Those of us out there love to watch good anime, especially if it involves detectives, crime, and investigation. Do you feel like you have watched all the good ones and do not have anything else to pass your time? Worry not; we bring you a new list of some of the most fantastic detective anime of all time.
You will surely love to watch anyone of these titles. We will include various anime with different genres, but all of them will involve some detective work. We hope you find a good one to watch from this list.
Best Detective Anime of All Time: Our Top Pick đ
1. Death Note
Death note is one of the best detective anime around. The story is far superior to anything you have ever watched. Although this anime has other domination genres, such as supernatural, you will enjoy the thrilling detective work in this anime.
The show contains gods of death known as shinigami. They only need to see a human once and write their name in a special notebook called a death note to make them die.
Ryuk is one of the shinigami in charge of a death note. Living the same boring lifestyle, Ryuk feels bored out of his mind and wants some thrill, so he drops his death note into the human realm. Light Yagami, our protagonist, is a high school prodigy who happens to stumble upon a death note.
Soon after discovering the death note, he understands how to use it. With a twisted sense of justice and hatred for the current state of the world, Light starts writing names of criminals in the death note, rendering them dead.
By continuously using it a couple of times, he understands the limitations of the death note, which helps him formulate a future strategy. As his continuous killing spree starts to show up in the news and people start thinking that the murders may be planned.
Then enters a world-famous detective known as L, who begins a crackdown on lights plans. You will very much enjoy the back and forth between L and Light throughout the show, with an unforgettable ending waiting for you.
There is also a Death note movie depiction that you can watch; however, itâs not as good as the anime.
2. The Millionaire Detective- Balance: UNLIMITED
Have you ever wondered what if batman was not prosperous? Would he be able to become the vigilante that we know of him? Well, the opinions may differ. However, for our next anime, we will introduce you to a similar approach to the plot.
This detective anime listing follows a similar story, which depicts a detective using his vasts riches to solve cases. Our protagonist is Daisuke Kanbe, a detective with vast assets who starts working for Modern crime prevention headquarters.
The metropolitan police department only sends people to the headquarters who have caused problems for them. Daisuke soon meets his partner Haru Katou.
Katou despises Daisukeâs approach to solving crimes using materialistic ways. Both of our detectives are presented with challenging mysteries and cases.
They must work together to solve them. You will love the thrilling story of The millionaire detective.
3. Case Closed
Case closed is one of the best and oldest detective anime on this list. It aired in early 1996 and has been loved by viewers ever since. Shinichi Kudou is a high school student who possesses an immense talent for detective work.
The protagonist is popular for solving various challenging cases. It so happens on a day that he comes across two suspicious men and, out of doubt, starts following them. Later on, he witnesses a disturbing illegal activity unknowingly.
Due to unforeseen circumstances, the men catch him witnessing the whole incident. They apprehend him, doses him off with a certain experimental drug created by their criminal organization, and leaves him to death. Astonishingly he survives to see another day. However, to his surprise, he is now in the body of a seven-year-old child.
Shinichi hides his real identity from everyone, including his father, private detective Maouri Kogorou, and even his childhood friend Maouri with his previous intelligence intact.
He then starts using an alias as Conan Edogawa. His alias is inspired by famous mystery writers Ranpo Edogawa and Arthur Conan Doyle. The detective Conan starts solving cases covertly for his senior Maouri using his exceptional investigation skills.
Also, he begins to investigate the organization that drugged him and caused him to be in this situation. In the hope of reversing the effects of the drug, he continues to examine the organization rigorously.
4. Delinquent Detective
Delinquent detective is an excellent detective anime with lots of action and drama taking place in a school. Our protagonist Saki Asamiya is a young fugitive, spending time at a juvenile correctional facility.
Her mother is also a fugitive who is bound to get a death sentence. The delinquent teenager Saki is offered a chance to redeem herself and save her mother from possible death. She has to work as an undercover cop.
She is not armed with anything but with only a cool-looking yo-yo. Sakiâs task is to go back to her high school and investigate the mysterious deaths and corruption between students. However, getting all the answers is not going to be easy.
She has to face the Mizuchi sisters, who are both wealthy and powerful. After her previous expulsion, the sisters have assumed the control that belonged to her. You will surely enjoy this fantastic teenage detective story.
5. Matantei Loki Ragnarok
Matantei Loki Ragnarok, also known as Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarok, is a masterpiece detective anime based on the mythical gods.
Who doesnât know the story of mythological gods like the God of thunder Thor and his younger brother Loki? Loki is a Norse god widely known as God of mischief.
Well, the story starts with him getting exiled to the human realm for apparently a bad joke. He is also forced to take the form of a child. The condition to end his exile is to collect the evil auras that take over human hearts.
To get back to the world of gods and fulfill his requirements, he starts running a detective agency. A human girl named Mayura soon joins Loki in his adventures, apparently a maniac for mysteries.
She begins helping him in her way, and the two start investigating evil auras. A twist in the plot appears when other Norse gods begin descending to earth to assassinate Loki.
The reasons for this are unclear. Anyone fascinated by detective anime and Norse gods would have a great time watching this one.
6. Yakushiji Ryoko no Kaiki Jikenbo
The English name for this anime is Rokoâs case file. It is illustrated by Kakinouchi Narumi and based on written light novels by Tanaka Yashiki. The entire story is centered around a 27-year-old multilingual detective named Ryoko Yakushiji.
She works for the Metropolitan police after graduating from Tokyo universityâs elite department of law. She is forced to investigate bizarre and supernatural cases.
The protagonist has to face off with supernatural beings while fending off her rival investigator. You will get attached to every character in the show deeply with a clearly defined story for each character.
It gives meaning to the competition between characters and keeps you hooked in for the entire duration of the show. The anime takes the mystery and crime genre to a new level that will help you enjoy it even more. Though there are certain plot holes in the series, it is overall a good detective anime to pass your time.
7. Ghost Hunt
Donât get swayed by the title of this anime. We assure you it is quite a popular detective anime you have watched until now. The series is jam-packed with mysteries, supernatural, horror, and a hint of comedy as well.
Our main character Taniyama Mai is still in school. She and her friends like to exchange ghost stories between themselves. Most of their stories are centered around an abandoned school building on their campus.
While their storytelling session, a specific mysterious male figure interrupts. The person turns out to be Kazuya Shibuya, president of the Shibuya Research Company, and a 17-year-old. The principal called for him to investigate the mysterious stories surround the abandoned building in the school.
The next day Mai passes the abandoned building on the way to her school. She spots a camera inside and goes on to examine it. Soon she gets surprised by the assistant of Kazuya.
Mai unknowingly interferes in the ongoing investigation and injures the assistant while breaking the camera as well. She is then hired forcefully by Kazuya to replace his injured assistant and get the payment for his broken camera.
From this point forward, Mai begins to learn about the supernatural world and all the paranormal activities. She has to adapt to the profession of ghost hunting quickly.
8. Himitsu: Top Secret â The Revelation
Solving crimes and mysteries is no easy feat for anyone. The story of this (Visit Here) detective anime is set in a world where Japan has perfected the technology to retrieve the five yearsâ worth of memories of any human being.
They use a technology known as a brain scanner for this purpose. This tool can easily extract memories of a dead person, so solving crimes becomes much more manageable.
Although solving murder cases has become more comfortable, it comes at the cost of intervening with a deceased personâs privacy.
What person would want someone else poking into their personal memories right? It can also have drastic and long-lasting effects on the people who are investigating several heinous and psychotic murders.
The investigators get to experience the emotions and feelings of such murders while committing the crime. This method can twist any sane personâs mind.
People who love detective stuff in an anime will thoroughly enjoy this fantastic plot and storytelling. You will witness the ethical and moral choices that the investigators will have to go through while solving mysteries and crimes.
Forensic scientists also weigh in to collect the memory samples from the victims to speed up the investigation. Itâs a must-watch anime on this list.
9. Paranoia Agent
Paranoia agent is the story of an infamous shounen bat called Lilâ slugger who terrorizes the Musashino cityâs residents. He moves around the city, beating down people with his golden bat while moving on his rollerblades.
Investigators find it extremely hard to understand this assailant, and catching him is no simple task. A well-known timid character designer named Tsukiko Sagi falls as the first victim to the shounen bat.
However, people suspected Sagi to be orchestrating the attacks. She was only believed to be the first victim of the many due to her human-looking pink stuffed animal called Maromi.
The detectives Mitsuhiro Maniwa and Keiichi Ikari begin investigating the assailantâs identity as he runs around the city, attacking several of his victims.
As more and more victims fall prey to this mysterious golden bat attacker, the news quickly spreads around the town like a wildfire. Paranoia starts to creep in the minds of all the adults and kids living in that town due to several chilling rumors and stories.
Find out whether our two detectives can identify and stop this attacker before becoming a victim themselves of the paranoia running around in the town.
Overall it is an excellent psychological thriller that will keep your mind running until the end. You will be left clueless unless you pay close attention to the whole story.
10. Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
Ghost in the shell is one of the widely known titles on this list. It has several seasons that are popular among a lot of people. If you have heard of or probably watched anyone anime on this list, it would be Ghost in the shell.
The anime story is set in a near-distant future, where humanity has developed the technology to replace or transplant machine parts in the body completely. By doing these transplants, people can gain immense cybernetic and physical prowess.
![[TRAILER] Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/p10UOdDglaw/0.jpg)
It brings the human and machine world closer than ever before. With excellent and advanced technology, there are also criminal-minded people who use them for evil purposes. Indeed, with the rise of this technology, illegal activities increased as well. The new and much dangerous crimes emerge out of the shadows.
To tackle the increasing number of threats, the Japanese government establishes section 9. They are an independent working unit of the police force which deals with the new heinous crimes.
Daisuki Aramaki leads the team, and Motoko Kusanagi successfully leads the unit to solve the sensitive crimes in the new social spectrum. Soon a new criminal appears in the story, nicknamed âthe laughing man,â an A-level hacker.
The team has to deal with this new threat, but itâs not going to be easy. So the chase begins as the hacker continues to leave his mark on the new world.
We assure you it is a binge-worthy title with lots of new mysteries, crime, and technology. You will thoroughly enjoy every minute of this anime.
11. Detective School Q
Detective School Q is your usual detective anime with new and unsolvable crimes once again taking place in Japan. The crimes run rampant in the city, and they seem to be full-proof; even the best detectives have a hard time gathering clues.
Five teens decide to solve these unsolvable crimes that even the brilliant detectives failed to solve. The group contains a teenager named Kyuu, an average boy who aspires to become a detective one day due to his high logical and reasoning ability.
His aspirations enable him to find out about a school called Dan Detective School(DDS). It is a famous school that allows students to bear arms. The next teen in this group is Megu.
she has a photographic memory. Others are Kenta with extraordinary martial arts ability, Kazuma, a genius programmer, and Ryuu, a mysterious boy. In Kyuuâs quest to find out the truth behind the crimes, he and his group begin the investigation.
12. Bungo Stray Dogs
Bungo stray dogs is a widely popular anime amongst a large number of viewers. It has everything you would want in a supernatural mystery. The story begins with Atsushi Nakajima witnessing the presence of a mystical tiger in his orphanage.
This creature plagues his orphanage, and it seems only he is aware of it. People start suspecting him as the culprit behind these mystical incidents. The 18-year-old Atsushi is kicked out of the orphanage and rendered homeless, without any food or shelter.
He wanders around the city, starving. Suddenly he sees a man named Osamu Dazai drowning and jumps to save his life. It so happens Dazai is a supernatural detective and a suicide enthusiast who is also investigating the mystical white tiger. Itâs the same tiger witnessed by Atsushi as well.
Alongside his partner Doppo Kunikida, Dazai manages to solve the mystery. However, the solved mystery puts Atsushi in a tight spot. After several strange events, Atsushi is forced into joining their odd team of supernatural investigators.
Together they take on several cases that are out of the scope of the police to handle. He soon meets various of his enigmatic coworkers, and the investigation continues. You will surely enjoy the fantastic storytelling and the unique plot of this awesome detective anime.
13. Psycho-Pass
The psycho pass story has been set in 22nd-century japan, where it is the safest country to live in. Japan has enforced a new system of justice named the Sibyl System.
In this system, every citizenâs mental state is monitored to discover the signs of criminal intent called psycho-pass. The real objective of this system is to determine the threat level before a crime occurs.
Inspectors have been tasked with implementing this system and subjugating anyone with the slightest of ill intent, often by using lethal force.
There are also those known as enforcers or jaded inspectors who have become criminal-minded; they are tasked with carrying out the Inspectorsâ dirty work in exchange for their freedom.
Akane Tsunemori enters the story as a young woman with honest desires to uphold justice in society. She starts working alongside one of the veteran enforcers named Shinya Kagami.
As she continues working, she soon discovers that the Sibyl system is not at all perfect in upholding justice, as her fellow inspectors believe.
With her beliefs turned upside down, Akane starts wrestling with the idea of what justice is and how they can uphold it with a system that already seems to be corrupt, to begin with. You will love this popular police crime fiction that has all the elements of a great detective anime.
14. Monster
The monster begins with an elite neurosurgeon named Dr. Kenzou Tenma, who is recently engaged to the hospitalâs directorâs daughter. As per the hospital hierarchy, he is well on his way to ascending through the system.
Unformatelly for better or for worse, one night, a certain incident changes Tenmaâs take on life forever. Once, he was preparing to perform surgery when the director of the hospital called him and asked him to switch patients to a famous performer and instead perform brain surgery on him.
His fellow coworkers appreciate his accomplishment; however, due to this decision, a poor immigrant worker dies. This incident starts to weigh on Tenmaâs conscience.
Once again, a similar situation arises when Tenma chooses to hold his ground. Instead of performing emergency surgery on the mayor, he operates on a young boy named Johan Liebert.
This decision of his makes him lose all social standings and has to face some serious consequences. Although due to the mysterious deaths of two doctors and the directors, he becomes the new director of the hospital.
However, after 9 years, he soon faces a similar challenge where he saves the life of a criminal. He must now embark on a quest to stop the havoc caused by the criminal he saved.
Conclusion
The anime included in this list are some of the best detective anime with several genres. If you have any one of these left to watch, you should start watching them as soon as possible. You are missing out on some of the gems of this genre. We hope that you like some of them and have a great time watching them.
