Two Must-See Supernatural Shoujo and Seinen Anime about Trauma and Mental Distress

Here are a must-see shoujo and seinen that have incorporated the supernatural to depict mental health and illness, trauma, and healing.

BY NATALIE CHERIE CAMPBELL

Anime has never shied away from tackling hard topics. Some include mental health and illness, bullying, grief, guilt, suicidal ideation, trauma, and the healing process. There are a lot of great anime that focus on these issues, including A Silent Voice, Orange, Your Lie in April, Violet Evergarden, Wonder Egg Priority, Welcome to NHK, Angel Beats, Given, and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. As it should be, both genres that market to women as well as those that market to men are addressing these difficult but crucial themes. Two anime that do so—one with a young female protagonist and the other with a young male protagonist—are the shoujo Fruits Basket (2019) and the seinen Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai.

Shoujo’s target audience is adolescent girls, portraying stories about school, friendship, and first love from the perspective of young women. Shoujo’s primary emphasis is emotions and characters’ feelings. Driven primarily by the process of learning interpersonal skills, self-confidence, and life balance, shoujo is full of opportunities to show what growing up is actually like and the difficulties that come along with it.

Seinen’s target audience, on the other hand, is young adult men, portraying a large variety of stories from a male perspective. Seinen has a stronger emphasis on realism, storyline, and character development than the action-oriented shōnen, which markets to adolescent boys. Feelings aren’t just a realm for women, but even so this emphasis often leads seinen series to be confused with shoujo.

Both shoujo and seinen cater to slice-of-life stories and daily, more ordinary struggles. However, some stories have added elements beyond the realm of reality, and they’ve done so with fantastic results.

Here are a must-see shoujo and seinen that have incorporated the supernatural to deepen their depictions of mental health and illness, trauma, and healing.

Fruits Basket (2019)

Fruits Basket, sometimes called Furuba or Fruba, began as a manga written and illustrated by Natsuki Takaya. It was first adapted as a one-season anime in 2001. By 2018, the manga had sold over 30 million copies, making it one of the best-selling manga as well as best-selling shoujo manga of all time. From 2019 to 2021, the manga was re-adapted as three seasons, along with a film in 2022. This second award-winning anime, directed by Yoshihide Ibata, adapts the full manga. It is absolutely stellar, dub and all.

Fruits Basket follows the story of Tohru Honda, a girl whose mother recently died in a car accident, leaving her an orphan living on the generosity of her grandfather. Renovations on his home lead to her living in a tent since her more frustrating characteristics include a belief that she is a burden and a desire to not impose on those who care about her. She soon stumbles upon a home nearby, where her swoony-but-reserved classmate Yuki Sohma lives with his cousin Shugure Sohma.

Between their insistence and her increasingly-dire need, she is persuaded to stay with them in exchange for her excellent homemaking skills. On her first day, Kyo Sohma literally crashes through the roof, causing a series of mishaps that lead to Tohru learning that 13 members of the Sohma family are possessed by the Chinese zodiac animals. It’s a curse that makes them transform when they are weak, stressed, or hugged by anyone of the opposite sex.

Over time, Tohru learns that the curse is darker than she thought, bringing with it abuse, trauma and subordination, difficulties that afflict every single member of the zodiac. However, Tohru helps heal their emotional wounds through her most defining quality—her kindness, which she gives freely. As she does so, she receives love and help in return, coming to understand her own self, her own pain, and her own insecurities better so that she can heal as well.

While the premise may initially seem a bit silly, the show’s supernatural elements bring surprising depth. The transformations and the curse’s restraints are both a source of pain and a manifestation of the characters’ psychological abuse. The rat is timid, self-disgusted, and insecure, struggling with the effects of depression, confinement, and isolation. The cat is pitted against the rat, cast out, and hated, struggling with self-loathing and hopelessness as it is rejected from being a full-fledged member of the zodiac. The dog is apathetic and scheming, struggling with the bitterness of unrequited loyalty and possessive spite. The ox is considered stupid, inept, and unstable, struggling with dissociative identity disorder as he goes back and forth between being laid back and enraged when he “sees red.” The horse is beautiful and despised for it, desperately wanting to be both free and cared for, suffering from abandonment and despair. The list goes on. The story also chooses the controversial route of showing the pain and trauma of the primary abuser and their steps toward healing. No one is free of the need for healing in this show, and everyone experiences the healing balm of nurturing kindness, patient care, and loving support.

Grab some tissues.

Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai

This anime is not what it seems. Based on the promotional posters, a viewer might sit down expecting bunny girls and fanservice, only to leave with deep feelings and lingering thoughts. Also categorized as a seinen, though I believe it fits the shoujo genre as well, Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai is an emotionally complex, psychological, supernatural romance.

Originally a light novel series by Hajime Kamoshida, Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai was adapted as an anime by CloverWords in 2018 with a film following in 2019. The story follows Sakuta Azusagawa, a stoic high school boy with a snarky, understated sense of humor and caring heart. He tries to slip under the radar at school because of a bad reputation based on false accusations. He lives alone with his younger sister, who dropped out of school following severe online bullying and death threats. She now experiences dissociative identity disorder, peregrinophobia, and agoraphobia.

His life changes when he sees a girl in a bunny outfit wandering through the library despite no one else noticing her. She turns out to be the teenage actress Mai Sakurajima. Having taken a hiatus from acting and school, she finds that she is “disappearing” as no one but Sakuta can see her. Rio Futaba, Sakuta’s friend and the only member of the science club, identifies the phenomenon as a form of Puberty Syndrome. Puberty Syndrome is a mysterious syndrome that affects adolescents in distress, and Sakuta decides to help Mai solve this bizarre problem before she disappears completely.

Over the course of the season and film, Sakuta meets and helps six young women experiencing Puberty Syndrome. One of the most intriguing aspects of the series is the supernatural application of actual scientific thought experiments from quantum mechanics, such as Schrodinger’s Cat, Laplace’s Demon, Doppelgangers, and Quantum Teleportation. These ideas are used to unravel the causes behind the physical manifestation of the girls’ mental distress. Some of these issues include inferiority complexes, low self-confidence, self-acceptance, social rejection, sexualization, illness, and depression, all of which are incredibly potent and unfortunately common. However, it is Sakuta’s support and caring investment in the girls’ well-being that allows these young women to address their struggle so they can move forward. Eventually, Sakuta will experience his own form of Puberty Syndrome, showing that he too needs support to confront and overcome the difficulties in his own life.

If you’re not into harem anime, be rest assured that Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai falls on the right side of the line, handling the relationships in the show with straightforward grace. The show’s treatment of women, relationships, adolescent struggles, and the healing process make Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai and its character’s shine.

Grab some tissues for this one, too.