It's easy to forget how gruesome this series can be sometimes.
Spoilers below.- Hisoka tied with razor-sharp wire to an upright bed, while being forced to remember the night Muraki raped him.
- Sangatanus feeling-up "Hijiri" ( actually Hisoka in disguise), then brutally murdering him. ( because it was Hisoka, a Shinigami, he got better.) That entire plotline was massive Paranoia Fuel. Getting an organ transplant? Not usually A Fate Worse Than Death. Having said organ come from someone who made a Deal with the Devil, and now said devil has declared you fair game? Not good at all.
- Kazusa's death. We don't see it happen, (though the manga shows us the—thankfully not graphically detailed—results) but we do know that she pushes Hijiri out of the way of a collapsing pillar, meaning that she was crushed to death underneath it. She gets better, but still. Oh, and did we mention that she appears to be eight years old?
- The St. Michael's School arc, which was so horribly full of Nightmare Fuel and Squick that the author made the next arc as an apology. To elaborate, a boy feels so guilt-ridden over engaging in gay sex with his teacher that he self-mutilates - cutting off his fingers and burning his genitals, to name a bit of what he does to himself - until he dies, and is thrown into the ocean. His classmate finds out about this and threatens to out the teacher, so what does the teacher do? Sleep with him, and then brutally murder him mid-coitus. The first boy's reanimated corpse, now possessed by a demon, reappears and - bearing in mind that this is a corpse that has spent a lot of time in the water, and thus is extremely decomposed - seduces the teacher, kissing him even though half his face is falling off. And then he sucks the guy's organs out. It's about as disgusting as you can imagine.
- The reason Muraki obsessively stalks Tsuzuki? He wants to put his brother's head on Tsuzuki's body, bring Saki to life, and kill him.
- Muraki in general. Murderer, rapist, driving everyone around him insane, manipulative, a doctor (which, yes, should terrify you) and many who see him (he dresses in white, is pale, has pale eyes and hair) think of him as an angel.
- The possible Eldritch Abomination that lives in Tsuzuki's head taking on a face he recognizes - his own from the past. He comes complete with a simultaneous "The Reason You Suck" Speech and Breaking Speech hybrid. It's notable to mention that after he speaks to Tsuzuki, Tsuzuki proceeds to stab Muraki. The dialogue suggests it was the child that goaded (or even forced) Tsuzuki to stab Muraki.In order for a flower to bloom beautifully, something must be sacrificed. Do you understand, Asato? Your life is built on the sacrifice of others.
- This entity is Enma, which is still terrifying since this means he's a god who can shapeshift and enter Tsuzuki's mind, manipulating him to do his bidding.
- Volume 11 of the manga aka the infamous Kamakura arc, all the way through. There's a reason it's rated M+. Wait, it's not? Well it should.
- To clarify: Hisoka's father Nagare had an ancestor who wasn't strong enough to kill a freaky snake god, and instead imprisoned it in his own body. To keep it from escaping and murdering everyone in the village, the god has been passed down from father to son for generations, each clan head bearing it, and every night the thing tentacle rapes him. Not everything is shown, but it's pretty goddamn obvious. Cue the Brain Bleach. It's depicted as graphically as possible without getting an R-18 rating. This is what would have awaited Hisoka, had he not been killed.
- And Hisoka's mother was forcibly impregnated by the same (vengeful) god that constantly rapes Nagare, and Rui's pregnancy with Gods-know-what kind of hellspawn has lasted for at least two years. In story. Since Rui is implied to be pregnant with a vessel for Yatonokami, and both she and Nagare are as much Hisoka's parents as they are the current child's, it's reasonable to assume that Hisoka actually is not entirely human and his empathic powers are a side effect of that.
- Alongside the above, everything about the Kurosaki clan in general. Literally everything. Ritualistic sacrifice? Check. Severe child abuse, implied to have plagued more than one generation? Check. Infanticide? Check.
- Doubling as a Tear Jerker, the fate of poor Mariko, a schoolgirl from the Kyoto arc. For starters, she witnesses Muraki summoning a group of Hell Hounds to maul her best friend Maki to death, with Muraki manipulating her into thinking that the shinigami are evil and out to get her and later everyone starts ostracizing her, assuming her to be responsible for Maki's death. The stress and paranoia starts to eat at her and later she's injured. While Tsuzuki is looking after her, Muraki arrives and slips a couple of centipedes into her hospital room before merging her with them, turning her into a Body Horror monstrosity that proceeds to try and kill Tsuzuki. Tsuzuki, already reeling from the deaths of Maria, Kazusa and Tsubaki, refuses to fight her...and in response, Suzaku more or less summons herself for him and incinerates Mariko in a misguided effort to protect her master. To make matters worse, Tsuzuki can hear the girl screaming in agony as Suzaku burns her alive. No wonder he ends up going insane immediately after. Oh, and just in case you're wondering, this is what Mariko is screaming as she dies, in the anime version:Mariko: IT HURTS! I CAN'T BREATHE! SOMEONE HELP ME! LET ME OUT!
