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Whether you’re looking for a mystery involving adventure, time travel, investigations, suspenseful pursuits, or psychological and thought-provoking puzzles, these picks are sure to catch your eye, prick your ears, and have you at the edge of your seat with mysteries that will keep you guessing. With a range of relatable, captivating, and often suspicious characters, you’ll be wondering who’s trustworthy and whodunit. Can you solve these series’ mysteries before the truth is revealed?
While action as a genre tends to be pretty popular, there’s a certain contemplative charm that mystery anime have that just pulls the audience in and leaves them craving more; the thought-provoking themes and secrets compelling the viewer to inherently seek the truths, motives, and resolutions until the very end. And with these series’ piling problems, questions, puzzles, riddles, secrets, and, well, mysteries, the truth is definitely not always as it may seem…
1) The Apothecary Diaries
When Maomao, an apothecary’s daughter from the red-light district, gets kidnapped and sold to be a servant of the imperial palace, she’s thrust into a world of mysterious disturbances within bureaucratic disputes. Trying to hide her literacy and medicinal knowledge, when the emperor’s children begin falling gravely ill, she can’t help herself but to quietly solve the “curse” anonymously. When the beautiful eunuch Jinshi manages to single her out, she’s promoted to concubine Gyokuyou’s lady-in-waiting and poison taster. But as Maomao’s skills prove her indispensable, she begins facing risks that go beyond the hazards of tasting for poisons.
As a historical anime, The Apothecary Diaries piles on mysteries within mysteries, both episodic and throughout the overarching plot, that’s sure to keep you hooked and guessing. Maomao’s methodical and intuitive investigations often rely on a piece of wisdom from her adoptive father: staying silent on half-baked conjectures until substantial evidence supports a hypothesis.
The Apothecary Diaries can be streamed on Netflix, Hulu, or Crunchyroll where available.
2) Monster
When renowned neurosurgeon Dr. Kenzou Tenma is faced with the moral dilemma of either saving a child’s life or following orders to perform surgery on the town’s mayor, he manages to save the life of the young boy, Johan Liebert. Unfortunately, Tenma’s good intentions come with their own consequences. Years later, beyond losing his job and fiancée, deaths mysteriously begin cropping up, with suspicions pointing a finger at Tenma himself, forcing him to face the consequences of his choices and the monster he allowed to live.
If you’re looking for a mystery that’ll keep your ears perked and eyes attentive for the duration of an extended binge, Monster definitely does the job. With 74 episodes, Tenma’s pursuit leads him to travel on a lengthy, years-long journey full of psychological suspense and thought-provoking questions of morality.
Monster can be streamed on Netflix.
3) Link Click
Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang run the Time Photo Studio under their landlady and close friend Qiao Ling. Under the guise of a photo studio, their trade instead involves the client providing the photo. With it, Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang are able to travel back in time. While Lu Guang provides guidance with his ability to see 12 hours into the photo’s future, Cheng Xiaoshi leaps back to the moment the photo was taken, assuming the identity of the photographer along with all of their memories and emotions. The two must then work together in order to solve the client’s request and relieve them of their past regret. But witnessing increasingly tragic events progressively takes a toll on Cheng Xiaoshi and eventually garners unwanted attention.
Link Click gives the mystery genre two things that can often be overlooked: a clever new tool for the time travel trope and actual deep emotional connections between the people involved and the consequences of such a power. Furthermore, the use of photographs here isn’t just a visual symbol, but an allegory that pervades the entirety of the narrative, giving truly vibrant snapshots of the human experience.
Link Click can be streamed on Crunchyroll.
4) Steins;Gate
Alongside his supportive childhood friend Mayuri Shiina and otaku hacker roommate Itaru Hashida, mad scientist Rintarou Okabe of the Future Gadget Laboratory endeavors to create scientific and technological innovations. Despite his overwhelming enthusiasm, Okabe and his team have only managed to create a microwave that seemingly only has the odd ability to transform bananas into green goo. At first, when he discovers that the microwave can be used for time travel itself, it seems like a groundbreaking scientific innovation. Unfortunately, as things spiral out of control and the discovery garners unwanted attention, Okabe soon learns that time travel isn’t just a toy, but leads to dire, traumatizing consequences for both his loved ones and his own sanity. Realizing all too late the damage that’s been done, Okabe is determined to move time itself to set things right.
Speaking of time travel anime involving deep emotional connections and the consequences of such a power, Steins;Gate is also a great choice if you’re looking to get deeply invested in a mystery anime. At first, the prospect of time travel seems like an exciting breakthrough, but it soon becomes clear through cycles of psychological torment that not everything is as it may seem…
Steins;Gate can be streamed on Crunchyroll.
5) Odd Taxi
As a taxi driver, Hiroshi Odokawa meets many strange customers in his line of work like the unemployed Taichi Kabasawa who hopes to become internet famous, Miho Shirakawa, a nurse with her own secrets, the “Homo Sapiens”, a struggling comedic duo, and the infamous delinquent Dobu. But making a living as a taxi driver isn’t an easy job, especially when a girl goes missing and authorities track the leads back to him, the yakuza and corrupt cops hot on his heels.
Odd Taxi may at first look like a cutesy, quirky anime about anthropomorphic animals just getting caught up in the antics of others, but it’s so much more. The series piles on mystery upon mystery that the audience may not have even realized to begin with was a mystery. But that’s part of the fun. The absolute layers that Odd Taxi offers brings a unique, clever novelty to the genre.
Odd Taxi can be streamed on Crunchyroll.
6) Made in Abyss
On a remote island live the citizens of Orth, a city on the edge of a colossal pit known as the Abyss. With otherworldly creatures, ecosystems, and treasures adding to the mystery of this strange vertical landscape, both travelers and locals have spent millennia trying to uncover its secrets. When Riko, a rookie-ranked Red Whistle Delver, happens upon a mysterious robot boy, Reg, she becomes inspired to venture to the bottom of the pit in search of her elite White Whistle missing mother. She and her new friends must have the courage to face the dangers of the chasm threatening to swallow them.
Where did Reg come from? What awaits them at the bottom of the Abyss? Just how dangerous can the adventure get? The layer upon layer of questions and the physical and psychological trauma only piling up as the determined group of friends delve deeper to their unknown fate as the mysteries of the Abyss await them.
Made in Abyss can be streamed on Prime or HiDive where available.
7) Summer Time Rendering
After the death of his parents, Shinpei Ajiro had been taken in by the Kofune family and their two daughters, Mio and Ushio. Though he eventually left for Tokyo to continue his education, he’s returned to his home island of Hitogashima to attend Ushio’s funeral after she’d tragically drowned while attempting to rescue a little girl. But during the funeral, his best friend brings suspicion into the whole situation with the added information of bruises found on Ushio’s neck. With the accident looking more like a murder, Shinpei begins noticing strange happenings around him as he starts questioning what really happened to Ushio. With strange things happening and people disappearing, Shinpei uncovers much more about the island itself on top of what happened to Ushio.
This suspenseful supernatural mystery is sure to keep you questioning on what’s really going on, each new revelation only leading to more and more questions. Not only must Shinpei unravel the truth behind what really happened to Ushio, but eventually discovers way more than he originally bargained for as the island itself has secrets yet to be revealed.
Summer Time Rendering can be streamed on Disney+ or Hulu where available.
8) Erased
29-year-old detached manga artist Satoru Fujinuma experiences the odd phenomenon he calls “Revival” of being sent back several minutes before an accident occurs, and he takes advantage of the ability to save the lives of those around him. When he’s wrongfully accused of the murder of someone close, this time, he’s sent back 18 years in the past to his childhood in 1988. Suspecting the present-day murder may be connected to a childhood incident, the abduction and murder of his quiet classmate Kayo Hinazuki, Satoru speculates it’s a chance to make things right, uncover the truth, and prevent present-day tragedies.
Erased seems to be somehow both a relatively popular yet still underrated anime, as the mystery will definitely keep you guessing. The overlooked investigations by the protagonist’s childhood self to actually be heard by unobservant adults are as quiet as the acclaim of the anime itself, both deserving to be more widely considered.
Erased can be streamed on Hulu or Crunchyroll where available.
9) Serial Experiments Lain
At school or at home, Lain Iwakura isn’t the most social. When her father introduces her to the many uses of the internet, here called the “Wired”, she begins noticing its prominence in society, from email to video games to drugs, learning that its influences go beyond the hardware. As she searches for answers within the Wired as to why so many strange happenings seem to be occurring around her, Lain becomes more connected with people than she ever anticipated.
This series has more of a slow-burn mystery as society itself at first seems pretty normal, if a bit seedy. Even so, the realizations Lain comes to about the Wired go deeper than what an onion router could dig up. Serial Experiments Lain is a great pick if you’re looking for a side of existentialism to go with your slice of mystery pie.
10) Mononoke
A mysterious man simply known as the Medicine Seller travels across feudal Japan in a venture to slay malevolent spirits known as mononoke. But the task isn’t as simple as exorcism recitations nor battling the paranormal in physical combat. Instead, he must first learn its Form, its Truth, and its Reason through intense psychological analysis and careful investigative work in order to unsheathe the mighty Exorcism Sword and carry out slaying the hostile apparitions. And performing a precursory confrontation of the mononoke to further learn about them tends to be just as, if not more, dangerous than the subsequent clash.
Not only are the stylizations of the animation itself more vibrant and colorful, but so is the unique twist Mononoke takes on the mystery genre. While action tends to be a popular response to opposing a foe, the preemptive contemplative route the Medicine Seller takes when confronting the mononoke makes for a refreshing, enigmatic perspective to problem-solving.
Mononoke can be streamed on Netflix and Crunchyroll.
What’s your favorite mystery anime? Let us know in the comments if there’s any you think we should check out!
