Highlights
- Dai Dark: Zaha Sanko seeks to find the truth about his coveted bones with the help of his skeletal guardian Avakian.
- Bokurano: Kids pilot mechas to protect Earth, using their own life energy in a dark and morbid battle for survival.
- Parasyte: Shinichi battles a parasite in his right hand, questioning humanity’s place in a world filled with monstrous aliens.
Sci-fi can cover a broad range of stories. There are daring, high-end space adventures with futuristic tech like Star Wars, utopian journeys seeking new life and civilizations like Star Trek, and gritty, grounded tales that focus on the grimmer parts of humanity. Blade Runner offered a morality story about replicants, while Alien introduced class struggle, corruption, and one of cinema’s scariest lifeforms: xenomorphs.
The darker side of sci-fi has been featured in novels, movies, comics, and manga. Some of them have gone on to become iconic, like Akira, Genma Wars, and Giant Robo. However, some manga go beyond political corruption, psychic trials, and secret societies, and aim to make things pitch black. These are the darkest sci-fi manga.
1 Dai Dark
Teen Spacefarer & His Skeleton Friend Try To Stop Aliens From Stealing His Bones
- Written & Illustrated by Q Hayashida.
- 7+ Volumes, 50+ ‘Bones’ (Chapters).
- Available in English via Seven Seas Entertainment.
Fans of Dorohedoro may have heard of Q Hayashida’s space-based series Dai Dark. It takes place in a cosmos divided between the Regular Realm and the Dark Realm. The former is inhabited by Aliens (i.e. any organic being) and Robos, where anything beyond the view of the Solar Mass cult goes. The latter is only accessible by Dark beings, where Alien bones are used as currency and technology gets stranger.
The bones of Zaha Sanko are particularly in demand, as they’re said to grant their owners any wish they desire. After growing up in fear of being kidnapped or killed, he travels the galaxy with his skeletal guardian Avakian to find the person spreading these rumors. Like Dorohedoro, it combines gruesome character designs and grim situations with a dark sense of humor, which some readers might find more palatable.
2 Bokurano
Kids Use Their Lives To Fuel Mecha & Protect The Planet
- Written & Illustrated by Mohiro Kitoh.
- 11 Volumes, 66 Chapters.
- Available in English via Viz Media’s SigIkki imprint.
Neon Genesis Evangelion is the archetypical heavy mecha show. Its tales of betrayal, trauma, and morality stuck with viewers and readers alike. It inspired a wide range of mecha series in its stead, including one so dour the director of its anime adaptation sought permission to give it a happier ending. Bokurano sees fifteen kids discover a grotto near a beach filled with computers and electronic equipment.
Their owner, Kokopelli, says he’s using all that to make a video game about mecha called Zearth defending Earth from aliens, and asks the kids to test it out. Once they agree, they wake up in a new world where they can control the Zearth for real. However, they find out too late that they run on life energy, and that they could die after every successful battle. Bound by Kokopelli’s contract, they must use their remaining time on Earth to defend it.
3 Parasyte
Aliens Possess Humans & Turn Them into Cronenbergian Monsters
- Written & Illustrated by Hitoshi Iwaaki.
- 10 Volumes, 64 Chapters.
- Available in English via Kodansha Comics USA.
Parasyte is an alien invasion story with a twist. It’s about drill-headed aliens called Parasites that take over human brains by going through their noses or ears. From there, they can twist and re-shape the body into any form they like to satisfy their taste for human flesh. One tries to take over Shinichi’s brain, only to end up stuck in his right hand instead.
Calling itself Migi (Japanese for “right”), it still battles Shinichi for control of his body but works with him to fight off rival Parasites. It’s a more straightforward, almost shonen-like story, as Shinichi gets into body-horror battles. However, it does tackle bigger themes, like whether the Parasites are any worse for the world than humanity itself, and conversely, that humans have as much right to survive as other creatures.
4 Gantz
The Dead Are Forced To Kill Aliens
- Written & Illustrated by Hiroya Oku.
- 37 Volumes, 383 Chapters.
- Available in English via Dark Horse Manga.
When people die, they hope to reach a happy afterlife, get reincarnated, or at least pass away peacefully. In Gantz, Kurono and Kato end up joining other recently deceased people in an empty apartment occupied by a single black sphere. It’s known only as Gantz and claims their lives now belong to him as he arms them and sends them out on missions. Their goal: kill the aliens hiding in society, or die trying.
Each successful mission awards the group points. Once they reach 100 points, they can regain their lives, get better weaponry, or resurrect a deceased teammate. Kurono and Kato search for meaning in their death games, fearing they are merely being made to murder for someone or something else’s entertainment. Its themes aren’t cuddly, and its explicit sexual and violent content makes it a hard read for the squeamish.
5 Blame!
Cyborg Seeks Nearly-Extinct Gene Type To Change Dystopian Megacity For The Better
- Written & Illustrated by Tsutomu Nihei.
- 10 Volumes, 66 Chapters.
- Available in English via Vertical Inc.
Blame! is a dense manga to get into. On the surface, it’s simple enough to grasp. In the far future, a cyborg called Killy is on a quest to find someone with the Net Terminal Gene, a genetic marker that’ll allow them to access the Netsphere, which could control the Megastructures that hold up “The City” – a labyrinthine structure so gigantic it covers the entire Solar System.
It’s not a simple task. Nearly everyone with the NT Gene was killed, and everyone else had theirs nullified by a virus released by a cult. Then the City is so vast that what remains of humanity hides in small enclaves, isolated from each other by millions of miles of dark corners and dead ends for terrifying monsters to lurk in. On top of its world-building and rich lore, there’s a heavy atmosphere to take in.
6 Shadow Star
Cutesy Tale Of A Girl & Her Monster Turns Into The Apocalypse
- Written & Illustrated by Mohiro Kitoh.
- 12 Volumes, 68 Chapters.
- Available partially in English via Dark Horse Comics.
At first, Shadow Star sounds like a simple, even light manga series. While on holiday, Shiina goes diving and discovers a starfish-like being that saves her from drowning. She learns it’s called a “dragonchild” and names it Hoshimaru. From there, the two take to the skies and go on all sorts of adventures, meeting other kids with their own “dragonchilds.”
But things gradually get worse from there. Hoshimaru acts out based on Shiina’s will, for better or worse. Her friends are abused, tortured, and murdered as the world gradually turns against the dragonchilds. Then circumstances aren’t as simple as they look. Defeating villains just leads to innocents being killed, and things just get worse. The ending isn’t any cheerier either.
7 The Two Faces Of Tomorrow
Space Station AI Is Trained To Make Hard Decisions, Then Decides To Attack Earth
- Illustrated by Yukinobu Hoshino, based on James P. Hogan’s original short story.
- 2 Volumes, 25 Chapters.
- Available in English via Dark Horse Comics.
Shadow Star is nearly as dark as a manga can get without it being an ero-guro piece. Yet its sci-fi connections are light compared to its fantasy ones. Luckily, there’s no such ambiguity in Yukinobu Hoshino’s work. Inspired by Osamu Tezuka and 2001: A Space Odyssey, he made his name adapting sci-fi stories to manga. For example, The Two Faces of Tomorrow.
It’s an adaptation of James P. Hogan’s short story of the same name, and richly details hard sci-fi concepts like Stanford Torus space stations. All while bringing the story of an AI called Spartacus to life. It’s tested to the extreme on whether it can handle independent decision-making safely. This only turns out too well, as it ends up choosing between sacrificing its space station or fighting back against the Earth itself.
8 Pluto
Android Tackles Bigotry, Morality, Murder, And Conspiracy
- Written & Illustrated by Naoki Urasawa, based on the original story by Osamu Tezuka.
- 8 Volumes, 65 Chapters.
- Available in English via Viz Media.
Osamu Tezuka has been compared to Walt Disney, yet his work isn’t all singalongs and smiles. Even Astro Boy came with a backstory involving death and child abuse. Yet it’s still a fantastical sci-fi superhero story. When Naoki Urasawa decided to re-adapt one of Astro Boy’s arcs for a new manga, he switched things around to make it a more grounded, moody story.
Pluto switches perspectives from Atom to Gesicht, an android detective working for Europol. He’s tasked with investigating the murder of Montblanc, a famous robot war veteran who brought humanity and machinery together. On top of having to uncover the conspiracy behind Montblanc’s murder, Gesicht confronts the bigotry of an unequal society, as man and machine barely get along with each other.
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