7 spooky Netflix anime to start watching this Halloween

The Promised Neverland

Set 25 years in the future, an 11-year-old redhead named Emma and her best friends Norman and Ray are orphans living in a gated children’s home called Grace Field House. Emma, Norman, and Ray are three of 37 children in total living on the property, cared for by a woman named Isabella who they call “Mom.”

While the first episode starts out with a bright-eyed, big-smiled Emma living a relatively care-free, happy life at Grace Field House, with her and all the other children having complete freedom to play anywhere on the grounds. There’s only one rule: don’t go past the gate.

This rule is claimed to be set in place to protect the children from the outside world until they are deemed fit to face it or are adopted. It’s an age-old rule of the horror genre that when everything is going fine and someone breaks a rule, the one rule they were asked to follow, things go south pretty fast.

When one of Grace Field Home’s orphans, Conny, is sent away after allegedly being adopted, Emma notices the girl left her stuffed animal behind. When Emma and Norman go past the gate to return the toy to their friend, they find a very dead, very much murdered, Conny. Norman, Emma and Ray spend the rest of the series uncovering the truth about their orphanage, their “Mom,” and the true, tragic purpose of their lives.

In February 2020, The Promised Neverland won “Best Fantasy” and “Best Antagonist” awards at Crunchyroll Anime Awards. The year prior, Polygon named the series as one of the “best anime of the decade.” The anime is, without a doubt, a sickeningly horrifying series, but shines in our picks of Netflix anime to start watching this Halloween with its purpose to ask audiences the question, “What do you do for survival? Where is the line drawn?” The show makes fans think and realize that honest answers can often be more terrifying than any monster.