Unbeknownst to many, creatures of darkness and evil lurk in the shadows, ready to pounce on unsuspecting humans. The Hellsing organisation is dedicated to getting rid of these unholy forces and at the top of the organisation is Sir Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing, who commands a powerful military dedicated to fighting the undead. Her army; however, is nothing in comparison to her trump card: Alucard, the vampire. With his new vampire servant, Seras Victoria, Alucard battles all that opposes Hellsing in order to ensure the survival of humankind.

Starting off with the fact that he proudly sports a perpetually bloodstained lab coat on any regular day, we have a mad scientist who possesses immense intelligence… and immense madness. The Doctor was the mind behind the creation of a Nazi vampire army which had a thousand volunteers. Under situations of stress, The Doctor would bite down on his fingers hard enough to draw blood. Yikes!

Ever since Kagari “Akko” Atsuko watched her idol, the famous witch, Shiny Chariot in a magic performance when she was a child, Akko has aspired to become a witch just like Shiny Chariot. Despite not having a magical background, Akko is determined to become a witch who can use magic to make people smile. However, it proves to be difficult from the jump as the trip to her new school is anything but smooth. After the unpleasant trip to Luna Nova Magical Academy, Akko’s new school and learning environment, she befriends Lotte Yansson and Sucy Manbavaran and also finds Shiny Chariot’s wand, the Shiny Rod, which she claims for herself! Starting off her time with a handicap, Akko realises that succeeding at Luna Nova is going to be a major challenge; however, determination is Akko’s best quality and she aims to use it to the best of its potential.

Sucy is a cynical Southeast Asian witch who specialises in the brewing of potions, which often have bizarre effects. With a blatant disregard for ethics of any kind, Sucy uses her friend Akko as a test subject and sometimes even uses Akko to help her gather some of the dangerous ingredients that she needs to pull off some of her experiments! Sucy’s approach to magic and the related sciences makes all the more sense when one considers how she looks just like a stereotypical witch, with the pale skin to match!

Yuuki Rito is a timid 16-year-old who has had a crush on his fellow classmate Sairenji Haruna since he was in middle school. The situation becomes a little bit interesting when one night, a naked girl crash-lands on Rito during his bath time and it turns out that the mystery girl is Lala Satalin Deviluke, the crown princess of an alien empire! Escaping from an unwanted arranged marriage, Lala marries Rito and so ends his perfectly normal life. With an ever-increasing legion of girls slowly coming to realise the positive elements to Rito’s character, and his own romantic preamble reaping rapid failures, Rito’s life has become infinitely more interesting than ever before.

Despite being the crown princess of the Empire of Deviluke, Lala’s most interesting feature isn’t the fact that she is an alien princess. It is her keen intellect and inventive mind which let her create some of the wackiest, most comical inventions in the entire show! Lala’s genius has helped both herself and Rito out of some of the stickiest situations but with her childish personality and her absent mind, these inventions tend to do a lot more to cause mischief and go haywire almost all the time!

Igarashi Ganta’s class was supposed to have an amazing day at Deadman Wonderland, the local prison amusement park, where prisoners do dangerous activities for the entertainment of the masses. However, everything falls apart when every single one of Ganta’s classmates is killed by a man in red. Framed for the murders, Ganta is sentenced to prison in the very Deadman Wonderland his class was supposed to visit. In Deadman Wonderland, Ganta is exposed to a reality of sadistic inmates and the emergence of strange powers all in a ruthless environment where he must participate in deadly games, find the “Red Man” who killed his friends and clear his name.

Giving off the initial impression of a regular doctor who has earned her stripes in the understanding and in-depth care of the human body, Takashima Rei is actually one of the more sadistic characters in Deadman Wonderland. This becomes evident whenever there is a battle between Deadmen. Winner earns themselves a lot of credits and glory perhaps, while the loser often catches a trip to Takashima-sensei’s dentist chair, where the doctor excitedly removes an organ from the loser’s body, often very painfully.

Hasegawa Kodaka is a high schooler determined to make a positive impression at his new school and possibly make some friends. Unfortunately for him; however, he is immediately labelled a violent delinquent about a month in due to his intimidating facial expression. Kodaka’s notorious reputation leaves him friendless; however, when he finds fellow loner Mikazuki Yozora talking to herself in an empty classroom, they hit it off over stories of their lonely high school lives. Looking to overcome the difficulties of making friends, Kodaka and Yozora start the Neighbour’s Club. Created for people who have no friends, the daily activities of the club include learning social skills and fitting in; but with each new member bringing a whole new type of eccentricity to the table, maybe social skills and fitting in aren’t exactly all they need to make new friends.

Perverted, eccentric, geeky and perverted is the perverted Shiguma Rika. Initially being saved by Kodaka from a harmless accident in her lab, Rika joins the Neighbours Club, immediately exposing herself as the show’s resident genius, but also its resident pervert. She often goes into highly excited tirades about anything sexual and even goes as far as to say things to make people uncomfortable!

After being driven to the brink of extinction by the titans, mysterious humanoid creatures that thrive on human flesh, humanity now lives behind a concentric circle of thick walls. In order to survive, humanity assumed life behind these walls and managed to go 100 years without a single encounter with the titans. However, one day, a massive titan manages to break through the outermost wall, restarting humankind’s fight for survival. After suffering a loss at the hands of the titans, young Eren Jaeger dedicates his life to their eradication and joins the Survey Corps branch of the military which is committed to exploring the land beyond the walls. Alongside his childhood friends Mikasa and Armin, Eren joins the bid for the survival of humankind.

One of humanity’s keenest minds is Hange Zoe, the head scientist of the Survey Corps and one of the more significant individuals in the Attack on Titan universe. Her keen mind is perhaps rivalled only by her eccentricity and apparently offbeat sanity. Her desire to help in the fight against the titans is augmented by the fact that she actually finds the titans interesting beyond their terror and carnage – in fact, when there were titans that they’d actually managed to capture, she named them Sawyer and Bean. Hange cried while torturing them – no one in that universe is crying for a titan unless they’re the mad scientist, Hange Zoe!

15-year-old Kurosaki Ichigo has always been able to see ghosts. After contact with the ghost of a teenage girl, Ichigo’s immense spiritual energy makes him a target for Hollows, evil spirits who were once human souls. However, Ichigo remains blissfully unaware of this until one night, a woman dressed in a black kimono, armed with a katana at her side, appears in his room out of thin air. She claims to be a Shinigami, an entity akin to the Grim Reaper who guides the souls of the departed to the other side. Their initial meeting turns ugly when a Hollow attacks Ichigo’s family and the Shinigami, Kuchiki Rukia, sustains heavy wounds. With their deaths all but sealed, Rukia suggests that Ichigo take some of her powers in order to defeat the Hollow. And on that day, a Shinigami was born.

Perhaps one of the most profound takes on the concept of perfection comes from the mouth of the Gotei-13’s resident mad scientist, Kurotsuchi Mayuri. Mayuri has very little regard for ethics and a very high level of curiosity. These two elements together make Mayuri quite the poster boy for mad scientists everywhere; however, we think it is also how he feels next to nothing about experimenting on himself or others and also has no concern for the sensibilities of those who witness his work. Working hard to improve what he has created and to understand what he does not makes Mayuri an extremely beautiful case in the archetype that is mad scientist.

In 2010, the Holy Empire of Britannia begins to explore its military might, starting off with the conquest of Japan. Renaming the country “Area 11” after its defeat, Japanese citizens become rebels in an attempt to regain their independence. Exiled prince of Britannia, Lelouch Lamperouge, finds himself in the middle of a conflict between Japanese rebels and Britannia’s forces. He escapes only due to the appearance of C.C., a mysterious girl who gives Lelouch the “Geass”, an incredible power which manifests in him as the power of absolute obedience. He then dons a mask and becomes “Zero”, an enigmatic figure leading the Japanese rebels against Britannia, for whom Lelouch bears much resentment.

Known for the notorious “table scene”, Nina Einstein, as per her name, is a genius high schooler who attends the same school as Lelouch. She is shy but incredibly astute. Later, it is revealed that she is also incredibly maniacal, with her racism against the “elevens” fuelling most of her actions. After the death of Euphemia at the hands of Zero, Nina loses her mind and hates the Japanese even more than she did before. Fun fact: just like her namesake, Albert Einstein, Nina contributed to the creation of a weapon of mass destruction, later feeling remorseful at the damage it caused.

Tokyo is a city of intense violence due to the existence of humanity’s only natural predator: the Ghoul. Ghouls are bloodthirsty beings which feed on human flesh to survive, using their human-like appearance to blend in with human society. 18-year-old Kaneki Ken’s date with the beautiful Kamishiro Rize goes horribly wrong when the fellow bookworm turns out to be a Ghoul herself. With Kaneki coming extremely close to death, a freak accident causes Rize to lose her life, but the meeting sets into motion Kaneki’s dark descent into the violent world of the Ghouls where the only philosophy is canis canem edit.

Long story short, this guy is the reason why Kaneki was turned into a ghoul. While it is initially made out to be that Kaneki’s life was in danger and that they needed to use Rize’s organs to keep him alive, the truth is shocking. Kanou Akihiko had been working and experimenting on ghoulification for a long time and even had some failed attempts like Kuro and Shiro, who are introduced in Root A. His madness is quite clear – he was using ghoulification in attempt to prompt the next stage in human evolution. Being the misanthrope that he was, Kanou believed that human beings lack potential and sought to change that with his own hands.

18-year-old Okabe Rintarou, self-proclaimed mad scientist, rents out an old room in a building in Akihabara, where he and his friends Shiina Mayuri and Hashida “Daru” Itaru create inventions Okabe dubs “Future Gadgets”. When their “Phone Microwave”, a Future Gadget which turns bananas into a green gel for some odd reason, soon becomes capable of sending emails to the past, the three are given the ability to change history. However, despite the exciting developments, Okabe soon realises the true danger of being able to transcend time.

Self-proclaimed mad scientist Okabe Rintarou assumes the name “Hououin Kyouma” when introducing himself to others. Working much to the effect of a nickname or just a disregarded stage name, Hououin Kyouma is an important element to the character that is Okabe Rintarou for various reasons. For starters, Hououin Kyouma exists in order to make Okabe’s best friend Mayuri happier after the death of her grandmother. Kyouma’s mannerisms and behaviour are extremely cartoonish and quite comical, but “Kyouma” soon ceases to appear after Okabe’s time-travel ordeal.