YMMV / Speed Grapher

• Awesome Music: The whole soundtrack qualifies but the closing credits ''Break The Cocoon'' definitely takes the cake.
  • A good number of people know about this series just because of the OP Shinkichi Mitsumune's "Shutter Speed"
    • Or you could be one of the many who was annoyed that Funimation was unable to use Duran Duran's "Girls on Film" like in the original Japanese version.
• Complete Monster: Speed Grapher, while already dark, has these:
  • Katsuji Kamiya becomes Japan's Prime Minister and schemes to take possession of the Roppongi Club, which caters to every fetish and predilection of the upper classes, away from Chōji Suitengu, while also gaining control of Kagura for his own purposes. A glutton whose power is to devour anything, before he even achieved these powers, he once drove a couple to suicide over a huge debt, and then took their children to compensate. The son he sold as a child soldier would one day become Suitengu. The girl, who was only five, he sold as a Sex Slave to be abused and debauched until she was an Empty Shell years later, knowing only how to please men and request money for it.
  • Mizunokuchi is a sadistic dentist who, as a Euphoric, is granted a multitude of spider-like limbs that he can turn into drills. In the past, Mizunokuchi operated on heroine Kagura when she was due for dental surgery, removing her lower molars while she was still conscious so he could feel her pain. In the present, the dentist takes pleasure in outright tying patients down and simply torturing them to death by drilling through their mouths. He even takes disturbing trophies of the teeth that he carves and polishes afterwards.
  • Ran Yurigaoka is an esthetician with a thing for tattoos and body art. With his Euphoric powers, he can make his tattoos come to life. Yurigaoka uses them to control other people, playing them as People Puppets for his amusement. His real joy, though, is the Giant Spider tattoo on his back. Yurigaoka uses his fame to find women and uses his powers to give them pleasure, before he paralyzes them by merging the spider with their skin. After this, he has it kill them while they're alive and conscious, but paralyzed the entire time.
  • Chief Ekoda is the head of the Tokyo Police Department, who hides a secret fetish: He has a thing for legs. In fact, while a member of Suitengu's Roppongi Club, Ekoda took the chance to satisfy his feitshes by kidnapping women, holding them hostage and then cutting their legs off before preserving them as trophies, molesting and killing the women himself. His first two victims were his own wife and daughter. Later in the series, Ekoda kidnaps Ginza Hibari and tries to do the same to her before she frees herself. Ekoda is set apart by being a completely human monster, and his insane excesses make even the hardened Ginza reevaluate everything she had done to this point.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Bob, to a lesser extent, aside from being the most funniest characters mixed in a rather dark setting, he is a gay whom is portrayed very positively, being a nice person, a loyal supporter and an overall good friend to those around him.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: While the ending is supposed to be happy because Japan is saved from greed and corruption thanks to Suitengu succeeding in wiping out Japan's corrupt elite, the fact is that Suitengu is the Big Bad who did this by utterly destroying Japan's economy, which will have a devastating effect on the whole world and ruin millions of innocent lives, and the old elite end up being replaced by Suitengu's associates, who have done some pretty heinous things under his orders and got off scot free. The only slight glimmer of hope that a Full-Circle Revolution hasn't occurred is that Suitengu's henchmen happened to be portrayed as Punch-Clock Villains rather than the equally corrupt counterparts to the ruling class that was taken down, but there's no guarantee that the wealth they've accumulated won't go to their heads. The main characters get their happy ending, as shown in the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue, but it's rather conveniently glossed over if the general populace of Japan, let alone the entire world, is better off.
• Ho Yay: Besides Bob, Tsujido is really attached to Suitengu. Played with more subtlety than in many anime, though.
  • Joe. It's like the series was trying to make up for the horrible relationship we'd been forced to watch Saiga struggle away from up until then. Until he dies.
• Magnificent Bastard: Chōji Suitengu is a man who flaunts his extensive wealth via using expensive yen notes as cigars, believing everything "has its price", especially human life. In truth, Suitengu is dedicated to overthrowing the social order of Japan, manipulating all the upper echelons of society with his Roppongi Club that caters to a variety of fetishes. Constantly planning ahead of series hero Saiga, Suitengu also manipulates his lover, Shinzen of the powerful Tennozou Group and later disposes of her when she attempts to betray and kill him. Revealing his tragic past to his Arch-Enemy, Prime Minister Katsuji Kamiya, when the latter tries to kill Suitengu and take over the Roppongi Club, Suitengu kills him and enacts his master plan: causing a massive financial crisis to completely erase the corrupt upper class and completely break their hold on Japan forever.
• Moral Event Horizon: Shinzen's treatment of Kagura puts her WAY beyond this point. Other Euphorics also cross this line.
  • Ginza started as a pretty violent Cowboy Cop who had a habit of killing deserving criminals she came across and tried to blackmail Saiga into sleeping with her. Disturbing stuff overall, but made less cringeworthy as it could've been given the deaths were played for dark laughs, and Saiga wasn't especially bothered by her blackmail and got the better of her anyway. However... it becomes clear she has a very unhealthy obsession with Saiga and eventually trades Kagura to her abusive mother in return for "keeping" him. She then proceeds to hit him with her car, repeatedly rape him while he's unconscious while questioning why "she's not good enough for him" (How her plight tugs at the heartstrings...) and lock him up until he decides to be with her. Later on, the show attempted a Heel Realization, but most would say it was just a little too late for her to realize her treatment of an innocent girl and of course her little rape sessions were wrong.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: As of Episode 20, the Author Tract and Willing Suspension of Disbelief both went off the rails. All wealth and power invariably make monsters of everyone who has it, everyone else is a hypocrite and an ineffectual one at that. Humans are uniformly response-stimulus machines, and even our hero isn't exempt from that.
• The Woobie: Kagura
  • Iron Woobie: Saiga, himself.
  • Suitengu as well after his origin story has been revealed and elaborated upon. In which case, he'd probably be more of a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Pretty much any villain the show tries to make sympathetic, simply because of how far they go, how many of their crimes tend to be completely unnecessary, how little (if any) remorse they show for said crimes, and how their reasons for their actions come off as utter Wangst, especially in proportion to their deeds:
  • Big Bad Shinzen Tennouzu is supposed to be pitied because her husband (supposedly) ran out on her when she was pregnant, and because she, while still absolutely gorgeous, is very, very slowly losing her looks, despite the fact that she humiliates, hits, and starves her own daughter, and allows Suitengu to use her in his club, in her case seemingly believing she's being used for sex and only takes issue with the possibility that Suitengu himself was sleeping with her, and only out of jealousy's sake.
  • Chouji Suitengu, the real Big Bad, is supposed to be pitied because his sister died years ago, despite the fact that he murdered a man who owed him as little as ten yen and leaves his fresh corpse in front of his son, which is implied to be regular business for him, uses Kagura as a semi-Sex Slave in his club ^note While he does invoke Even Evil Has Standards against making her actually have sex, he still forces her to have make-out sessions, which he does as a Necessary Evil, but then, he doesn't show any remorse for it, either, distributes products that lower people’s inhibitions to make them more violent, and completely destroys Japan’s economy, which will likely screw over millions of innocent people. That this is portrayed as a happy ending does not help.
  • Hibari Ginza is supposed to be pitied because... her boyfriend doesn't want to bang her, despite the fact that she gives Kagura back to her abusers, then abducts and rapes Saiga several times feeling sorry for herself as she does so. And apparently the audience is meant to feel the same.