Ichinomiya Kou is the son of a wealthy businessman. His family’s number one value is “never owe anyone anything”. As such, Kou always repaid his debts, be they personal or financial, but when he runs into a group of mischievous kids on Arakawa Bridge, he ends up falling into the river flowing underneath. Luckily, Kou was saved by a passerby; however, under influence of his family’s number one value, Kou now owes this person his life! This person, a stoic homeless girl named Nino, who lives under Arakawa Bridge in a cardboard box, desires only one thing: to fall in love. When Nino asks Kou to be her boyfriend, Kou has no choice but to accept, moving out of his nice home in order to be with his girlfriend under the bridge.

When Kou arrives at the site under the bridge, he slowly realises that there are quite a few people living under Arakawa Bridge. This group of individuals has banded together to become a village and they are very eccentric characters. One of these characters is the shepherd, Maria. Like Kou and Nino, Maria lives under the bridge and she is a sharp-tongued pink-haired woman who enjoys nothing more than to verbally crush the people she speaks to. Her sharp tongue is so effective, it even makes one of the other characters bleed! Overall, Maria is one of the more terrifying residents of the underside of Arakawa Bridge and Kou has a very difficult time around her as she scares him.

In Tokyo’s downtown district of Ikebukuro, a number of strange rumours regarding anonymous gangs and a popular urban legend: the legend of the headless “Black Rider”, who is said to drive a jet-black motorcycle around the city. Ryuugamine Mikado has always longed for a move to the city, craving the excitement of city life. So when his best friend, Kida Masaomi, invites him to Ikebukuro, Mikado is convinced. The city lives up to his expectations when on his first day in Ikebukuro, Mikado sees the Black Rider. However, that isn’t the end of the excitement Mikado’s new life will bring him, as a number of supernatural begin stirring up the district.

Operating in Ikebukuro is the famous information broker, Orihara Izaya. Izaya claims to be a firm lover of humans. He enjoys studying human emotions and behaviour and he launches vicious psychological attacks on everyone to whom he speaks. His words are deliberate and misleading, and his words have inspired many significant actions and events from the characters around him. His tendency to be enjoying his psychological attack of other human beings, as well as the effect thereof on the other characters, makes this information broker sadist number 9.

Sakamoto Ryouta is unemployed and lives with his mother. He spends most of his time playing the popular online video game, BTOOOM!, of which he is Japan’s top player. His peaceful life changes when he finds himself stranded on an island with a small green crystal embedded in his left hand, unable to remember how he got there. It soon dawns on Ryouta that someone has decided to replicate the game BTOOOM, in real life, with real repercussions. Armed with unique bombs called “BIMs”, players have to kill seven other players and retrieve their green chips. With 8 green chips in total, the player will be allowed to leave the island and return home. Ryouta is forced to fight when out of nowhere, a man wielding BIMs tries to kill him. He finds himself being forced to survive, by all means necessary.

One of the players stranded on the BTOOOM! island is 14-year-old Kira Kousuke. In his regular life, Kousuke is a BTOOOM! player who has lived a terrible life of domestic and sexual abuse, neglect and mistreatment at the hands of his father. He ran away from home many times and resorted to theft, which escalated to robbing people and killing them. His activities became worse as he then raped 3 women.With years of mental torture, Kousuke has become twisted, revelling at his current situation on the island. Unlike Ryouta, Kousuke felt no reservations about killing other players and uses his devastating black hole BIM to cause serious damage to other players. His lack of empathy is possibly an effect of the horrendous childhood he experienced. Be that as it may, he is incredibly bloodthirsty and enjoys seeing people suffer.

Academy City is mostly home to students. The city is leading scientific advancement and currently has an ESPer development programme. Level 5 ESPers are the strongest, of which Academy City has 7. Ranked third among these Level 5 ESPers is Misaka Mikoto, an electricity-user known around the city as “the Railgun”. When strange things begin happening around town, Mikoto investigates and uncovers a connection of each crime to the “Level Upper”, a device which is claimed to be able to increase the ESPer level of its user. It turns out that there is more to Level Upper than initially caught and Mikoto soon realises that there is a darker side to the city.

Accelerator is a project, an ESPer developed in order to test the possibility of going beyond Level 5 and the strongest ESPer in Academy City. According to the city’s best supercomputer, Tree Diagram, achieving ESPer Level 6 can only be possible by killing 128 Level 5 ESPers without one failure. Since there are only 7 Level 5 ESPers in Academy City including Accelerator, the plan was revised and he was dispatched to kill 20 000 Level 3 ESPers instead – the Misaka Mikoto clones. He revels in his ability to gruesomely murder each clone. Accelerator’s sadism makes him the ideal candidate for the experiment as he enjoys killing other people, especially the Misaka clones.

Train Heartnet is a skilled assassin who works for Chronos, a secret organisation which owns one third of the world’s economy. Dubbed the “Black Cat”, Train is one of Chronos’s best killers. One night, he meets Minatsuki Saya, a bounty hunter. He befriends Saya and as a result of her influence, Train begins to rethink life as an assassin. Train decides to leave Chronos and begin a life as a bounty hunter, but Chronos and Train’s old partner, Creed Diskenth, are not impressed with his defection. How long until Train is forced to face his past?

Creed is extremely possessive over Train, regarding him one of his best friends and one of the best assassins in the world. He believes that it is a waste of talent for Train to no longer be in Chronos, but Creed’s jealousy over Train’s friendship with Saya is what prompts the madman to visit Saya himself and brutally murder her after torturing her in combat. Creed has a terrifying one-track mind and he believed that Saya had bewitched Train. He was convinced that he was saving Train, but he also wished to inflict pain on Train in order to prompt a response.

Two and a half years after Naruto leaves Konohagakure for intense training, the Akatsuki is quickly approaching completion of their grand plan which threatens the safety of the ninja world. Now older, Naruto has not changed all that much where personality is concerned, but he possesses a greater desire to become stronger and protect his friends. Naruto Shippuuden is the second part of the story about the boy who wanted to become Hokage.

Hidan is a sadistic, masochistic S-rank ninja from Yugakure who joined the Akatsuki. He left his village out of frustration as he believed that shinobi were meant to kill – he killed his neighbours before leaving the village. He joined Jashin, a cult-like faith where practitioners worship the teachings of outright slaughter, murder and destruction. Hidan makes a point of making his opponents’ deaths as painful as possible and he revels in murder and violence. He enjoys torturing his opponents, but he also tends to inflict injuries on himself too, showcasing a masochistic side to complement his sadism.

Hyoudou Issei is an extremely perverted high school student who spends all his time peeping on women and daydreaming about having his own harem one day. One day on his way home from school, a beautiful girl asks him out on a date. However, she turns out to be a fallen angel who kills him. Luckily, the beautiful Rias Gremory, a top-class demon, revives Issei as a demon, giving him a second chance at life. Now as a demon, Issei meets the other demons in his school in the Occult Research Club. Slowly becoming accustomed to life as a demon, Issei must train and fight for survival in a dangerous new world.

Freed Sellzen is the priest who led Asia Argento before her death and revival into a demon. He is a character completely antithetical to the common conception of priests. He is foul-mouthed, dangerous and bloodthirsty, bearing an incredibly anti-demon prejudice exuded from every part of his body. He revels in torture, violence and murder and enjoys fighting and killing demons. His seemingly unstable nature makes his inclusion on this list a necessity.

Tatsumi and his friends Sayo and Ieyasu embarked on a journey from their village to the empire capital in order to find work in the Royal Army so they can send money back to their village. When Tatsumi finds himself separated from Sayo and Ieyasu, he explores the capital on his own and is very quickly exposed to the extent of the depravity of the people in the capital. He soon joins Night Raid, the covert assassination branch of the Revolutionary Army, a group created in order to overthrow the Prime Minister, Honest, whose greed has thrown countless people into strife and poverty. Being skilled killers, the members of Night Raid know what is at stake and they remove all obstacles in their way.

General Esdeath is a high-ranked general of the Empire and a legendary figure throughout the capital. Her power and ruthlessness in combat is unmatched and her bloodlust is second to none. She truly enjoys fighting, war and suffering and her favourite thing is seeing her opponents suffer at her hands. Her vicious deeds are known throughout the Empire and she is the Revolutionary Army’s greatest threat.

Kurosaki Ichigo is a high schooler who, for as long as he can remember, has been able to see ghosts. His life was otherwise normal until one night, a woman dressed in a black kimono, armed with a katana appeared in his room. She introduced herself as a Shinigami, a grim reaper-like entity whose role is to guide good spirits over to Heaven, and to purify evil souls called Hollows. Soon after, Ichigo’s family is attacked by a powerful Hollow and the Shinigami sustains fatal wounds. With their situation looking bleak, she suggests one thing: she will transfer her Shinigami powers to Ichigo so he may defeat it. From that day, Ichigo’s life changed forever.

The captain of the 12th Squad of the Gotei 13, the Research Division, is none other than Kurotsuchi Mayuri. He is incredibly driven by his curiosity and is not shy to look into things in the most unethical way possible. His disregard for his underlings is shocking; however, nothing trumps the fact that he ordered a Shinigami group to purposefully delay their reaction to a Hollow signal, which led to the death of Ishida Uryu’s grandfather. This was all so Mayuri could poke and probe the body of a Quincy. His Zanpakuto is capable of severing all the nerves in an opponent’s body parts without removing the sensation of pain – so Mayuri ends up having a motionless opponent whom he perforates an indefinite number of times.

When Natsuki Subaru, a high school shut-in, goes to the convenience store, he steps out into the a fantasy world. Bewildered, Subaru’s new environment gives him a rough greeting as he is attacked by thugs soon after his arrival and beaten to a pulp. Luckily, a white-haired beauty named Satella, on her way to find the one who stole her insignia, runs into Subaru and saves him. Grateful, Subaru offers his help towards finding Satella’s insignia. Later that night, they find the insignia’s whereabouts, but they are soon brutally murdered. Subaru awakens to the same sight he saw upon stepping outside the convenience store, the same thugs, the same Satella, everything happening in exactly the same way. The mystery deepens as history repeats itself.

Betegeuse-Romaneé-Conti is one of the main antagonists in the series and he is one of the evil Witch’s Sin Archbishops, as the Archbishop of Sloth. His life is directed by diligence and love for the Witch. He is capable of a vast array of evil magic and can even possess other people’s bodies. His power of Sloth allows him to mentally break his opponents, causing them to experience hallucinations, pain and even go completely mad. His lack of empathy and his masochistic tendencies come together to create an unpredictable, obsessive and dangerous mess of a character.