, a black page, a tall hero with frosted chips, an On Deck panel with coloured case rows and a monospaced binge-time counter, and rows of posters. The official AniClipse site describes it in detail. If a page looks unusual, Is AniClipse working? lists quick fixes, and Where AniClipse titles stream introduces the official services behind every Watch now button.

Sharing a mystery

Mysteries are wonderful to share. Watch a case with a friend and race to name the culprit, recommend a ghost story to someone who loves a good fright, or start a small club that tackles one series a month. Every shared theory adds to the fun, and keeps these clever, atmospheric stories finding new detectives.

The hero carousel

The home page opens with a tall hero carousel that fills most of the first screen, as the original's did. Five titles take turns: Mononoke, Penguindrum, Ghost Hunt, JOKER GAME and The Twelve Kingdoms. Each slide shows a wide still, darkened by a gradient that rises from the bottom and sweeps in from the left. Over it sit three small chips with thin borders and a frosted black fill: the audience score, the type and the year. Below them come the title in bold, a few lines of story, a white Watch pill and an outlined Details pill. Square arrow buttons sit in the top-right corner, and a row of slim dashes marks the slides along the bottom.

The five were chosen to show the range of the site: a stylish supernatural mystery, a symbolic family drama, a classic ghost investigation, a tense spy thriller and a grand dark-fantasy saga. Each is a fine first case.

The guide strip and tabs

Below a short welcome, a slim indigo strip explains how AniClipse works: every title opens on the official services in your country through JustWatch, and a Help link leads to the details. It sits where the original placed its community banner, in the same soft indigo. Next come two small tabs, Series and Films, modelled on the original's Watch and Read tabs. They jump straight to the Mystery series row or the Mystery films row further down the page.

The On Deck panel

The original home page had a panel called On Deck, a live schedule of the next episodes to air, with a countdown clock. AniClipse keeps its layout and gives it a new job. On the left, a Next up card with a lime border presents the featured series, its poster, its number of episodes and its running time. Below it, five case rows list the opening episodes of that series, each with the episode number in a monospaced box, the episode title, the original air date and a thin coloured border on its left edge: amber, orange, sky and lime in turn.

On the right, a side card carries a lime chip labelled Binge time and a large monospaced counter showing how many hours and minutes the whole series runs, a playful echo of the original's countdown. Beneath it, a short list called Tonight's case files suggests five compact series of thirteen episodes or fewer, each with its episode count and a small poster, ideal for a weekend of sleuthing.

Rows and cards

After the On Deck panel come the rows: Mystery series, Mystery films, Detectives, Psychological, Yokai and spirits, Dark fantasy and Top rated. Each row has a heading with a thin white bar on its left and a See all link on its right, and scrolls sideways. The cards are tall posters with eight-pixel corners and a hairline border, with the audience score in a small frosted chip in the top-left corner. Beneath each poster come the title and a monospaced line with the type, the year and, for a series, the episode count.

How to watch a case

Watching on AniClipse takes three steps. Open a title from the hero, the On Deck panel, a row or the search. On the title page, read the story, check the list of episodes and choose your country. Then press Watch now, and JustWatch opens with every official service that carries the title where you live, whether by subscription, rental, purchase or free with ads. The anime then plays in that service's own app. How to watch with AniClipse covers every step.

Title pages list every season and every episode with its air date, so you can see how a mystery unfolds over time. Short, tightly plotted series such as Kokkoku: Moment by Moment or JOKER GAME run twelve episodes, while long-running detective shows like Kindaichi Case Files stretch past a hundred and forty episodes of cases, each one a self-contained puzzle.

Search, Explore and My List

The search understands English and Japanese titles and many alternate names, so Mononoke and モノノ怪 lead to the same series. Add a season and an episode, like Ace Attorney S2E3, and the search goes straight to the right show. It also finds voice actors and studios. The Explore pill opens the full A to Z with filters for type, genre and year. Finding a title has more tips.

My List is your personal case board. Save titles with Add to My List, tick episodes as you watch and My List remembers where you paused. It lives in your browser, works instantly and exports to a small file for another device. My List explains how.

Subtitles and dubs

Almost every title streams with English subtitles, and many popular mysteries also have English dubs. Mysteries reward close listening, so some viewers prefer the original Japanese performances with subtitles, while others enjoy a dub so they can watch the screen for clues. The available tracks depend on the service and your country. Subtitles and dubs covers the details.

What makes a mystery anime

Mystery anime takes many forms, and Mystery anime basics gives a quick tour. There are classic whodunits, where a brilliant detective gathers clues and names the culprit in the final scene. There are supernatural mysteries, where the puzzle is a curse, a haunting or a spirit with a grievance. There are psychological mysteries, where the real question is what is happening inside a character's mind. And there are mysteries of worlds, stories that begin in an unfamiliar place and slowly reveal its rules.

What unites them is the pleasure of discovery. A good mystery invites you to play along, to notice the odd detail in the background, to form a theory and to see it confirmed or overturned. Anime is especially good at this, because animators can plant clues in every frame, from a colour that appears at the wrong moment to a symbol hidden on a wall, and because many series are adapted from novels, manga and games that were built around fair-play puzzles.

Detectives

The Detectives collection gathers more than thirty sleuths, and Detectives on AniClipse suggests where to begin. Kindaichi Case Files is the great classic of the genre: Hajime Kindaichi, a lazy high-school student with a famous detective grandfather, solves elaborate locked-room murders in remote hotels, islands and old mansions with his friend Miyuki. Its hundred and forty-eight episodes from 1997 are packed with ingenious puzzles,, and the story continues in the 2014 revival The File of Young Kindaichi Returns.

Sherlock Hound is a delight for all ages: Conan Doyle's stories retold with dogs, co-directed in part by Hayao Miyazaki, full of flying machines, chases over London rooftops and a charming Professor Moriarty. The 2024 film Sherlock Hound: The Movie gathers its adventures for the big screen. Agatha Christie's Great Detectives Poirot and Marple brings the Belgian detective and the village sleuth to anime, with a young assistant who travels with them from case to case.

Younger detectives fill the shelf too. Detective School Q follows a class of gifted students at an academy for investigators, Spiral: The Bonds of Reasoning follows a boy searching for his missing brother through a web of logic puzzles, and Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarok casts the trickster god Loki, trapped in a child's body, as a detective in modern Japan. Psychic Detective Yakumo follows a college student who can see the dead and uses the gift to solve crimes.

Conan on the big screen

Several Detective Conan films sit on AniClipse, including Detective Conan: Dimensional Sniper, Detective Conan: Sunflowers of Inferno, Detective Conan: Private Eye in the Distant Sea, Case Closed: Zero the Enforcer, Case Closed: The Fist of Blue Sapphire and Detective Conan: The Scarlet Alibi. Each sets the shrunken detective against a spectacular crime, from a sniper in Tokyo's tallest tower to a stolen van Gogh painting and a gem heist in Singapore. Detective Conan: Episode One - The Great Detective Turned Small retells how Shinichi became Conan, a perfect starting point for newcomers.

Courtrooms and case files

Ace Attorney adapts the famous game series about Phoenix Wright, a rookie defence attorney who turns hopeless trials around with a shout of objection, and its two seasons capture the games' mix of comedy and clever deduction. Case File N° 221: Kabukicho imagines Sherlock Holmes as a quirky detective in Tokyo's nightlife district, competing with other sleuths to solve cases, and Beautiful Bones: Sakurako's Investigation pairs a high-school boy with a bone-obsessed young woman who reads mysteries in skeletons. The Dinner Table Detective follows a wealthy police detective and her butler, who solves every case while serving dinner.

Yokai and spirits

Japanese folklore is full of spirits, and the Yokai and spirits collection gathers the most atmospheric of them. Yokai and spirits offers a short introduction. Mononoke is a masterpiece of style. A mysterious Medicine Seller travels through Edo-period Japan, confronting vengeful spirits called mononoke; to draw his sword, he must learn their form, their truth and their reason. Each arc is painted like a woodblock print come to life, with textured paper, bold colours and sliding screens that open onto strange spaces. Malevolent Spirits: Mononogatari, a separate story from 2023, follows a young exorcist sent to live with a girl who protects spirits, and explores the bonds between humans and tsukumogami.

The 2018 series about the yokai boy Kitaro, on AniClipse under its Japanese title, brings the famous one-eyed hero and his father, an eyeball with a tiny body, into a modern Japan where yokai cause trouble through social media and city development. Graveyard Kitaro retells his origins in a moodier, more grown-up style, and Akuma Kun follows the son of a famous demon summoner who solves supernatural cases with a demon partner.

Ghost hunters

Ghost Hunt follows Mai, a high-school student who stumbles into the office of Shibuya Psychic Research, a team of ghost hunters led by the brilliant, arrogant teenager Kazuya Shibuya. Together with a monk, a shrine maiden, a priest and a medium, they investigate haunted schools, dolls and mansions with thermometers, cameras and old-fashioned courage. It is one of the best supernatural mysteries in anime, eerie and absorbing. Ghost Hound, from Production I.G, follows three boys in a small town whose out-of-body experiences draw them into a mystery connected to a kidnapping years before.

Muhyo & Roji's Bureau of Supernatural Investigation follows a genius magic law practitioner and his loyal assistant, who judge and sentence evil spirits, and After-school Hanako-kun brings the school ghost Hanako and her friends into short, playful stories. Midnight Occult Civil Servants imagines a Tokyo ward office whose staff look after the spirits living in the city, and Shabake follows a sickly young merchant in Edo who solves mysteries with the help of the yokai who guard him.

Gentle spirits

Many anime spirits are friendly. Gingitsune: Messenger Fox of the Gods follows a shrine maiden who can see her shrine's grumpy fox spirit, We Rent Tsukumogami follows siblings in Edo who run a rental shop full of objects that have become gossipy spirits, and Re-Kan! follows a cheerful high-school girl who can see ghosts and helps them with their unfinished business. Rin-ne, from Rumiko Takahashi, pairs a girl who can see spirits with a penniless shinigami boy who guides lost souls. Shigofumi: Letters from the Departed follows a girl who delivers letters written by the dead to the living.

Psychological anime

Psychological anime turns the camera inward. The Psychological collection gathers stories about doubt, obsession, ambition and the strange logic of the mind, and Psychological anime suggests a path through them. Penguindrum, from director Kunihiko Ikuhara, begins with two brothers and their gravely ill sister, who is saved by a mysterious penguin hat that gives her a second personality with a demanding mission. What follows is a dazzling, symbolic story about fate, family and the choices that bind people together, full of bright colours, subway signs and three unforgettable penguins.

Welcome to the N-H-K follows a young man who has shut himself in his apartment for years and believes a vast conspiracy keeps him there, until a mysterious girl offers to help him. It is funny, painfully honest and ultimately hopeful. Haibane Renmei, from the creator of Serial Experiments Lain, follows a girl who awakens with small grey wings in a walled town, where winged beings called Haibane live quiet lives of work and friendship while slowly learning why they are there.

The Tatami Galaxy is a whirlwind by Masaaki Yuasa: a university student relives his first two years again and again, joining a different club each time in search of the rose-coloured campus life he dreams of. Its rapid-fire narration and bold visuals are unforgettable, and the sequel The Tatami Time Machine Blues adds a time machine and a broken air-conditioner remote. Kyousougiga explores a mirror version of Kyoto created by a monk's drawings, where a strange family searches for its missing parents.

Mind games

The Mind games collection is for viewers who love battles of wits. Akagi follows a teenage prodigy who walks into a yakuza mahjong parlour in 1958 and begins a legendary gambling career, his calm genius unsettling every opponent. One Outs takes the same spirit to professional baseball, where a pitcher unbeaten in street wagers joins a struggling team under an audacious contract. The Money of Soul and Possibility Control, known to fans simply as C, follows a student who is drawn into a hidden financial district where people duel with their own futures as collateral.

GNOSIA is a sci-fi social-deduction game: aboard a drifting spaceship, the crew must work out which of them are hostile impostors, and the protagonist relives the same voyage again and again to learn everyone's secrets. Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers turns a fantasy quest into a locked-room mystery, as seven heroes gather where only six were chosen and must discover which of them is false. Selector Infected WIXOSS follows girls who duel with sentient cards, each hoping a wish will be granted, and discovers the heavy price behind the game.

Spies and thieves

The Spies and thieves collection gathers agents, phantom thieves and con artists. JOKER GAME follows the D Agency, a secret spy school founded in 1930s Japan by the enigmatic Lieutenant Colonel Yuki, whose recruits are trained to spare every life, their own included. Each episode is a self-contained espionage story set in Tokyo, Shanghai, London or Berlin, full of disguises, double crosses and quiet brilliance.

Princess Principal sets a team of teenage girl spies in a steampunk London divided by a wall, where a princess, a thief, a samurai girl and two others take on missions for a secret service while hiding their own schemes. The story continues in films such as Princess Principal Crown Handler: Chapter 1. ACCA: 13-Territory Inspection Dept. is a cool, stylish political mystery about a laid-back inspector who travels a kingdom of thirteen districts, each with its own culture and cuisine, while rumours of a coup swirl around him.

Phantom thieves bring a lighter touch. Magic Kaito: Kid the Phantom Thief follows the dashing thief who often crosses paths with Detective Conan, Mysterious Joker is a bright adventure for younger viewers, and LUPIN ZERO imagines Lupin the Third as a schoolboy in 1960s Tokyo, meeting a young Jigen for the first time. Lupin the Third: Jigen's Gravestone is a grittier film in which Jigen becomes the target of a mysterious sniper. House of Five Leaves follows a timid ronin who falls in with a gang of kidnappers in Edo and discovers the kindness behind their crimes.

City mysteries

Durarara!! is a sprawling mystery set in Tokyo's Ikebukuro district, where a headless rider on a black motorcycle, a bartender with superhuman strength, a smiling information broker and a web of gangs and online communities all cross paths. Its sixty episodes weave dozens of characters into one clever puzzle. Hamatora and Double Decker! Doug & Kirill bring detective agencies and police partners to colourful future cities, and Trickster retells Edogawa Rampo's Boy Detectives Club with a boy shielded by a mysterious fog that keeps every threat at bay.

Dark fantasy

The Dark fantasy collection gathers kingdoms, curses and fairy tales with shadows, and Dark fantasy on AniClipse suggests where to start. The Twelve Kingdoms is one of the great fantasy sagas in anime. Yoko, a shy high-school girl in Tokyo, is carried away by a mysterious man to a world of twelve kingdoms ruled by monarchs chosen by heaven, where she must survive, grow and discover her own destiny. Its forty-five episodes, based on Fuyumi Ono's novels, build a rich world of politics, mythology and moral questions.

Land of the Lustrous is a visual marvel from studio Orange, set on a shore where immortal gem people defend themselves from moon-dwelling raiders. Phosphophyllite, the most fragile gem, longs to be useful, and each change to Phos's body brings new abilities and new doubts. The computer animation glitters like light through crystal. Princess Tutu begins as a ballet fairy tale about a little duck who becomes a girl, and grows into a clever, moving story about characters trapped inside a storyteller's unfinished tale, set to classical music.

Rozen Maiden follows a shut-in boy who receives a living antique doll, one of seven sisters fighting to become the perfect girl, and Rozen Maiden - Zurückspulen revisits the story from a new angle. Pandora Hearts follows a young nobleman cast into an abyss on the day of his coming-of-age ceremony, and Tegami Bachi: Letter Bee follows a boy who delivers letters across a dark land lit by an artificial sun.

Fairy tales and legends

The Grimm Variations reimagines six of the Brothers Grimm's fairy tales with dark new twists, told as stories written by the Grimm siblings themselves. Hakkenden: Eight Dogs of the East adapts a classic Japanese epic about eight young men bound by mystical beads, and The Mystic Archives of Dantalian follows a young heir and a mysterious girl who guards a library of forbidden books. Le Chevalier D'Eon reimagines a famous French spy of the 1700s in a Paris of poets and secret societies.

The Heike Story retells the famous medieval war chronicle through the eyes of a young girl who can see the future, in delicate watercolour animation by Science SARU. Onmyoji follows the legendary court diviner Seimei and his friend Hiromasa as they solve supernatural mysteries at the Heian court. The Deer King and The Girl from the Other Side are two fine fantasy films, one about a warrior and a child surviving a strange plague, the other about a girl and her gentle, cursed guardian in a divided land.

Sci-fi mysteries

The Sci-fi mysteries collection gathers puzzles set in strange futures. Real Drive, from Production I.G, follows an elderly diver who returns from a long coma to investigate mysteries inside the Metal, a vast digital sea of human memories. Time of Eve is a thoughtful short series about a café where androids and humans are asked to treat each other as equals, and a teenage boy who discovers what his household android does in her free time.

KADO: The Right Answer begins when a colossal cube appears over Haneda Airport and swallows a passenger jet; a government negotiator becomes humanity's voice in talks with the being inside. The Gene of AI follows a doctor who treats humanoids in a near future where they live alongside people, and Your Forma pairs a police investigator who can dive into memories with a brilliant android partner. Humanity Has Declined is a sly, whimsical satire about a mediator between the last humans and the tiny, cheerful fairies who now run the world.

Eden of the East begins with a young woman on a trip to Washington who meets a naked amnesiac holding a pistol and a phone loaded with eight billion yen, and follows the mystery of a game played by twelve chosen people to save Japan. Re:Creators brings characters from anime, novels and games into the real world, where they confront the people who created them. 18if follows a boy who wanders through the dreams of witches, each a young person trapped by a painful memory.

Game adaptations

The Game adaptations collection gathers mysteries born in video games. PERSONA 4 the Animation follows a transfer student in the rural town of Inaba, where a string of murders is linked to a mysterious television channel that appears only on rainy midnights; Persona 4 The Golden Animation retells it with a new friend, and PERSONA5 the Animation follows a band of high-school phantom thieves who steal the corrupt desires of adults. .hack and .hack//G.U. Trilogy explore mysteries inside a vast online game.

Lord El-Melloi II's Case Files {Rail Zeppelin} Grace note follows a young professor at the Clock Tower, the great academy of magecraft, who solves magical mysteries with his apprentice. Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva sends the puzzle-loving professor and his young assistant to an opera house where a mysterious performance promises eternal life, and Tasokare Hotel follows a woman who wakes in a hotel between life and death and must discover who she is.

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