The 14 Best Psychological Anime With an Unreliable Narrator

Narrators who lie, memories that warp and realities that quietly come apart at the seams, from arthouse landmarks to recent sleeper hits. Which one messed with your head the most?

1

Serial Experiments Lain

A 1998 cyber-psychological series whose paranoid heroine blurs the line between the real world and the Wired.

1000pts

2

Perfect Blue

Satoshi Kon's 1997 thriller in which a pop idol's fracturing identity makes reality and delusion indistinguishable.

999pts

3

The Promised Neverland

A 2019 thriller of staged normalcy where the children's understanding of their world is deliberately false.

857pts

4

Welcome to the NHK

A 2006 series viewed through a paranoid recluse who imagines conspiracies behind his own isolation.

734pts

5

Future Diary

A 2011 survival-game thriller narrated by an unreliable observer who claims detachment he doesn't possess.

734pts

6

School-Live!

A 2015 series in which a cheerful narrator's delusions mask the horror of a zombie apocalypse.

642pts

7

Paranoia Agent

Satoshi Kon's 2004 series tracing a wave of collective delusion sparked by an elusive attacker.

514pts

8

Monogatari Series

A dialogue-driven supernatural saga filtered entirely through Koyomi Araragi's self-distorting narration.

514pts

9

Texhnolyze

A 2003 bleak sci-fi series whose disorienting perspective mirrors a decaying underground city.

514pts

10

Boogiepop Phantom

A 2000 series whose fragmented, overlapping viewpoints leave the truth deliberately unstable.

514pts

11

The Tatami Galaxy

Masaaki Yuasa's 2010 series whose breakneck monologue reveals a narrator reshaping memory through regret.

321pts

12

Odd Taxi

A 2021 mystery whose deadpan walrus narrator slowly reveals how little of his account can be trusted.

321pts

13

Tomodachi Game

A 2022 psychological thriller built on manipulation, where the protagonist's true motives stay hidden.

0pts

14

Death Note

A 2006 cat-and-mouse thriller whose protagonist's self-justifying inner monologue masks his descent.

0pts