Examples of mermaids present in Anime & Manga.
- Husky is a Bishōnen Merman from +Anima. Like most +anima, he's the only one of his kind (the only one who is fish-like, that is). His legs turn into a fish tail at will. If he is about to drown, he'll change in order to be able to breathe: this is how he was forced to do it in the circus. It apparently takes him some effort to turn into his human form. He's also perfectly amphibious. And he's probably the prettiest merman around. When he's introduced, he's performing in a circus as the Mermaid Princess.
- In 07-Ghost noel mermaids have furry rings around their neck and waist, and the ability to change the appearance of their face at will. They also can only express themselves in melody.
- Berserk:
- Isma is introduced as a lonely genki fisher girl, rumored to have a mermaid ("merrow") mother, whose lack of nudity taboos borders on Innocent Fanservice Girl. However, Isma seems to be completely human herself, and claims to be unsure of whether merrows even exist, though readers get fairly quickly a subtle hint which suggests something else, in an ominous style typical of the series. It turns out that Isma is genuinely ignorant about her true heritage, and only unlocks the ability to transform into a more typical mermaid form after meeting her mother (who is indeed a merrow); additionally, her cheerful and kind behaviour really is her true personality, which is quite a surprise considering the setting.
- Merrows in general look like classic beautiful mermaids, but with fin-shaped ears. Additionally, they're actually spirit creatures who can weaponize their songs and have a true name which gives anyone who knows it control over them. Surprisingly for the series, merrows are actually quite benevolent towards humans, which is a nice change of pace from the setting's usual supernatural assholes.
- Blue Submarine No. 6 has a genetically engineered, evidently entirely female, race of mermaids. Typically they pilot underwater lobster-ish mecha as the front line troops of the antagonist forces. While fitting the Cute Monster Girl trope in many ways, they are not your traditional style of mermaid, considering that they have a tendency to bite.
- In Cardcaptor Sakura, the spirit forms of The Watery and The Bubbles cards are mermaids.
- The mermaids in A Centaur's Life are a subspecies of human, just like angels, longears, satyrs, or centaurs. Like the rest they are mammals evolved from apes and can interbreed. These mermaids are mammalian, with their legs joined into a tail at around knee level, fins on their hips, and a tendency to not wear shirts unless other races are around and would object. Most mermaids live in places that are kept flooded by at least a few feet so they can get around. Anywhere else and they have to be carried or rely on technology.
- In Delicious in Dungeon, there are two types of merfolk. The first is human-type merfolk, which look like traditional mermaids. They can sing enchanting songs to lure adventurers into the water. The other is fish-type merfolk (mermen), which wield tridents and look like fish with human arms. They're more fish than human, though, since they hatch from eggs and spend their juvenile stage looking like regular fish. The two species are apparently unrelated, as a mermaid happily eats a juvenile merman in a side-chapter.
- Digimon Frontier: One of the antagonists, Ranamon
, is a human hybrid fairy digimon with control over water. Despite not having the typical mermaid traits (human upper body and fish-tail), she definitely constitutes being a mermaid. She has many fans among digimon due to her attractive appearance, but this changes when she digivolves into her marginally less attractive, tentacled beast form, Calmaramon. Her benevolent mega form, Ancientmermaimon, is more typical of a mermaid.- Digimon Fusion: The Death Generals and the Seven Kingdoms has Mermaimon who is the Leader of Olegmon's Armies in the Gold Land. She two is more typical of a mermaid.
- Digimon Fusion: The Death Generals and the Seven Kingdoms has Mermaimon who is the Leader of Olegmon's Armies in the Gold Land. She two is more typical of a mermaid
- Sophia and The Mermaid Tribe and The Merman Tribe in Doraemon: Nobita's Great Battle of the Mermaid King are humans from the distant Planet Aquadia, who have adapted to living underwater. Their mermaid powers comes from clothes which turns their lower bodies into fish-tails, and can shift between human and mermaid form via a buckle on their belts. Doraemon and gang notably gains their own mermaid forms when Doraemon uses one of his gadgets to duplicate the technology in Sophia's blouse.
- A chapter/episode of Ghost Sweeper Mikami has the cast investigating a beach hotel, and Yokoshima meets a girl named Namiko, who asks him on a date and turns out to be a mermaid when he accidentally splashes water on her legs. While she was not evil, she was only interested in him because her husband (a very ugly fishman who was terrorizing the hotel) had an affair with an evil spirit who turned out to be behind everything.
- Hekikai No Aion: The mermaids need to consume "psyche", only obtained by killing people with tsunamis or earthquakes. In-universe, they're responsible for the sinking of Atlantis, Mu and the destruction of Pompeii, and they are the primary targets of the protagonist. The youngest of them is able to change into a fully human form to move around on land.
- Hayame from Hell Teacher Nube has it easier than most. Aside from being a very likable goof and a powerful ally, she can regenerate from anything (even being reduced to a desiccated corpse for centuries or cutting out her own liver,) her singing voice can compel anyone in earshot to act out the emotions in her songs, she can change back and forth from mermaid to human at will (though her methods leave something to be desired,) and her flesh and blood can grant hyper-accelerated healing to anyone who consumes them. In her natural form, she's a Cute Monster Girl with webbed hands, long and pointy fins instead of ears, highly-visible gills over her ribcage, and Godiva Hair to cover her bare Non-Mammal Mammaries.
- In Inuyasha the Movie: Fire on the Mystic Island you can see the young hanyou Ai. She has swimming-skins between her fingers and toes, and also ears that look like swim fins. Their abilities in the water are not seen, but they have swum amazingly fast from an island to the mainland.
- Mei Mah / Mei Mer of K.O. Beast changes into a mermaid when wet or when something makes her cry. Her tears become pearls.
- Level E has mermaids with the rather unusual power to detect any attempt to lie to them... by their tongue involuntarily shooting out and stabbing the liar to death. Unfortunately, it doesn't stop them from being sold into sex slavery and pretty much wiped out, because a loophole is found to evade the ability but the mermaids don't realize it.
- The much older Mahou no Mako-chan shares some similarities with Pichi Pichi Pitch, as they are both based loosely on The Little Mermaid. Mako-chan uses a magic pendant to transform and is more of a Cute Witch.
- In a story arc of a Mazinger Z manga, a race of giant Fish People from another dimension called Chip Kamoy attempted to invade Earth. In order to communicate with human beings, they kidnapped a human girl and transformed her into a mermaid: her legs were replaced by a long fish tail, and fins grew from her head. She was definitely good, though, and tried to help The Hero Kouji Kabuto. Unfortunately her "masters" executed her in punishment.
- Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch involves mermaids who follow "The Splash Method"; though it also has elements of The Little Mermaid in there. If a mermaid tells a human her secret she'll turn into sea foam (supposedly; it's never tested, and the manga implies it might be a lie spread to keep up the Masquerade). Additionally, her human form is quite different looking from her mermaid form besides just the obvious lack of tail. The main character also sacrifices her voice — but just her singing voice (she can sing beautifully as a mermaid, not so much as a human). On top of this, they are also Magical Girls with Magic Music.
- A one-shot manga tale by Rumiko Takahashi had a passionate romance between a human boy and a mermaid — which ended as soon as they kissed. (Mermaid breath tasted like rotten fish, and human breath tasted like rotting plants. Yuck both ways.) The mermaids from Takahashi's Mermaid Saga are vastly different than most, as they are monstrous, flesh-eating, and very hard to kill. Eating their flesh has a Million to One Chance (really) of granting immortality — and otherwise kills you, if you're lucky.
- Merman In My Tub has a dorky and androgynous merman named Wakasa, who lives in the bathtub of a human guy named Tatsumi. Not able to survive out of the water for long, most of the episodes take place in the bathroom, where Tatsumi is forced to awkwardly share the tub with him. Later episodes included more characters, including Takasu (a half-octopus merman), Mikuni (a jellyfish) and Maki (a tiny snail-person). The Manga also featured Agari, a shark merman.
- Mero in Monster Musume is a mermaid with webbed fingers, fins instead of ears, gills along the sides of her chest, and a covering of slime so her body doesn't dry out. She's amphibious, able to breathe air so long as it's humid, but needs to use a wheelchair to get around on land, lacking any ability to shapeshift. It's very strongly indicated that the Mermaid Problem would not be a problem if she wanted to mate with a human; in hindsight, the gothic-lolita-style skirt she wears does cover the one part of the body you'd assume there to be a problem...
- The setting has other kinds of merfolk as well; some are based on different types of fish, such as eel mermaids and shark mermaids, while others combine fish and human characteristics in different ways, such as a fish with legs or a woman with an entire fish for a head.
- My Bride is a Mermaid's mermaids demonstrate the Splash method listed above. They can remain in human form as long as they don't get sufficiently wet (which isn't too much.) Nagasumi spends a lot of time drying off Sun just to avoid having her secret discovered by others. Adults grow out of this, and it is possible for younger mermaids to resist the change with limited success if they are disciplined enough. Their songs can cause a variety of status effects. Otherwise nice people, aside from being Yakuza... Also, one of them is the Terminator who can take a Kill Sat to the face without flinching. Yeah... Nagasumi gets in some serious trouble with him due to a severe misunderstanding while drying off his daughter.
- In Negima! Magister Negi Magi, one character, talented swimmer Akira Ookochi, can turn herself into a mermaid for a short time using her Pactio. Sort-of: she gains a fish tail and can teleport through water.
- In One Piece, Mer-people come in two flavors: Merfolk and Fishmen. Fishmen are Fish People that are ten times stronger than humans on land and twenty times under water. Merfolks are The Little Mermaid type. At the age of 30, the tails of mermaids (but not mermen) split and may be used as legs. Even so, they are the fastest swimmers in the world. In both cases, the types of fish they're similar to, and thus their physical features, greatly vary. Merfolk and Fishmen can intermarry, but instead of being hybrids, each child can be either a mermaid/man or a Fish(wo)man.
- Papuwa: Tanno is a cross-dressing fish identified as such by his lipstick and his feminine legs clad appropriately in fishnet stockings.
- Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea: The mermaid equivalents are magical goldfish-sized creatures with protohuman faces and powerful magic who can turn shapeshift if they taste human blood. Oh, and they appear to be the result of breeding between a no-longer-human wizard and the goddess of the ocean.
- Po Po Lo Crois: Luna is a water sprite who can change into a human using a magic golden key (used previously by Narcia to become Kai) in order to walk on land.
- Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Oktavia von Seckendorff, the Mermaid Witch, is an Eldritch Abomination resembling a gigantic mermaid knight, geared with a BFS and throws wheels toward anyone who interrupts her concert. Not only is she a mermaid in appearance, she bears a Whole-Plot Reference to The Little Mermaid. Specifically, her former self, Miki Sayaka, became a magical girl to heal her Love Interest Kyousuke's hand hoping that he'd fall in love with her, but then she learnt the Awful Truth of a Magical Girl is basically a lich, and then Hitomi kicked in and confessed her love toward Kyousuke after Sayaka failed to do so. Unable to confess her feelings to Kyousuke and feeling that she's basically a zombie, Sayaka had gone off the deep end and became the Mermaid Witch. In Rebellion, Oktavia serves as Sayaka's Guardian Entity and she can be summoned at anywhere there is water, including Sayaka's own blood.
- Rave Master has Celia, a very beautiful mermaid who naturally falls in love with Haru, much to Elie's displeasure. Her magic is strong but useless in the absence of water, although she can also use it to give herself a pair of shapely legs to keep up with the gang out of water. She is the younger sister of the Queen of the mermaids, which of course makes her a mermaid princess.
- Bluebell from Reborn! (2004) has a box weapon which turns her into a shonisaurus / human hybrid that resembles a mermaid. However, she doesn't seem to have heard of Seashell Bras, and is instead covered up by her hair (not that there is much to cover up).
- Rental Magica and Rosario + Vampire have both had the dangerous, flesh-eating kind of mermaid. Though Rosario's, true to its style, appeared as a Cute Monster Girl beforehand.
- Satou Kashi no Dangan wa Uchinukenai lampshades this trope when Nagisa remarks on Umino's supposed transformation story: "That's the scenario from The Little Mermaid, isn't it?" It turns out Umino really did get her story from The Little Mermaid and she was lying about being a mermaid.
- In the short horror manga School Mermaid, the mermaids actually look like schoolgirls in bathing suits, with an ever-present creepy smile on their face, the ability to swim through solid matter like it was water, and at top speed at that, only come out at night, and can only make screeching sounds. Oh, and if a human girl who's hunting them is unable to kill and eat a mermaid by sunrise, they'll all rise up, drag her down into the floor, and turn her into a mermaid herself.
- A later chapter reveals that they have the ability to go into some sort of feral mode and develop finned hands, scaly skin, fanged piranha-like mouths and bulging anglerfish eyes, done in response to a girl trying to hunt them that doesn't need to hunt them because the object of their affection already reciprocates.
- Later chapters reveal if a mermaid eats the flesh of the one she loves, she's restored somewhat to humanity, though she retains the speed of a mermaid and a peculiar manner of speaking. (It's confirmed that they will never completely restore their humanity.) If someone takes one of these mermaids to the sea, and chants a different spell, they will turn into the 'classic' mermaid one thinks of, with a fish's tail. If they eat the flesh of this mermaid, it acts as a Fountain of Youth to them.
- There IS a way for a mermaid to be completely restored to humanity. They have to eat the flesh of another mermaid with the letter after their letter.
- Shinkaigyo no Anko-san is a manga all about various mermaids, all based on different sorts of fish and with assorted traits based on the ones they come from. Most obviously, they have fin ears and a lower-body like their type-fish, as well as elaborate hairstyles, but other traits also cross over, including anglerfish with lures on their heads, sharks with serrated fangs and poor vision, pufferfish who can distend their cheeks and who have poisonous skin, eels who secrete slime when nervous, and discus fish who secrete milk when excited. They also live in a world in which they take "Mer-Meds", a medicine that lets them transform their tail into human legs so they can interact with humans. The star of the manga is a cute little anglerfish mermaid and her best friend, a somewhat perverted human girl who's fascinated by mermaids.
- Usamaru Furuya's Short Cuts has a mock poll about mermaids, asking which would you prefer, regular (fish bottom) or reverse (fish top) mermaid. The final "moral" is that people liking regular mermaids is the reason the population is decreasing: Put up with your partner, even if they have a fish face.
- A Sinner of the Deep Sea: The merfolk of this world live in a secluded society deep, deep in the sea. They resemble your classic half-and-half merfolk, human on top and fish on bottom, and can breath both water and air, having gills along their hips that connect to their lungs. They also have a form of bioluminescence, able to make their hair glow, to see in dark places. Being underwater at such depths also makes them very strong.
- In the Slayers anime series, there's a mermaid that's a fish. Literally, just a fish... with tetrapod arms and legs. Not a reverse mermaid. A *whole fish* with legs, arms... oh, and lipstick. There are other merfolk seen in the earlier (1st and 3rd) series; turns out they all look like fish with arms and legs. Their most amusing (and oddly touching) appearance is in a Slayers Try episode: a young fishgirl and the shipwrecked sailor she saved are in love with each other, and use a spell that will allow a fishperson to be with a human if they truly love one another. The spell actually works, and she changes into a beautiful human girl... and he turns into a fishman!
- In the world of Stealth Symphony, merpeople are often captured and sold as slaves, and are perpetually in half-fish form but can live on dry land. One of them, a mermaid named Wavess, was able to break free and, in something of a sadistic revenge, headed a large operation of capturing and selling humans (and other species) as slaves. She likes to sneak in undercover among the groups of captured slaves, building up hope by giving them encouraging words so as to crush it later. Unique to her, she has the ability to control any water that comes into contact with her blood.
- Totsugami: The mermaid totsugami looks like a traditional mermaid but instead of swimming through water, it swims through air. Later on, it's revealed that the mermaids true body was a shrunken mummy that belonged to the school's biology preparations room.
- The sea people from Umi Monogatari resemble humans exactly (not counting Pointy Ears, which nobody seems to notice) except for the need to breathe underwater, though they also have magic rings that can solve that problem. They also tend toward skimpier clothing than most humans, something that is noticed when they go on land.
- In Vampire Princess Miyu, Rima Minami seems to be the typical mermaid with fish tail and able to breathe underwater kept into a fish tank by her father. The twist is that said dad is a Shinma (and her mom is said to have been a normal mermaid), and Rima also has a twin sister named Mari who does not have anything mermaid-ish, but shares a Psychic Link with Rima that lets the captive mermaid-Shinma girl see the outside world.
- Zekkyou Gakkyuu features a story about mermaids living in a school pool who take only the beautiful to their land to make them even moreso. The mermaid is real, but it's actually a linked chain of animate drowned corpses that kills girls and adds their bodies to itself.
