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Dark Fic / Anime & Manga

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Dark Fic in Anime & Manga.

  • Azumanga Daioh:
    • One particularly disturbing example is the Fusion Fic doujinshi Drifting Classroom, a horror tale void of any of the series' humor, optimism or light-heartedness. It involves the school, with everyone inside, being sent to a barren world. They split into factions over whether they should attempt to find a way home or try to start a life in the new world. People start dying, Osaka finds a gun in a paper bag and begins killing the other girls, Chiyo winds up getting the gun but Osaka stabs her in the throat. Then Chiyo sees Chiyo-Daddy after she dies, who is actually God or something, then wakes up to find it's All Just a Dream and everything's fine.
    • There is a Hentai doujinshi (links will not be provided - Brain Bleach is expensive) which revisited Osaka theorizing about what would happen if Chiyo got kidnapped. It's a Hentai. Do the math.
    • I'll Be On The Road Again, in which Kaorin realises that she can never have Sakaki, and ends up killing herself by driving her car into a wall. Short and eerily In Character.
    • Azumanga Royale, which is a crossover with, well, Battle Royale. And it's hilarious, thus proving that you can make a series Darker and Edgier and still keep it funny.
    Yomi: Tomo-chan, my best buddy in the whole world, wait for me so we can 'team up'! I'll introduce you to my new friend, Mr. Spiky Bat! He's been wanting to meet you for a real long time. I think you're going to become real close!
  • The two 'Karakura Cops' stories. It places the Bleach characters in a police force setting and the Espada are a terrorist group who brutally murder almost the entire cast. Apart from containing cannibalism, suicide and child murder, it actually starts off as a light-hearted comedy.
  • Death Note isn't exactly a cheerful story to begin with, but The Faceless (Disguise of Carnivorism) explores the Fridge Horror of having a realm of Death Gods feeding off human lifespans all the time and what happens when humans learn this. They begin killing each other because of it, resulting in a Post Apocalyptic World of Nihilism.
  • Digimon Adventure 02:
    • The Story We Never Told is a darker retelling; the violence level is ramped up, there's distrust between the two generations of Digidestined, and there's a anti-Emperor resistance that quickly becomes vehemently anti-human in general, and quickly turns most of the Digital World against the kids. Oikawa, who was a Tragic Villain under Myotismon’s control in the original series, is reimagined as a Psychopathic Manchild who sees himself as a god, and caused the car “accident” that killed Izzy’s parents. Ken, already the biggest Woobie of the 02 Digidestined, is made even more tragic then he already was (his brother Sam still died in a car accident like in canon, but unlike in canon, Ken deliberately pushed him in front of the car, Oikawa is responsible for his Start of Darkness, his partner Wormmon is Killed Off for Real, unlike in canon where he was reborn as a Digiegg, and finally, Ken himself is murdered by Oikawa after he decides that Ken had outlived his usefulness.)
  • Nana's Everyday Life delves into themes darker than Elfen Lied, and that's saying something!
  • Free! is a lighthearted sports comedy, but Eyes Wide Open All the Time is a gritty police drama where Haru's a chronically ill drug runner, Rin's a streetwalker in love with Sosuke the cop, Makoto's a former POW trying to reajust to civilian life, and pretty much everyone else's either homeless, a drug addict, or both.
  • Fullmetal Alchemist:
  • "Yukiyukite Senshadou" note  is an infamous doujinshi among the Girls und Panzer fandom for an amount of gore better suited to actual war than a sport played by high schoolers, as this story removes all safety precautions present in the anime. The first change is the senshadou tournament in this story uses live ammo. The second change is some of the named characters in this fic are more bloodthirsty than they are in the anime. The third change is that the tournament allows killing, including using flamethrower on the tank crews who are exiting their tank, using AP weapons to penetrate the enemy tank's armor and kill the tank crews who are still inside, and secretly deploying a sniper to pick off enemy crews before they can enter their tanks. The fourth change is the absence of flag-carrying tanks, which means senshadou match in this story ends only with capitulation Explanation or with one team completely annihilating the other team. These four factors naturally result in an absurdly high death count, with the number of named characters who survive the story being measurable on one hand. And this does not include all the atrocities and war crimes committed outside the tournament.
  • The Cries of Haruhi Suzumiya is a Haruhi Suzumiya darkfic by way of crossing it over with Higurashi: When They Cry, and manages to be darker than both of the source materials. It contains fingore, child murder, heads exploding, maggots bleeding out of a girl's privates, and just what would happen if two of the most powerful characters in fiction went insane.
  • With Kill la Kill being a rather controversial show, this can be a given, however, some of said fics are often more graphic than the anime is:
    • If I've Been Enveloped in Tenderness is a rather grim and explicit fic. To elaborate, Ragyo won and there is a very high body count with Mako's parents, Nudist Beach, and two of the Elite Four being executed. The fic can be found on Archive of Our Own, where it is rated thusly.
    • Maim de Maim isn't as dark but it does have its moments. A key point would be what Ragyo did to Mr. Tapatio or Nui's backstory, rather, what she did in said backstory.
    • Like the abovementioned, A Minor Miscalculation,have more detailed deaths than in the original anime, the first chapter opening to Mako and Mataro losing their parents to Nui in very graphic fashion.
    • The Crimson Garment and most of what can be said is that Satsuki has a lot psychological issues and the fic is a dystopian fantasy where most parents only see their kids as a means to an end (Mako's parents don't), death rates are high, life is determined by your grades (80% fail the test), and the world is a rather depressing combination of a Crapsack World and Wretched Hive. Essentially, it's like Kill la Kill meets Akame ga Kill! and Neon Genesis Evangelion, with some bit Elfen Lied in a Hunger Games like setting.
    • At the End of Days (extended version can be read here: [1]) is a fic that takes place sometime after Ep. 18 and, well, getting rid of Ragyou didn't kill them off she like said, instead, they've gone haywire, bring the end of the world. It's a also a Death Fic, as most of everyone that Satsuki and Ryuuko knew are dead, included Mako, Iori, and three of the Elite Four.
  • Komi Can't Communicate: Adding realism to a light-hearted series, The Sea or the Mountains depicts Tadano suffering from PTSD after being kidnapped and nearly killed by Yamai Ren. It also goes into Yamai's backstory explaining that she suffered from multiple psychological issues such as bipolar disorder and psychosis.
  • K-On!:
  • Love Live!:
  • Lucky Star:
  • Lyrical Nanoha:
    • The Name of War. There's no external enemy, just the TSAB, and the divisions in squads and families are heart-breaking.
    • Anything by Extrinsical is not for the faint of heart.
    • Also, Scars of Time and Distant Sky. (The latter contains Planetarian spoilers!)
    • Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha BetrayerS is something of a household name for Nanoha darkfic, not so much because of blood, gore, and murder, but because of how thoroughly and gleefully it subverts the original's enlightened ideals of The Power of Friendship, honest communication, and family bonds. The author instead turns the story into an A Song of Ice and Fire-level political clusterfuck, where Hayate masterminds armed coups, Nanoha has to fight Fate (again) and Subaru for reasons she is not allowed to explain to them and vomits blood every morning from overexertion, and a 9-year-old Vivio has to fight both of her mothers in a bid for galactic dictatorship.
  • Shadow Cell's Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny retelling brings much of the Zeta and Victory into SEED Destiny.
  • My Hero Academia:
  • There are quite a few Naruto fanfictions which explore the whole children-as-warriors idea, as well as killing for money and the short life expectancy of ninjas. The only reason the setting of Naruto isn't already dark is purely because it chooses not to focus on such things, being a Shōnen series:
    • Although More Than Enemies starts as kind of a Crack Fic, it soon gets Darker and Edgier by two key Plot Points. First, Río's backstory and everything related to it (fully exploring the hell party ROOT is and revealing the dark sides of characters such as Kakashi, Minato, and the Sandaime). Second, when Sakura gets a rude awakening of the shadows of the Shinobi world and Konoha herself — she is the expendable member of her team, her friend Stalker-san is the murderous Itachi Uchiha, and both Suna and Konoha had done terrible things Yuna, an elderly woman who is Sakura's friend.
    • Atonement is a chilling description of a scenario in which a curious doctor delves into the case of a permanent psych-ward patient and regrets it. Naruto ends up in the psych ward by undergoing serious torture, losing one of his hands, going blind, having his chakra pathways destroyed due to forced extraction of Kyuubi, and ends up developing a split personality to cope: he ends up thinking he's Sasuke.
    • FanFiction.Net abounds with fanfiction describing Naruto's all-out, lifelong struggle to utterly decimate the Leaf Village because people hated him (he recognizes this possibility himself). These are usually chock full of tales of him being beaten, burned, stabbed, mugged, occasionally raped (if the author is going for some real shock value), harassed, having his house destroyed, and generally just doing everything possible to make him kill everything forever.
    • Ten Thousand Fists involves him getting an Omnitrix filled with anime characters in place of aliens. And you know its a Dark Fic when Chapter 1 has Iruka tortured, mutilated, and killed with the same happening to Naruto, who only lives due to a Deus ex Machina. Then we find out he suffers the usual gamut of beatings, burnings, dog maulings, rapes, etc. And somehow it manages to get worse once Kakashi shows up.
    • Team 8 is one of the most popular Naruto fanfics and has its fair share of darkness. Almost every Hyuuga is a complete jerk (especially towards Hinata), Kurenai has a Dark and Troubled Past, and Naruto suffered near-systematic abuse prior to becoming a ninja that goes way beyond what the manga implies.
  • Negimaru, a Dark Fic for Negima! Magister Negi Magi made by the same people who made Drifting Classroom above and Evangelion RE-TAKE. It's about Chisame’s alter ego Idol character getting beaten by her fellow classmates in Internet popularity polls so she schemes of a plan to destroy their reputations online by using her *ahem* cosplay skills. Her plans succeed a little too well, and... let’s just say she gets too involved in her plan...
  • The Neon Genesis Evangelion fandom might collectively be the crowned champion of this trope. The series was already known for its darkness, but amongst fans known for analyzing everything down to the smallest detail, the ability to tease out the smallest aspect and expand upon every twisted meaning or interpretation is phenomenal. A far from comprehensive list:
    • Random1377 is a prolific NGE darkfic author, with entries such as The Lifespan of a Love Affair (a deconstruction of the Misato/Shinji pairing), Let She Who is Without Sin (about a Serial Killer), and Aoi (includes Shinji being killed in the first chapter, and falls apart from there).
    • Adam Kadmon has written several NGE dark fics, taking particular aspects of the characters and canon and spinning them to horrific effect. Examples include I Knew Him When, a deeply depressing examination of the lives of the pilots and the people around them post-Third Impact, The Second Other, which nightmarishly twists the relationship between Shinji and Gendo, and Fast, which grotesquely examines why Rei is a vegetarian.
    • Scar Tissue is also a good one: Asuka blames her scars and death in canon on Shinji and punishes him by subjecting him to constant emotional, physical and sexual torture, and Shinji takes it all because he thinks he deserves it after defiling her and leaving her to die right before ending humanity. Meanwhile Shinji's low self-esteem and self-hatred has become a split personality tortures him in the form of hallucinations. And that's only the backstory. The fic itself begins after Asuka beats him so brutally that he has to be taken to the hospital and she finally realizes her actions have been horrible. On the other hand, the fic inverts the usual darkfic formula in that it starts off dark and gets progressively lighter.
  • Marie D. Suesse and the Mystery New Pirate Age!! deliberately invokes as many One Piece fanfiction clichés as possible, then breaks down and explores what would happen in those cases if reality ensued. The results are often both hilarious and horrific.
  • Osomatsu-san:
    • I With A Reputation For Follow-Up Suicide is a novelization of a MAD of the same name. All six of the brothers are Driven to Suicide, one by one.
    • Death In The Family has Ichimatsu killing Karamatsu.
    • Ichimatsu participating in Self-Harm and/or contemplating suicide is a surprisingly common fandom plot. Here is a particularly heartbreaking example, and another by the same author.
    • One particularly famous Pixiv comic had Iyami and Chibita solve a murder mystery where the sextuplets were hacked to pieces, only to find out Osomatsu did it, then hid the fact that he wasn't among them by rearranging the body parts so each body looked like someone lost a part when hiding their corpses.
    • After learning that Osomatsu-kun had a chapter where a robber dragged Osomatsu into being his partner in crime, fans started writing and drawing plenty of fic where the memory still haunts Osomatsu in his adult years. Either the robber returns and pulls him back into that life, or it turns into Alternate Universe fic where he kidnapped Osomatsu and subjected him to a lot of physical and mental (and occasionally sexual) abuse when they ran away together.
    • Modmad's untitled comic, the first page of which can be found here, is a downplayed example as the tone remains mostly as wacky as the original series. However, there is still a dark element to it, as the robber mentioned above, Tougou, returns running a "legitimate" business wherein he has roped Jyushimatsu's girlfriend into working in porn against her will and tries to give Jyushimatsu the Cement Shoes treatment when he tries to rescue her (though fortunately, Jyushi survives and formulates a Zany Scheme with his brothers and Chibita to save the girl).
    • The oneshot i'll take you somewhere even more brilliant goes into depth on Jyushimatsu's unnamed girlfriend. The woman, named "Homura" in the fic, is a depressed, suicidal ex-pornstar.
  • The Pretty Cure fanfic Don't Cry For Me, I've Already Wilted focuses on Saki Hyuuga/Cure Bloom, the plucky protagonist of Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash★Star, being tempted by the Dark Kingdom to join them and turn against the Pretty Cure. She actually accepts, and begins to hang around with them more, all the while unknowingly being corrupted by Bad Energy. In the end, Saki fully abandons the Pretty Cure, including her best friend Mai, and adopts a Dark Magical Girl form known as Yamiko. During the final battle, Yamiko uses Bad Energy to try and kill Nagisa, which sparks a chain of losses that lead to the Pretty Cure ultimately giving up on the battle, meaning that not only does the bad guy win, but there is no chance they'll get Saki back either.
  • The Puella Magi Madoka Magica fanfic Persephone's Waltz manages to be even bleaker than its notoriously depressing source material, with an incredibly detailed exploration into someone's slowly collapsing sanity and the horrible things that people can be driven to in desperate situations. About halfway through Sayaka brutally stabs Homura to death (it doesn't stick) and it isn't even the most horrifying thing that happens.
  • Ranma ½
    • Ill Met By Starlight is a Dark Fic where Gemma's training causes serious psychological damage to his son.
    • Another popular Dark Fic is Can't Let Go. It's about how both Ukyo and Mousse decide to deal with the ones they're infatuated with.
    • Hearts of Ice involves darker themes, ghouls and demons of the not funny kind, blood magic, mind manipulation and character deaths.
    • Ukyo Can Cook, which has Ukyo comforting Ranma, who's worried about Akane's recent disappearance with a special okonomiyaki, which Akane helped make...
    • The Bitter End has Ranma and Akane finally marry... but still arguing. And she still hits him. And the comedic violence gets less comedic...
  • Sailor Moon:
    • The series had a bit of a dark turn in its final season, where a renegade magical girl tries to destroy the world and nearly succeeds. The Golden Queen of Shadow Galactica tells her side of the story, taking cues from the manga but featuring a dream sequence from the anime, and has what would definitely be considered a bad ending.
    • Deconstructed in The Dark, Twisted, Grotesque, Violent and Generally Perverse Adventures of the Sailor Scouts!. Written under the conceit of the main characters reading through various fanfic "scripts", it manages to touch on every facet of Sailor Moon darkfic ever to exist.
    • Deaths of the Senshi is quite good once you get past the squick. And they get better in end, so don't be too afraid.
    • Usagi Is Dead Hip Hip Hooray. The title only gives you the very barest inkling: it starts with an unspeakably horrifying tragedy that subverts the entire original show, and only gets worse from there.
    • The Last Light is a short crossover in which the whole concept of the Sailor Crystals is given the Doctor Who treatment. Equal parts Tearjerker and Nightmare Fuel.
    • Damaged was a long-ago well-regarded darkfic in which one of the senshi is lost, presumed dead, in a battle with the Dark Kingdom. Lacking any explanation for what happened to her, officials turn their attention to the remaining girls, and their lives fall apart in different ways. But it's the ending that packs the real punch...
    • A highly popular yet unfinished Dark Fic is A Dangerous Pairing. The story features an evil version of both Usagi and Mamoru.
    • The Last Werewolf involves Makoto/Sailor Jupiter becoming a werewolf and being involved in a war between werewolves and vampires.
  • Also made by Studio Kimigabuchi is a Sgt. Frog doujin titled Hikari No Kuni. Which shows a dark version of an alien invasion from Keron.
  • Respect is a What If? Smile Pretty Cure! story that examines what would happen if timid crybaby Yayoi Kise made a contract with Kyubey in order to stop a bully from tormenting her. Needless to say, things go downhill quickly.
  • Soul Eater has been getting a few, too. For example, A Souls Songbook is a Alternate Universe Fic where the battle between Shinigami-sama & Asura eight centuries ago went the other way, resulting in a Crapsack World run by the witches, the Kishin is worshiped by the mainstream religion, and the Shapeshifter Weapons are considered things.
  • The Rise and Fall of Captain Starlock is this for Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, with Simon crossing the Despair Event Horizon and vowing revenge against the beastman. It still didn't become full darkfic, but, you got the picture.
  • Based off To Love Ru, "To-Love-DEATH" is all this. Taking a silly romantic comedy like To-Love-Ru, allow the characters warm your heart, then get destroyed with zombies!

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