In the dark of Halloween night, from the world of movies to the realm of video games, the scariest of monsters come from out of the shadows for more tricks than treats – and manga is no exception to this sort of macabre meetup.
In honor of the Halloween holiday, we’d like to introduce you to six of – at least in my opinion – the absolute creepiest and most terrifying monsters from across the entire medium.
(And don’t worry – no matter how outright disgusting or beastly they get, you can rest easy knowing that none of them will ever be a match for the master monster fighters themselves – the Kamen Riders!)
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5. Yubiko (Choujin X)
In recent chapters of Choujin X, mangaka Ishida Sui has debuted arguably the series’ most Junji Ito-inspired design yet for one of its titular choujins.
Fully manifesting itself during her fight with Azuma at the Ojima Tower Ruins (Ch. 29), the psychotic and sadistic Yubiko’s creepy choujin form has the ability to duplicate and extend her body parts at an accelerated rate.
Not only that, but she’s also a skilled martial arts fighter – if you aren’t careful, those same extraneous body parts will be used to grab you, hold you down, and literally rip you apart.
Things get even creepier when Yubiko enters her chaos state – wherein a choujin is overtaken by their abilities, to the extent where they face the threat of losing their own humanity and sense of self.
Named Nirvana Mandala, in this form, Yubiko creates a sort of ‘exo-skeleton’ armor for herself using her extra body parts. The result is a terrifying mash-up of ever writhing limbs, its mockery of the human form topped with a tuft of black hair.
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4. Tsuchinoko/Kuragiri/Mongolian Death Worm (Dandadan)
With an appearance best described as ‘what if Winnie the Pooh’s acid-fueled pink elephant dream turned into an actual, outright nightmare’, the Mongolian Death worm in Dandadan is, as described by protagoniost Okraun, “a giant man eating earthworm cryptid that inhabits the Gobi desert.”
Sporting long, serpentine bodies covered in spots which ends in a tentacle-ringed, gaping-mouth full of multiple rows of teeth, in the world of Dandadan, a Kuragiri has been worshipped as the Great Snake Lord – or Tsuchinoko – by the people of Jiji village for over 200 years.
And over those two centuries, the beast has been fed asn innumerable number of human sacrifices – including the Evil Eye – by the Kito Family, who believe that this will curr enough favor with the worm to spare their village from its rampages.
However, this particular kuraguri is made even scarier by the fact that it can use a ‘psychic wave’ techniqued to coerce its victims into committing suicide.
Thankfully, this power only holds real sway over humans and espers. In the face of Yokai or spiritual prodigies like Jiji, the worm’s power is essentially meaningless.
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3. The Founding Titan/Attack Titan (Attack on Titan)
Out of all the titans created by Haijime Isayama, the Founding Titan (also known as the Attack Titan) sports without question the creepiest and most fearsome design of all of Attack on Titan‘s eponymous giants.
A gigantic, fleshless skeleton which crawls around on all fours, the Founding Titan controls its abilities with a variety of fearsome, earth-shaking roars – or screams, if in human form.
From being able to change and modify any Subject of Ymir’s body chemistry to possessing absolute control over the minds and actions of any given Titan, the Founding Titan’s name evokes just a small amount of the primordial fear inherent that its body lords over the world.
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2. Nomans Nomen (Jagaaaaaan)
A half-fractured human who sees everything in life as a challenge, Noamsn Nomen – formerly known as Ren Nojo – is the leader of the Deader Land political group and the final villain of the horror manga Jagaaaaaan.
One day, after years of thriving as a multimillionaire business man, Nomen found that, despite all this success, he still felt his life was still unfulfilled and empty.
Faced with this realization, Nomen decides to take his own life – but midway through his attempt, he is given his fractured form by the selfish Fractured Human supremacist Chiharu Matsuymachi.
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Free of his human limitations, Nomen discovers he has the ability to recreate any data – even DNA – thanks to the use of the series’ signature ‘Frenzied Frogs’ – literal amphibians which hold the ability to make humans ‘Fractured’.
Eventually, Norman loses a mayoral election due to his own corruption, after which he begins a journey of self-discovery to fill the emptiness left inside of him by the absolute crumbling of his entire world.
With this power in hand, Nomen sets out to fulfill his dream of creating a “kind world” – a dream with which he seeks to bring to fruition by absorbing humanity into one collective mass.
But as the world continued to reject him, Nomen eventually transcended into his terrifying final form: the hyper-dimensional, half-Fractured Human known as Meta Nomen.
In this form, Nomen can manipulate the neurons of person’s brain to the point where the victim no longer feels pain, but only pleasure.
1. Honoka (Gleipnir)
Like the mother of all demons Lilith herself, in Honoka’a eyes, everything is meaningless – including her own existence.
With this nihilisim so deeply embedded within her soul, Honoka sets herself upon the mission of erasing everything.
More specifically, she wants to erase the people who knew her previous self – but hey, she can’t help it if she manages to cause some collateral damage along the way.
Equal parts unstoppable void of emotions and magnet for negativity, Honoka’s dread goes so far that she even considers the smiles of others around her to be nothing more than a mirror which mockingly reflects her sorrow.
Since the majority of the one hundred alien coins Kaito redeemed were used to recreate Honoka, she has no will of her own and thus is easily influenced by the emptiness plaguing the alien’s coins.
With the use of herself, her titans, and her clones, Honoka ultimately seeks to build up enough negative energy to envelop the world in a void of absolute nothingness.
Bonus: Mangaka Yoshiaki Sukeno’s Personal Picks (Twin Star Exorcists)
There are so many amazing monsters in Twin Star Exorcists – so much so that I found it hard to pick just one.
Stuck on my pick from this series, I reached out to series mangaka Yoshiaki Sukeno for his thoughts on what they considered to be the series’ spookiest monsters.
Taking time out of their day, Sukeno was kind enough to provide us with a selection of not one, but three of his favorite creepy creations.
First up is Hirdarugami, a member of the D-rankl class of parasitic Kegare known as Deigan.
Using its claws to mark its targets for possession, after successfully taking them over, the Hidarugami will proceed to starve their victims to death – though sometimes, if a human is particularly weak this process will have the unfortunate side effect of killing the spirit along with the host.
Sukeno’s second pick is the Faceless, a group of enhanced and mass-produced Kegare which boast terrifyingly accelerated regnerative abilities.
Originally utilized during the Invasion of Tsuchimakdo Island to turn the area in question into a living Hell, what makes the Faceless even more terrifying is that the more humans the eat, the stronger they become.
The final monstrous favorite from the Twin Star Exorcists creator is the long-armed, long-legged C-Rank Tengaga Ashinaga.
With the head of an old man and old woman, this creepy two-headed kegare is like the ‘monster in the closet’, hiding in wait to drag it’s prey back into the Magano.
NEXT: ‘Housing Complex C’ Review – Sometimes Cosmic Horror Smells Like Fish