Creepy Doll / Anime & Manga

• Amatsuki: The doll that Ginshu keeps his/her soul in, what with its high-pitched voice and jerky movements.
• A major motif in Another. There's a dark and deserted doll store in the series' Town with a Dark Secret, where really creepy ("laying in coffins, like corpses" creepy) are displayed, including one that looks eerily like Misaki, then there's the deal with her doll eye under her bandage. Also, in the anime, occasional flashes of dismembered sad eyed dolls. Brrr.
• Episode 9 of Betrayal Knows My Name features a shop full of creepy dolls. And Elegant Gothic Lolita Ashley always seems to be carrying one around with her and uses them to attack people.
• Black Butler: The second opening of the second season has a scene where Grell Sutcliffe is holding a creepy doll version of Sebastian, which she kisses before placing it among doll versions of Ciel and Alois... which she then proceeds to drive her chainsaw through.
• Bleach: In his released form, Szayelaporro has the ability to create a small Voodoo Doll that has his enemy's likeness. Any damage done to the dolls' internal organs, accessed by taking the doll apart (which doesn't happen to the original) removing the organs and then crushing them, is done to the original, debilitating them from the inside. The doll's exterior has some effect on the victim as well, as seen when Ishida felt Szayelaporro scratch and flick his doll's face. And Szayelaporro later makes a voodoo doll of Mayuri who is pretty creepy himself... but Mayuri is so Crazy-Prepared that he manages to out-gambit Szayelaporro, as he had replaced his own organs with doll-like substitutes so Szayelaporro's powers had no effect on him.
• Q from Bungou Stray Dogs has a somewhat disturbing plush doll that he carries everywhere. When he decides to use his ability, it starts laughing maniacally, even as he mutilates to activate his ability.
• Case Closed has cases in which traditional dolls play rather bloody and creepy role:
  • In one of them, there are mentions of a certain Shinto deity named the Kimono Goddess. She doubles as a goddess of revenge, and if a devotee of hers wants to ask her to sponsor their punishment of someone who has wronged them somehow, said person must make a creepy doll in paper and leave it in a box at the Goddess's shrine at midnight. Conan, Ran and a woman named Eri find two dolls in the local Kimono Goddess Temple, and talks about revenge are had. That same night, another doll is found... and it's wearing a demon mask. Few afterwards, two women named Ema and Asuka are stabbed to death, and in Ema's case there's a fourth paper doll on her pierced chest. And the killer is Eri, since they drove her long-lost sister Sakurako to suicide.
  • In another, Kogoro is hired by a man who is a member of a Big, Screwed-Up Family and makes creepy traditional dolls for a living. Not only he makes dolls... but it turns out he uses said doll making business as a cover for drug traffic, with the dolls being filled with cocaine bags.
  • In at least two murders, some rather creepy and old karakuri puppet dolls have been used by the killers to try giving themselves alibis.
• Dolls are a recurring motif in the Count Cain series. One chapter featured a girl in a leg-cast who kidnapped other girls to turn their corpses into dolls.
• Parodied in one Crayon Shin-chan AU-story, where an evil, sentient European doll who ruined countless lives in the past somehow ends up in Japan, which a drunk Hiroshi randomly found her atop a dumpster and decide to bring the doll back to baby Himawari as a present. Said doll is more than gleeful to try her luck at ruining a Japanese family, but every single one of the doll's attempts at cursing the Nohara family backfires (hilariously), with her attempts at hypnotizing Himawari into jumping out a window and trying to booby-trap the house with thumbtacks gets repeatedlty interrupted by Shin-Chan (who, as usual, is oblivious the whole time). Before the doll tries her luck at hypnotizing Shin-Chan, Shin-Chan instead decides to give the doll an impromptu haircut, strip her and in the midst of playing rough, accidentally dropping the doll into Himawari's used diaper. Needless to say, the cursed doll won't be ruining anymore families after Shin-Chan's through with her.
• In the Cyborg 009 2001 TV series, one of these with the looks and size of an adult woman is found in the center of the Big Fancy House that is Cyborg 0012. The actual brains and control of the wayward house are implied to be inside the doll.
• Road Kamelot from D.Gray-Man. As well as possessing a number of creepy dolls, she herself can transform into an extremely creepy doll.
• Dear Brother:
  • One of the rooms at Fukiko's summer house is full of creepy dolls and obsessively arranged items of memorabilia from the day she first met her crush Takehiko Henmi, which she has since kept completely unchanged for six years and forbids anyone else to enter, save for herself and a maid whom she specifically tasked with its cleaning.
  • Rei Asaka also keeps one. It's both one of the dolls seen in the OP and ED, as well as one of the two gifts that Fukiko gave her some time ago (The other being a gold bracelet). That doll becomes Nanako's Tragic Keepsake, though the circumstances vary: in the manga Rei gives it to Nanako before committing suicide, in the anime Fukiko gives it to Nanako after Rei's fatal accident.
• Death Note:
  • Near constantly plays with creepy toys and uses them to test his various theories.
  • Misa Amane wears an Elegant Gothic Lolita style dress in one instance, for when she was committing suicide after she thought Light died. Overall, the dress combined with her depressed facial expression and her dark make-up makes her look like a life-sized porcelain doll, to an eerie effect. That scene mirrors an earlier scene where Misa, dressed the same and traveling through the same setting, sings a capella about her devotion and trust to Kira. Though the lyrics are optimistic, her tone, and doll-like dress, makes the scene still quite creepy.
  • In the live-action series, Near communicates with Mello as a ventriloquist's dummy. It remains to be seen whether the dummy is Mello, or merely a representation of him, but either way, it's creepy.
  • One of the Shinigami, named Gelus, looks like a creepy doll. It's actually quite innocent and forlorn compared to the typically asshole-ish, apathetic Shinigami, and having no friends and obsessing with the aforementioned Misa Amane.
• There are countless mannequins strewn across the bar in Death Parade, which Decim collects as a hobby. Some are dressed up, most are nude, many are broken and faceless. As it turns out, the mannequins belong to former guests whose souls were either reincarnated or sent to the void, leaving their featureless bodies behind. As such, Decim has taken to collecting their bodies and dolling them up in their likeness to ensure they are not entirely forgotten, especially when he's subjected to frequent mind wipes to prevent the inevitable psychological strain of possessing many lifetimes' worth of memories.
• Denjin N: Tadahiro uses a baby doll as his backup Soul Jar, and later packs it with cameras, extra legs and weapons.
• In Descendants of Darkness, part of Kazutaka Muraki's general state of madness stemmed from memories of his mother's enormous collection of porcelain dolls. It didn't help that the panels of the manga depicting the dolls copy-pasted four or five of them to horrible heights of creepiness. In the opening of the anime, a child Muraki is seen among dozens of dolls; he then picks up one from the floor and holds it in his arms.
• In Final Fantasy: Lost Stranger, particular kind of creepy doll is all the rage among women in Mysidia, who consider it Creepy Cute In-Universe. After escaping from the Magus Sisters' hideout, Shogo realizes that they were the ones who created the dolls, and the sisters activate them to attack the Mysidian Royal Cathedral. Even worse, they turn out to be a version of Calcabrina created en masse, meaning that they will simply fuse together into a giant monster when six of the same type are defeated, and split back into six when the giant version is defeated.
• Ghost Hunt has Minnie, a possessed doll.
• Ghost Stories features a supernatural doll named Mary who stalks the main character Satsuki throughout episode 11. At the end of the episode the Mary doll also commands other dolls to gang up on Satsuki and attempt to kill her all while singing a song about how they plan to do so.
• Helen ESP has a school mannequin that falls in love with is maker, and because she can't have him, decides to kill him, all the while knowing just how wrong her actions are.
• Hell Girl:
  • Mina, but we don't learn it for a while since she's a Third-Person Person who manages to fool Hajime and Tsugumi with her speech patterns.
  • Invoked to great effect in an early episode. A girl from an orphanage, Inori, is picked up by a dollmaker old woman named Kyogotsu, supposedly to marry her son... on the condition that she acts like a doll: she should only sit around, looking pretty and quiet, without even interacting with the family or her new husband. Naturally, poor Inori snaps after a while and, despite Hajime's warnings, she sends Mrs. Kyogotsu to Hell; fittingly, the upcoming scenes feature many of these dolls coming to life and attacking Mrs. Kyokotsu, then transforming her in a Creepy Doll before sending the old woman to Hell as Inori's revenge. Even the title of the episode lampshades it: it's Hanayome Ningyo, which means Bride Doll.
• In Hell Teacher Nube, a girl named Shizuka has a traditional Japanese doll that grows its hair and asks Nube to check on it. He does, but all of the doll's hair falls out. There are other creepy dolls around, like a very detailed "visible human" doll whose left half exposes all its internal organs... and then comes to life and believes itself to be a real boy, forcefully pushing itself into anyone it could think of as a "friend".
• Sorta the point for Hyde and Closer as dolls are used as curses to attack people. Even Hyde, the protagonist's doll, isn't exempt from this, it has a chainsaw sword in his zipper!
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure had a Stand called Ebony Devil, which was this.^note Ebony Devil in actuality possess the doll, while still being under Devo's command.
  • Later in Part 3 is Telence T. D'Arby's doll collection. He uses his stand Atum to cheat in competitions to seal his victims souls into dolls he makes in their image. The dolls can still move in herky-jerky movements and talk while fully aware but unable to do anything, with some of them even going insane as a result.
• The principal of Jujutsu Specialty High School of Tokyo, Masamichi Yaga, from Jujutsu Kaisen has a childish interest in creepy cute dolls. However, it is revealed that the cute dolls themselves are cursed and can become aggressive.
• Junji Ito uses this trope to distressing effect in "The Hell of the Doll Funeral", a one-shot comic included with Junji Ito Kyoufu Manga Collection. Over the course of six pages, a disease transforms a small girl named Maria into a doll, which is creepy enough on its own. It doesn't stop mutating her there, though.
• In K, it's revealed in the manga Days of Blue that Gotou has a collection of freaky dolls that creep out Hidaka, his roommate. In fact, Hidaka escapes to Enomoto's room at one point since he was attempting to read a magazine in his own room, but the dolls kept staring at him.
• Kämpfer:
  • A line of stuffed animals that look like they committed Seppuku with their intestines sticking out, and two of their names translate to Suicide Tiger and Suicide Black Rabbit. These are FOR KIDS.
  • And the girl who looks the most girly of the characters has a room of them. And the main character is expected to sleep in there.
• Boogie-Kun of Karin is a doll possessed by a serial killer that holds a knife in its hand. Later on, Anju mentions that she collects other creepy dolls that all have interesting histories. She then asks Karin if she wants to hear about them, but Karin quickly leaves in fear.
•  In The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords (2004), Erune's doll is animated by Shadow Link and intimidates its owner before sending her to the Dark World.
• In one episode of Mokke, a bunch of abandoned Hina dolls are possessing a bridge to try to get attention.
• The Zashiki-Warashi arc of Mononoke has a lot of these, representing aborted fetuses.
• Gillen finds one of these in Monster, in relation to a serial killer he is examining.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi: Chachazero, who doubles as a sort of evil peanut gallery.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion:
  • There's one in Asuka's Mind Rape sequence. The truly horrifying part is when the doll is hanging from the ceiling spinning on the end of a rope along with Asuka's mother, Kyouko, who has just committed suicide. Scarier still were some of the scenes that were left in the director's cut of that episode. "Do you love me? Do you really love me?" "BUT YOU'RE LYING"
  • After piloting EVA 02, having half of her soul sucked out by it and going insane because of that, Kyouko is seen holding the same doll in her arms and talking to it, believing it to be her daughter and refusing to acknowledge the real Asuka as her kid. Now you know where Asuka's hate of the "doll" word and concept comes. This means that Kyouko hanging the doll along with herself was an attempted murder-suicide. She wanted to take her daughter with her.
  • Asuka possesses one and plays with it at one point in Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0. Also, according to many, it's by far the creepiest thing to come out of anything Evangelion-related ever.
• Otogi Matsuri: The giant, eight legged cat/spider demon Kenzoku is accompanied by numerous creepy-looking dolls who refer to it as "Go-shu-jin sama" (meaning "Master of the House"), and who mainly serve to find humans to become the demon's next meal.
  Doll #1: Go-shu-jin sama, here.
  Doll #2: Over here.
  Doll #3: The new offering is here.
• Overlord (2012): Nazarick uses them as part of a trap involving Albedo's sister Nigredo. When you enter Nigredo's room, you see a Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl holding a doll as if it were a baby and with many similar dolls near her, then shrieking that it's wrong and attacking you with scissors... unless you present her with one of the dolls claiming it is her baby. Note that she's actually one of the nicest (that is, Good-aligned) NPCs in all of Nazarick.
• PandoraHearts:
  • Will of the Abyss's Creepy Doll form, a rabbit in a dress with black, bleeding pits for eyes.
  • The demonic doll that attacks Oz when he falls into the Abyss (anime only).
  • The doll that Break keeps on his shoulder.
  • The Will of the Abyss's Room Full of Crazy is full of these.
• A creepy doll in traditional Japanese dress appears throughout Paprika. It starts out as a sort of dreamscape "avatar" of one character, but later takes on a life of its own.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica:
  • Some of the witches' minions counts, especially Oktavia's Clarissas during episode 10, which are simply Sayaka's loosely copies of her friend and love rival Hitomi, in horrid colors.
  • Also, the witch Charlotte looks like a stuffed doll with creepy eyes before evolving into a much bigger form and killing/eating Mami.
  • As well, Albertine, as revealed in the official PSP game, appears as a giant clown-like doll.
• In a Ranma ½ story, Ranma accidentally breaks a typical Japanese doll during a trip to a hot spring. The doll has magic powers, and it starts to plan her revenge by targeting Akane and switching bodies with her.
• Reborn! (2004):
  • Ginger Bread is a Creepy Child and a vice-captain of the Millefiore Family's eighth squad, the enemies of the main protagonists in the future. He is also known as the Magician's Doll, primarily due to his usage of similar looking dolls that are clothed in a wizard's hat and cape, and have stars in their eyes (like he does), to fight. In addition, he uses spiders, summoned by what he calls sorcery. He claims to have had a hand in the death of Colonnello. As such, Lal Mirch engages him in battle, but after he loses, it is revealed that she was only fighting one of his dolls.
  • One of the Six Funeral Wreaths, Daisy is the holder of the Sun Mare Ring. He has a rather uncanny appearance with scars on his face, dirty-looking hair, sunken eyes, and carries a creepy plushie in his hands.
• Rozen Maiden:
  • Suigintou, Barasuishou, and Kirakishou, the antagonist dolls. Interestingly, Suigintou is considered the most attractive Rozen Maiden, at least physically, and Barasuishou is reasonably popular as well. Both have Woobie qualities that endear them to fans. Even Kirakishou comes off as somewhat sympathetic in her insanity as she gets more developed in the tales.
  • The rows of lifeless dolls in Enzu's shop definitely count. Compared to the living dolls, even Suigintou, they are way creepier.
• Sailor Moon:
  • The episode "Shingo's Innocent Love! A Sorrowful French Doll" is all about the Creepy Dolls. Shingo's almost girlfriend Mika is a Child Prodigy doll maker who takes to working on her latest project nonstop after her and Shingo's friendship goes briefly sour, and once Nephrite targets her, she starts making dolls who are REALLY damn creepy...
  • Also, more than one Monster of the Week, such as Murido, a sweet dream princess that is a youma under her cute face.
• In Shadow Star, Norio Koga's hobby is creating dolls and puppets based on shadow dragons, and needless to say, they're all kind of creepy. The creepiest of them all is a certain doll that's found hanging on the wall of Norio's best friend and unrequited love Takeo's house... with poor Norio's own head mounted on it. Needless to say, neither Takeo not Shiina's parents take the discovery well.
• Season 1 of Shakugan no Shana had Friagne the Hunter, who, while he wasn't a doll himself, was way, way too attached to his Creepy Doll minion Marianne. The reason he's in town is so he can dissolve the city to give her real life.
• In Slayers NEXT, one of the possible locations of the Clair Bible is a tower full of these. In truth the dolls were mostly harmless (aside of just floating around) and people thought they were creepy due to a legend about the person who used to live there, a handsome yet lonely male dollmaker who supposedly turned the girl he was a Stalker with a Crush to into a creepy doll so that she'd stay with him forever. Except for two of them, and one was a demon in the shape of the cutest doll of them all, making people believe that the other doll was a the dollmaker from the legend after a Deal with the Devil.
• An episode of Tactics featured a doll-maker and a house full of creepy dolls.
• One shows up in the first episode of Texhnolyze while Ichise has sex with a bizarre, bionically augmented woman.
• The titular character of The Unforgiving Flowers Blossom in the Dead of Night is a Yōkai whose original form is that of a doll in the school infirmary. According to her ghost story, those who witness the doll dancing in the night will be cursed. Even in her human form, she is described as looking like a doll.
• Nono in Urara Meirocho has a doll that not only talks, but also speaks exactly what Nono is thinking.
• Vampire Princess Miyu has dolls as a sort-of theme in both the TV series/OAV:
  • In the TV series there is Matsukaze, a doll that Winter Royal Lady Reiha constantly carries around in her arms and seems to be there as a mouthpiece for Reiha's hate towards Miyu. He ends up pulling an Heroic Sacrifice to save Reiha's life.
  • Also, this is the shinma Ranka's true form in the second OAV. And she not only turns people into creepy dolls, but she does this to her love interest Kei. On Kei's own request, since he wants to be with her forever.
  • At the beginning of that same OAV, Miyu in a schoolgirl disguise passes by a toy store and sees a very pretty but creepy ichimatsu traditional doll (like these ones) and says "You're frozen in time too, hmmm" while smiling softly. That's foreshadowing of Miyu's true nature as a Shinma who's Older than she looks, having been turned into a Shinma at age 13 and given eternal youth at the same time.
  • Episode 19, "Love of the Dolls" "Ningyōshi no Koi" (人形師の恋), revolves around a doll-maker, who falls in love with one of her creations... and how things get very creepy from there on...
  • In the manga, there's another Shinma that pulls similar stuff on two of Miyu's school friends and a chubby Office Lady. His first victims were an antique shop owner and his son Takumi, whom he revived after they died in a fire caused by Miyu when she gave a Mercy Kill to Takumi's Shinma mother; then, he erased the two's memories and used them as his pawns.
• The episode "Raindrops" from Witch Hunter Robin. A bunch of creepy dolls chanting "UNFORGIVABLE!" qualifies as some serious nightmare fuel.
• Tsukiyo's doll Luna, from The World God Only Knows.
• In the X/1999 TV series, a creepy life-sized doll dressed in a red kimono is seen in CLAMP Campus. Tokiko gave it to the Canon Foreigner Chairman of said Campus and told him that she'd die soon via giving birth to one of the Shinken, and in that moment the doll would break and tell him not just what happened to her, but where to find the Shinken itself.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! GX:
    • An episode has Jaden and his crew face a creepy doll come to life.
    • There's also the card Malice Doll of Demise, which serves as the figurehead for Jinzo/Psycho Shocker's deck. He even appears on the eyecatch.
    • And the "Rogue Doll" card.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL: IV (Four) uses a Gimmick Puppet Themed deck; his two Numbers cards are Gimmick Puppet — Giant Killer and Gimmick Puppet — Heaven's Strings both of which are uber creepy.
  • The original Yu-Gi-Oh! anime has one carried by Dark Necrofear — a baby doll with a large piece missing from its head, and a really creepy laugh. 4Kids apparently thought it too scary for the English dub, so it was edited out.

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