Kazuo Umezu's 1969 Orochi follows Orochi, a strange girl who wakes up for ten years at a time once every century who takes it upon herself to observe the lives of different individuals who catch her fancy, from afar. Orochi is the perfect example of the "Gothic wanderer" who's sole purpose in the story is to observe. She’s not evil, but inhuman and uncanny. Similiar to Count Dracula, she is ageless and exists outside time and morality. As she looks within domestice spaces from the outside, she exposes the uncaniness within. These domestic spaces, once safe and normal, become haunted and dangerous places of secrecy and terror. These stories most frequently explore family dynamics, especially between mothers and daughters, or sisters. The families are often broken, abusive, or hiding some terrible secret. These domestic horrors reflect the gothic fascination with the “sins of the family” and how trauma is often passed down through generations almost as if they are cursed. Orochi acts as a mirror to human nature, revealing how people act when pushed by fear or passion. The horror is rarely about actual monsters, but rather about what ordinary people can become under pressure. 

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by Dee Cohen

Moto Hagio published Heart of Thomas in 1974. Fourteen-year-old Thomas Werner falls from a pedestrian overpass to his death after sending a single, brief love letter to another boy, Juli, at the all-boys boarding school he attended. This manga follows many Gothic tropes. For instance, it uses death as a catalyst for the story, which immediately casts a haunting shadow over everything that follows. His presence after his suicide lingers in the minds of his students, particularly Juli, whose emotional repression and self-imposed isolation echo the classic Gothic figure of the tormented protagonist. Furthermore, the figure of the double is highlighted by the arrival of Erich, a new student who bears an uncanny resemblance to Thomas. Thus, the line between reality and illusion blurs as Erich becomes a living reminder of Thomas's death. Through these elements, Juli's emotional turmoil is foregrounded as he struggles with guilt, denial, and a fear of intimacy. Characters are constantly at odds with one another and threaten to expose each other's deepest regrets, yet they also crave love. This intermingles with the themes of sexuality and gender. Gender presentation in the story is fluid as many of the boys are not "traditionally masculine" and form intimate bonds with other boys. This creates a Gothic tension between what’s natural, what’s forbidden, and what’s unspoken.

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by Dee Cohen

 Kaze to Ki no Uta, or The Song of Wind and Trees, was published in 1976 by Keiko Takemiya and is considered by many as one of the first boys' love manga. It follows Serge Battour at the all-boys school, Lacombrade Academy, in 1880, France. Serge Battour is a new student who is trying to fit in with the rest of the student body, despite the taboo of his Romani heritage, made obvious by his dark skin. However, his roommate Gilbert Cocteau, known for sleeping with anyone at the school to manipulate them to his advantage, makes it his personal goal to bring about Serge's downfall.

The Gothic is all about the return of the repressed, and Gilbert's trauma keeps resurfacing; his illegitimacy, the abuse done by his uncle, and the loss of his mother. This all brings about the trope of forbidden desire. Their love is forbidden not just because it’s queer in a conservative environment, but because of their differing ethnicities and social positions. Additionally, the manga plays with gender as Gilbert is feminized and often described as if he’s already a ghost or angel fallen to earth. The beauty of the manga is tied to the fragility of mortality. There is also within this a certain gothic melodramatism. Characters sob, scream, collapse dramatically, and stare into voids. The characters are often overwhelmed by emotions and give in to them.

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by Dee Cohen

Berserk was published in 1989 by Kentaro Miura. It is the story of former mercenary, Guts, who is out for revenge. After being betrayed by a man he trusted and swore his loyalty to, he is marked for death and condemned to a fate in which he is relentlessly pursued by demonic beings. He soon sets out on a quest riddled with misfortune. He will let nothing stop him, not even death itself, until he is finally able to take the head of the one who stripped him—and his loved one—of their humanity. Like any good Gothic protagonist, Guts is shaped by a cursed past. Thus, his journey is less about "heroism" and more about surviving hell while trying not to lose his humanity.

Berserk leans hard into the Gothic trope of fallen religion. The Apostles, the Brand of Sacrifice, and the God Hand (all objects or groups of people in the manga) are all steeped in Gothic supernatural horror. They blend religious imagery, demonic transformations, and cosmic terror to represent the fear of the otherworldly and unknown. The Holy See is corrupt, inquisitions are violent, and "divine" miracles often come from the hand of God, and they may not always be good. Religious figures become zealots or manipulators, and faith becomes a mask for cruelty. 

From the start, Berserk is filled with Gothic architecture and ruined spaces, such as decaying cathedrals, labyrinthine dungeons, haunted castles, and medieval towns. In these places, the past lingers. They reflect the emotional and psychological decay of the characters. For instance, the man Guts once swore his allegiance to and who betrayed him, Griffith, was locked in a tower at one point. In this scene, the surroundings were symbolic of death, corruption, and the collapse of idealism as he was imprisoned and forced to reconcile with his mortality. In this way, psychological Gothic is core to Berserk. Every major character is mentally or emotionally broken and struggling with themselves and their pasts. Guts suffers from PTSD and constant nightmares. Griffith’s fall is about obsession, control, and the collapse of identity. Guts' lover, Casca’s, trauma after what was done to her during the major downfall of the characters called the Eclipse, is a raw portrayal of how horror can shatter the self. The manga constantly tries to answer the question of what it means to be human and fails to put a label on it.

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by Dee Cohen

The Cain Saga (1992-2004) by Kaori Yuki consists of Godchild and its prequel Count Cain. It follows the story of a young nobleman named Cain who is forced to become an Earl upon the untimely death of his father. He assumes the role of head of the Hargreaves, a noble family with a dark past. With Riff, his faithful servant, and Mary-Weather, his 10-year-old adopted sister, Cain investigates the mysterious crimes that seem to follow him wherever he goes. In this way, he acts as a sort of Sherlock Holmes as he solves the various crimes in the streets of London. It is set in 19th-century England, and is overflowing with classic Gothic imagery: foggy London streets, candlelit mansions, secret passageways, crypts, crumbling family estates, and lavish ballrooms that hide sinister secrets. Cain Hargreaves is heir to a noble line, but one riddled with scandal, madness, and murder. The decaying aristocracy and rot beneath high society reflect the Gothic obsession with appearances versus hidden corruption. 

Central to Godchild is the horrific legacy of Cain's father, of murder, incest, and human experiments, who represents the ultimate Gothic patriarch. Alexis Hargreaves rules over a secret organization called Delilah that conducts experiments to revive the dead, creating "deadly dolls" or resurrected corpses surviving on the fresh blood and organs of others. They also have some sort of supernatural power. Cain is not just fighting crime—he’s trying to escape the shadows of his bloodline and escape his inherited sin. These murders are patterned after fairy tales, tragic suicides, or grotesque medical experiments that lean into Gothic excess, such as lace, blood, roses, and shadow. All of these deaths eventually end in some experiment tied to eugenics and surgical experimentation. This encapsulates the gothic fascination with science and modernity. Alexis Hargreaves performs experiments not for healing, but to reshape life and death out of fear of the unknown and unfamiliarity of death. This is the manga's "mad scientist" like Frankenstein, who is attempting to overcome death.

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by Dee Cohen

Vampire Knight (2004) by Matsuri Hino takes place at Cross Academy and follows Yuki Cross, who attends the Day Class for humans, but is a Guardian for the Night Class of vampires (although this is a secret to the other Day Class students). Of course, there are vampires, and this is intrinsically gothic. Vampire Knight embraces the romantic yet dangerous allure of these creatures of death. It dives deep into forbidden love between vampire and human, humans who are riddled with resentment and guilt, and even love between siblings. All of the key characters (Yuki, Kaname, and Zero) carry deep emotional trauma, and the narrative doesn’t shy away from those inner demons, but rather exposes them and makes the characters face them. Zero, in particular, is the quintessential gothic anti-hero. He is tormented by his past, has a strange allure, and is obsessed with his desires to the point of violence. Each character is plagued by their ancestry, whether it's Yuki discovering her vampire origins and the incestual relationship between her parents (and her and her brother), or Kaname carrying the weight of being an ancient ancestor resurrected into a young man's body, each character carries with them an ancestral curse. Yuki is also a portrayal of the corruption of innocence. She shifts from a "normal" girl guarding against vampires to a princess of the vampire world, and her once pure love for Kaname (whom she did not know was her brother until her true identity was revealed) is twisted into an unnatural and tragic love. Zero, too, becomes trapped by blood as he becomes something he once hated: a vampire-hunter turned vampire. Thus, each of them must revisit their past that was never truly buried and live with the sins of their ancestors. 

As is a staple in more modern gothic fiction, Vampire Knight fixates on the decline of noble bloodlines, or in this case, pureblood vampires. They are powerful families rotting from within, clinging to their lost grandeur. They are a literally dying bloodline because Kaname and Yuki are the final true pureblood vampires. And each character is confined to their role. Only Yuki is able to transgress these boundaries by going from human to vampire. The academy itself is a façade. A peaceful school on the surface, yet hiding secrets underneath. This duality reflects the gothic fascination with dueling selves and the fear of what lies beneath the surface and façade of civility.

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by Dee Cohen

The Dreaming (2005) by Queenie Chan is about identical twins Jeanie and Amber, who are new students at Greenwich Private College, but the school's halls harbor a secret: students have begun to wander into the surrounding bushlands and vanish without a trace. However, Amber and Jeanie soon learn that the key to the school's dark past may lie in the world of their dreams. The story takes place in a secluded boarding school surrounded by dark forests and cut off from the outside world. The protagonists are foreigners from the city sent to this unfamiliar place. This creates a sense of isolation that torments the characters and leaves them on their own. As most gothic literature incorporates, the boarding school is filled with secrets and a dark history that is slowly uncovered. These secrets connect to the broken reality that the twins experience. The twin sisters experience strange visions, nightmares, and a growing sense that something is wrong. The line between dreams and waking life becomes increasingly blurred as they try to solve the mystery in their dreams. 

And of course, the gothic double is extremely prominent through the twins. Jeanie and Amber’s identical appearance causes confusion and suspicion among the school’s staff, and their bond becomes a central tension in the plot. The Vice-Principal very explicitly says that she will not allow twins in the school, so the girls are forced to act as if they are not twins. This forced separation of their shared identity introduces a rupture that reflects the Gothic fascination with split selves and fractured consciousness. The denial of their twinship becomes symbolic of suppressed truth, in addition to the suppressed truth of the school itself. This motif also aligns with classic Gothic literature, such as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, where doubling is used to externalize internal conflict. In The Dreaming, the sisters’ entangled fates reflect the emotional horror of being seen as one yet forced to exist as separate.

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by Dee Cohen

Kuroshitsuji, or otherwise known as Black Butler, is an incredibly popular manga by Yana Toboso in 2006. It follows the life of Earl Ciel Phantomhive, a young boy who inherited his deceased family's fortune and became Queen Victoria’s faithful servant and a giant in the world of commerce. However, by his side is his loyal butler Sebastian, who is secretly a contracted demon to aid Ciel in uncovering the secrets of London's underbelly. The setting is very important to the gothic narrative as it includes sprawling manors, candlelit studies, fog-choked streets of London, and decaying churches. The setting evokes the traditional Gothic environment where secrets lurk behind heavy curtains and every shadow might conceal something monstrous. It balances the excess of the aristocracy with the decay of the urban space. 

Ciel Phantomhive is a textbook Gothic protagonist: aristocratic, traumatized, and with heavy emotions and obsessions. Like many Gothic characters, he’s emotionally repressed, morally ambiguous, and driven by a past he can’t escape. His pact with a demon (Sebastian) is a common Gothic trope where the hero sacrifices everything he has in pursuit of power or justice. In this way, Kuroshitsuji fully embraces the supernatural aspect of the Gothic. There are demons, grim reapers, and undead butlers, but in true Gothic fashion, the supernatural is never straightforwardly evil. Instead, it’s seductive, morally gray, and entangled with human emotion. They are representations of the human psyche. In this way, the story plays into the gothic uncanny. The demon butler Sebastian looks human, acts human, and plays the perfect butler, but he is very much not human. It has taken a common trope in British literature, the butler, and made it unfamiliar. Gothic works love these dualities: life and death, man and monster, child and adult, servant and master.

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by Dee Cohen

Usumaru Furuya's 2007 manga Innocents Shounen Juugigun tells the story of a group of thirteen boys who join the children's crusades of 1212. The story revolves around Etienne, a boy who becomes a prophet and receives a call to action from a vision of Jesus Christ to travel to Jerusalem. 11 boys join his "Children's Crusade", and they leave for Jerusalem. Perhaps the most prominent gothic theme in this story is religion. Religion is not portrayed as a source of comfort or salvation, but as a force of fanaticism, manipulation, and violence. There is a clear distinction between the "Pagans" and the Christians. The children set off in order to reclaim Jerusalem in the name of their Lord, yet they encounter violence at every turn and are soon corrupted to the point where religion is no longer important. The story critiques blind faith and institutional hypocrisy, exposing the corruption of the Church. The army of children takes refuge in churches and abbeys along their journey, facing manipulation and trickery, as well as kindness. Gothic fiction has long been obsessed with ruined churches and perverse holiness, and Innocents Shounen Juujigun revels in this tension. Furthermore, as the crusades are a well-known historical event that ended in tragedy, the reader knows the Children’s Crusade will end badly, yet the story doesn’t rush to that end. Rather, it lingers in the suffering, the hope which makes the fall even more devastating. Gothic fiction thrives on the idea of inevitable doom, and this story is laced with that same fatalism. 

The line between faith and delusion disappears as children are led by visions and voices they believe are divine prophecies. Gothic stories such as this often revolve around unreliable perception and emotional excess, and this story dives into psychosis masked as piety. The image of children dying with serene smiles as they have fulfilled their "duty" invokes the uncanny as something familiar (a child, a saint, a cross) becomes eerie and unfamiliar. Similarly, the hyper-detailed art dwells on the vulnerability and brutality of the human body. In Innocents Shounen Juujigun, emaciated children, brutal injuries, disease, starvation, and death are accompanied by haunting beauty and peacefulness. The Gothic has always been fascinated by the fragile and decaying body, and this manga emphasizes physical suffering as a kind of spiritual crucible.

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by Dee Cohen

Requiem of the Rose King by Aya Kanno in 2013 is loosely based on the Shakespearean plays Henry VI, Part 3 and Richard III, the series follows an intersex version of Richard III during the tumultuous War of the Roses (1455–1487) period in English history. Richard III, the protagonist, embodies the Gothic theme of the uncanny. He is something familiar made strange as he is cursed as a "demon child" by his mother for his intersexuality. His very body becomes a site of horror and confusion. His ambiguous gender identity and struggle with self-worth represents the Gothic’s obsession with hidden selves, monstrous bodies, and the fear of the “other.” Although he is a prince and the eventual king, he is "the other" and must keep himself hidden. 

Characters in Requiem of the Rose King are driven by intense, often destructive emotions, most often vengeance, desire, guilt, or obsession. Richard is plagued by an identity crisis, haunted by internal voices and tormented by dreams. The madness of his mother, the instability of Henry VI (who speaks with angels), and the manipulations of nobles all contribute to a landscape where no one is fully sane or in control. Furthermore, there’s a consistent tension between love and violence, attraction and fear, especially in Richard’s relationships with King Henry VI, his "king-maker," Buckingham, and his servant, Catesby. Desire in this story is never pure, but rather it's twisted and often unfulfilled. This fusion of sexuality with emotional horror is a classic Gothic trait in stories like Dracula. 

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by Dee Cohen

Innocent was created by Sakamoto Shinichi and aired from 2013 to 2015. It tells the story of Charles-Henri Sanson, the fourth-generation family head of the Sanson Family, and executioner of Paris during the time of the French Revolution (1789 to 1799). Although parts of the story are exaggerated and fictitious for entertainment, Charles-Henri Sanson and his family of executioners were real. He lived from February 15, 1739, to July 4, 1806, and reportedly executed up to 3,000 during his time as the Royal Executioner of France. As an avid supporter of a clean, quick death, Sanson was the first executioner to use the guillotine. He performed the execution of many important figures such as King Louis XVI, revolutionist Robespierre, and Charlotte Corday, and his son Henri would go on to execute Marie-Antoinette.

Marie-Joseph's journey in this manga is unique as she wants to become an active participant in the executions, but is not allowed because she is a woman. These executions, and by extension the guillotine, were symbols of absolute power and control over life and death. Unlike traditional Gothic heroines who are often confined to passivity, Marie-Joseph is a figure of fury and ambition. Charles-Henri is her feminized brother who wants to escape his duties and is often seen sobbing from his guilt and how little control he has. On the other hand, Marie-Joseph is a powerful male figure who even, at times, dresses as a man to seduce high-ranking women like Marie-Antoinette. She has so much agency, so much freedom to move, she stages a rebellion at the end of the manga. She continually appears to disrupt Charles-Henri’s moral equilibrium. She haunts him with questions he cannot answer and challenges him to confront the blood on his hands. 

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by Dee Cohen

Created in 2021 by Shinichi Sakamoto, #DRCL Midnight Children is based on Dracula by Bram Stroker. The story follows Mina Murray and her classmates as they attempt to obtain victory against a foe from a faraway land (aka Count Dracula). In a lot of ways, Sakamoto's stories is faithful to the original text, but also deviates from it. It heavily follows Mina's exploration through gender and sexuality as she tries to find herself as the only girl at the male-dominated academy. Even one of the female characters in Dracula, Lucy Westerna, is portrayed as a man--Luke--with a split personality. He becomes Lucy at night when he sleep-walks. 

As is the case in the original, writing and reading are incredibly important, as Sakamoto gives the reader two narratives: the one that the three suitors tell the town about what happened to Luke/Lucy, and what Mina experiences. The boys talk of their valor and bravery in the face of Dracula and how they rushed to save Lucy when she was in his grasp, but Mina writes about their cowardice as men and how she was the one who faced Dracula and saved Lucy. In this way, Sakamoto challenges the reliability of these narrators. Furthermore, technology remains an important aspect of the story. Mina is practicing on the typewriter, and the suitors use telegrams to converse with one another.  

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by Dee Cohen