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There are some good anime adaptations of horror light novels out there, like Boogiepop Phantom and Higurashi When They Cry. But others haven’t been animated yet. Maybe with enough readers and attention, these suggestions will escape the page and end up on-screen too.

8 Ordinary Days With A Man-Eater

Neko Kamisata and Ayumu Kasuga’s light novel may be the closest people get to a light novel adaptation of Little Shop of Horrors. Only instead of a lethal plant with a taste for rock n’roll, humble high schooler Tōya Kamisaki has to feed his ‘fiancée’ Kuroe Ōgami one person a month.

Ōgami is actually a wolf monster in the form of a young girl. Tōya ended up making a pact with the creature in a bid to save his life from a gang beating. If he doesn’t pick out a person for her to eat, she’ll choose for herself, and that could include his friends, family, or himself. Though he can only find fresh ‘food’ for her for so long.

7 Sugar Dark: The Buried Darkness & The Girl

Enji Arai and mebae’s spooky light novel won the Grand Prize at the Sneaker Awards in 2009, making it the first light novel to do so since The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya in 2003. Kadokawa Shoten president Shinichiro Inoue predicted it would “certainly” get an anime adaptation. But after a decade since its original release, the fans are still waiting.

It was about a young boy called Muoru who, in penance for a crime he didn’t commit, is made to work forced labor in a cemetery. He works there for so long that he becomes known as the “Grave Keeper.” He’s kept company by a pretty girl called Meria as he digs his hole, one of which may lead toward an undead monster known only as “The Dark.”

6 Kai, Sasu

Kihara Hirokatsu’s light novel is actually a collection of 9 stories, or ‘Stabs’ (sasu), followed by a full-on manga chapter. The manga part, ‘Summer Time Graduation Trip’, has been translated and can be found online. But the rest of the novel has been much harder to find. It’s likely because the illustrations were by famed horror manga author Junji Ito, whose own work is much more popular.

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The title story, ‘Last Stab: Lips’, was about a young girl called N-ko noticing something strange about her wardrobe. Its doors get replaced with a shoji paper screen, then a 3D image of lips begins appearing on its paper. Then after that…well, the curious will have to track the story down for themselves to find out. The result isn’t pretty regardless.

5 Last & First Idol

Who says stories can’t cross genres? Gengen Kusano’s award-winning light novel mixes hard sci-fi with yuri themes, fantasy, and body horror. It can be found in English together with two of Kusano’s other stories: Evolution Girls (about an app that turns people into anthropomorphized animals) and Dark Seiyuu (about anime voice actors being the next step in human evolution).

Last & First Idol combines sci-fi author Olaf Stapledon’s novel Last and First Men with anime pop idols. Singer Maori Nīzono is driven to despair when her classmate and fellow singer, Mika Furutsuki, is killed. She preserves her remains in the hope she can be revived one day. That day comes, but only after humanity and civilization have long since fallen. The revived Mika seeks to become the ultimate pop idol for whatever’s left of life in the universe.

4 Torture Princess: Fremd Torturchen

Keishi Ayasato and Saki Ukai’s story is a more down-to-earth horror story. It just involves occult threats, abuse, and an isekai setting. It’s available in English via Yen Press, alongside its manga adaptation by Hina Yamato. Though the darker elements may mean studios will be slower to adapt it than Reborn as a Vending Machine.

Kaito is a 17yr old boy who’s strangled to death by his abusive father. He ends up in another world where he meets the torture princess, Elisabeth le Fanu. She gives him a choice: help her serve the Church by killing demons or die slowly and painfully. Choosing the former, he works with her and her automaton Hina to finish off the demons and their contractors, unaware that Elisabeth eventually will be the last one on the stake once her job is done.

3 Goth: A Novel Of Horror

Otsuichi’s work is more of a full-on novel of multiple stories than a standard light novel, though it did get a manga adaptation by Kendi Oiwa in 2004. It even got a live-action film in 2008 based on its title story about the narrator and his friend Morino discovering a notebook left behind by a serial killer. They have to figure out who their next target is before they get polished off, and they may be closer than they think.

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The other tales, with charming titles like ‘The Wristcut Incident’ and ‘Grave’, have been left on paper. However, they have been officially translated into English in both novel and manga form through Tokyopop. They’re good choices for readers looking for some bloody horror with a twist of mystery in them.

2 Pain, Pain, Go Away

Sugaru Miaki’s work is notable for following melancholy outcasts finding some meaning in their short lives. Three Days of Happiness had a formerly gifted child giving up their later years in favor of three exciting months. While Blue Sky and Cloudy Sky had a woman called Azure giving up control of her body to Claude out of depression, only for Claude to try and improve her life, so she can fear having something to lose.

Pain, Pain, Go Away continues this style, as a young man kills someone by accident. Luckily for him, the victim has the power to ‘postpone’ her death by 10 days. Unluckily for him, she isn’t too happy about it either way. With no more consequences to worry about, she plans to use those days to get revenge on everyone who did her wrong, and she forces her ‘killer’ to help. However, there may be more forces at work than odd superpowers.

1 Dungeon Defense

Finally, this light novel is actually Korean by origin, written by Yoo-Heonhwa. Though it’s also a little more typical, as it’s an isekai tale that involves entering a video game world. It just has a mystical flavor as it involves demons, death, and world-ending stakes at every turn. In his regular life, the unnamed protagonist was a master of Dungeon Attack, the world’s hardest strategy RPG.

After slaying demon after demon as the hero, he ends up sucked into the game’s world as Dantalian, one of its weakest villains. Set 10 years before the game’s setting, Dantalian has to use his wits and sharp tongue to convince the Hero to spare him and the 71 other Demon Lords to keep the world in order. That’s not to mention talking his way around his newfound demonic comrades and their accomplices. No pressure, then.

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