I'll have to give it a look, there's a whole lot of faux unsettling shit out there like tokyo ghoul, psycho pass, or death note, and maybe my tastes are a bit vanilla but I'd say that neon genesis evangellion as a series if you are paying attention to all the themes and plots probably takes the cake and somehow if you look at the iterations as sequences in a theme of recursive hells it actually has a happy ending, somehow, as happy as evangelion could end.
A bit of spoiler, in order of completion the animated evangellions are all sequential even though they seem iterative or like remakes, I haven't read the manga but I have a feeling it's the same, this fact isn't even made super clear in the ending of the rebuild series, the next strange thing is that every single ending for the animated evangellion projects makes sense, most people presume it's just psychobabble and don't try to wrangle with the themes or put together anno's mental vomit but if you sit with it long enough you can assemble it into a coherent thought, the unsettling bit is that anno's genius escapes language, 75% of each eva project is just thematic priming to prepare you mentally to deal with the last stretch. if you want to know what a mental break is like try to watch all three projects in a week, the original TV series, both made for TV movies, and the rebuild movies. If you are a weeb in a rough patch I still recommend the series in sequence but don't try marathon the whole thing or you will probably have a bad time, and generally if the ending of fight club confused you just don't bother watching it at all.
If Hideaki Anno had committed himself to philology and linguistic study he would have been the next Fredrich Nietzsche, but even better than nietzche because he resolves his hopeless system of philosophy.
I would have laughed at anybody saying this a couple years ago but I just finished the rebuild series and it's fresh in my mind for the moment.
If you're looking for recommendations and want borderline horror stuff with action or thrills or the ilk, the first three I mentioned aren't bad choices, if you can handle a slower pace and appreciate a serial story telling approach then I'd recommend mushishi, I don't normally recommend a series I've dropped but you may like dororo, it's modeled on old seinen serials so it does get pretty dark. Ajin and devilman crybaby are both worth mentioning.
What I find unsettling and what other people find unsettling are typically different things, for me the sort of unsettling thing that generates intrigue are those horrors at the core of human being, cheap thrills modeled on hollywood archetypes of horror are uninteresting to me, that said there are certain simple things which can light up the fear centers in our old lizard brain which I find can be entertaining if done tastefully and artfully, kubrick's the shining or just about anything done by junji ito would qualify, hell I even like a whole of the stuff coming out of the SCP project.
Ironically I'm not that big a fan of horror or "unsettling" media, I like psychological thrillers and they just happen to travel in the same circles it seems.
Ajin
Such a good series. Too bad they picked the literal worst animation style possible, for the anime. Damn-near unwatchable.
It was definitely off-putting, but I've seen worse, if it had been worse I'd probably have dropped it upfront.
this one if you know how our financial and economic systems work will scared the shit out of you, but if you dont understand the real world parallels to the anime its just another anime. considering how fucked our economy is now it might hit home even harder i watched this like 6 years ago
Ever read "Biomega"? Seems like it'd be right up your alley.
I recognize the art style, I think somebody recommended the author's other work to me too, I'll have to throw it into the list, from the little I've read about it, it seems like it would have been a perfect 50 episode run series, The gaul that terra formars got 2 seasons and 4 OVAs and they had the nerve to release heaps of garbage with massive budgets and stuff like this with solid concepts that should be easily executable with a mass international appeal don't get made is a testament to the cowardice and foolishness of people who make these financial decisions.
Amen. I've run in to countless manga, by now, and constantly find myself asking, "How is this not an anime? And a best-seller, at that?!?!" I got temporarily excited, when they came-out with that Blame! movie on Netflix. I thought: "holy shit, are these crazy slopes actually going to finally make a Biomega anime?!?!"
Alas: nope. However, definitely worth a watch. The author's right up there with Shirow Masamune and Hideaki Anno, IMO. Biomega is one of my favorite mangas ever. I went out of my way to buy the physical copies, because I appreciate it that much. I don't buy a lot of manga, for the record. I own a handful of series, in printed form. Biomega's definitely one of them, though.
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