If you haven’t heard of Genocyber before, here’s a bit of background information to help you understand. Genocyber was a cyberpunk manga created by Tony Takezaki in 1993 and later was adapted into a five part OVA in 1994. It’s set in the far future, where the nations of the world have started to blend together into one country. But this dream of world peace is being threatened by powerful corporations, which have used their money and influence to create private armies in an effort to maintain control and seize power.

One such corporation is the Kuryu Group. When they discover a “weapon” of immense power that combines physical prowess with cybernetics called the Genocyber, it seems that everything will soon tip in their favour. Of course, everyone wants to control this new weapon when news of its existence sweeps through the world. But it has a mind of its own, and its hatred cannot be contained by anyone! On the brink of world peace, everyone is swept up into a horrible war.
And the violence brought about by the Genocyber is like nothing anyone has ever seen.

Genocyber didn’t get a lot of attention for its story; in fact, it’s not rated very high at all. For better or for worse, what made Genocyber most famous was its incredible amount of gore. A lot of people are quick to claim that it’s the most violent and gory anime ever created. But just what does Genocyber do that sets it apart from loads of other violent anime out there? To put it simply, Genocyber has no limits. At all. And it seems to revel in depicting graphic horror violence on the screen in as many shocking ways as possible.

For example, in the first episode of the anime, the main character and host for the Genocyber Elaine is hiding in a hospital. While Dr. Reed, the man who wants to unleash the Genocyber through Elaine and her sister, is searching for her and his men brutally slaughter absolutely everyone in the hospital, including other patients (all on the screen of course). The most shocking gore is yet to come, though, because the police detective trying to protect Elaine unknowingly has a horrible surgery performed on him. When he wakes up, all the skin and muscle has been removed from the front of his torso. All of his internal organs are exposed when he comes to from the “surgery,” and everything is shown on the screen. In a later episode, people are violently ripped to shreds by bullets. These are not scenes that are easy to forget once you’ve watched them.

More than just the actual carnage on the screen, Genocyber is emotionally violent as well. Characters are destroyed in horrible ways seemingly without remorse. There is no time left for mourning or reflection, it’s always just onto the next horrific death. Whether a character is main or not doesn’t matter either - they all meet horrible and violent endings. This complete lack of remorse and feelings for characters and death makes Genocyber feel like it is gory just for the sake of being gory. Only the original creators know for sure, but that is undeniably how one feels when watching it. It’s gore for the sake of gore, not for the sake of the story or character development.

Genocyber is especially infamous for one gory choice that it made which has made it quite timeless in the world of anime - for better or for worse. There is an unspoken rule across all forms of media that while children can die in the plot of a story, it’s always done off the screen. Genocyber breaks that rule by killing a child for the audience to see and isn’t shy about doing so. That alone already sets Genocyber apart as one of the most violent and gory anime ever created, and to many people, is what pushes it into the number one spot.