10 Best Death Game Anime

The Death Game genre is one of anime's most iconic, running the gamut from entertainingly edgy schlock to powerful critiques of humanity.

• Future Diary: Classic death game anime with influential tropes, though it hasn't aged well. Cringy but still worth a watch.
•  Danganronpa: The Animation: Enjoyable death game with twists and turns, but the anime adaptation falls short. Best experienced through the visual novels.
•  Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor: Intense, thought-provoking death game series for gamblers. Considered the best in the genre. Watch on Crunchyroll.

The death game genre is one of anime's most iconic, although it is often hard to pull off right. This makes the better death game shows even more beloved by their fans even as the worse ones are reviled. It also makes it often difficult for new fans of the genre to find good recommendations for it.

This is unfortunate as the basic premise of the death game genre is brilliant in its simplicity. The genre involves several people who must compete in a game to kill the other participants. The nature of these games can vary wildly, from being more direct battle royales to hinging on simple activities like cards or hide and seek. But what is constant are the devastating stakes the participants are playing for, as their own lives hang in the balance. These are the best examples of this premise out into action.

10 PHOTOS

10
Future Diary
Cringy But Influential

Future Diary is a classic of the genre, making popular a lot of the tropes that are still very prevalent today. The death game in Future Diary involves its participants all receiving a special device that tells them specific information. While Future Diary has plenty of big twists, the show hasn't aged very well, which could leave many viewers disappointed with the execution of its brilliant premise. That being said, it is still a show that every Death Game fan should watch, as long as they can handle some of its cringe elements.

9
Danganronpa: The Animation
A Battle Between Hope and Despair

Danganronpa is a series of visual novels that feature some of the best death games in the genre. They follow a group of gifted high schoolers who are trapped together in a school with the only way out being to murder one of their fellow students. Unfortunately, the anime adaptation of the first game, Danganronpa: The Animation didn't quite do it justice as it had to cut down on a lot of content due to the shift in medium. However, despite this, the anime adaptation of Danganronpa is still a very enjoyable death game with plenty of twists and turns.

8
Tomodachi Game
A Death Game Among Friends

Tomodachi Game is a death game anime centering around a group of five supposedly close friends, with a lot of money at stake. The games generally try to push the limits of the participants’ friendship and are thus more psychological than many of the ones featured in other death games. Also, their pre-existing friendship provides another layer of depth to every betrayal that isn't as present in death games where the participants are strangers. This makes Tomodachi Game an intriguing watch even for fans who have seen many other death games.

7
Btooom!
An Explosive Death Battle

Btooom! is a death game anime that puts a dark twist on other shows like Sword Art Online. Following Ryouta, who is a top player of the violent video game Btooom!, the series turns that fictional world into reality by forcing its participants to actually kill each other. This gives it a relatively unique premise compared to other death game anime as it is focused on only one main game and can thus more fully explore its various characters. However, the game in question can get a bit stale compared to the variety that other death games provide.

6
Deadman Wonderland
A Deadly Prison

Deadman Wonderland follows the high school student Ganta, who is framed for the murder of his classmates and imprisoned in an insidious institution that forces its inmates to compete in various survival games. The series is incredibly entertaining, with mysteries and intrigue galore as Ganta must figure out who he can trust in the prison while also trying to track down the mysterious figure that murdered his class. However, the anime doesn't adapt the full manga, leaving the story with an unsatisfactory conclusion. Still, Deadman Wonderland's good points make it well worth watching.

5
Darwin's Game
Death Games Go Mobile

Darwin's Game is a death game anime following the mold of Future Diary, where the participants of the game must fight to the death using newfound superpowers. The concept is somewhat modernized here, as the game is held via a mobile app, and the protagonist is much more enjoyable to watch. There are also some incredibly entertaining characters like the man in a Panda suit who appears in the first episode showing viewers how wild things can get. While Darwin's Game isn't revolutionary, it is a very fun time for death game fans.

4
Talentless Nana
My Hero Academia Meets a Death Game

Talentless Nana may not seem like a death game at first glance. It follows a group of superpowered youths who are sequestered on an island ostensibly to help them train their abilities. In actuality, they are there to be killed off by Nana, a government agent who masquerades herself as one of them. This essentially makes it a death game where the majority of the players don't know they are in one until the murders start piling up, which is a fascinating twist on the genre.

3
Alice in Borderland
Short But Great

Alice in Borderland is one of the best death game manga of all time. The series is set in a strange version of Japan where everyone must participate in death games to survive, collecting cards along the way. Its three-episode anime adaptation unfortunately only covers the first arc of the series, giving fans only a taste of the greatness of its story to come. However, even if the series may end leaving fans wanting more, those three episodes and their death games are incredibly compelling and worth checking out for anyone who is a fan of the genre.

2
Death Parade
Death Games in the Afterlife

Death Parade is a much different sort of death game as it only has a pair of players and each episode switches them out for another set. The show is set in a bar in the afterlife where two recently deceased people must compete in a game to decide whether they will be reincarnated or not. Throughout these games, a lot is revealed about the participants’ original lives, which gives the show more emotional stakes. The nature of the show's setting also makes it more philosophical than a typical death game.

1
Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor
Death Games For Gamblers

Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor is arguably the best death game series of all time and has been greatly influential on other shows like Squid Game. The show follows the debt-ridden Kaiji as he participates in a series of underground gambling events to make enough money to escape them. The stakes of these games gradually escalate and it isn't long before his life is on the line. The intensity of the show and the large amount of thought put into each game easily make Kaiji the best death game anime.