The Most Disturbing Animated Nude Scenes
The following article contains extensive discussion of sexual assault and other sexual imagery.
Before you ask: this is not a list of scenes from hentai. We get it; when seeing a headline about disturbing animated nude scenes, some people's minds are immediately going to jump to visions of anime girls having carnal encounters with tentacled monsters. Cataloguing enough hentai to come up with a definitive list of the most disturbing scenes, however, frankly sounds dangerous to one's mental health. There's just too much of it. Plus, Looper is not a adult video site.
Instead, this is a list showcasing examples of artistic but disturbing nudity in non-pornographic animated films and television series. Animation has often been thought of as a medium for children's entertainment — which more often than not won't be allowed to feature any graphic nudity — or for wacky adult comedies, where the use of nudity is usually too silly to really be disturbing. Many of the examples on this list buck these generalizations, demonstrating the potential animation has for seriously exploring extremely upsetting subject matter — though it also contains some wacky comedies that just went too far, and one ostensible children's show that no child should ever be allowed to watch.
Belladonna of Sadness: The rape of Jeanne
A studio-bankrupting flop in its original 1973 release that has since gone on to be reevaluated as a cult classic, "Belladonna of Sadness" was the final and most experimental film in Eiichi Yamamoto's adults-only "Animerama" trilogy. This psychedelic treatise on sex magic and medieval misogyny is not what you'd expect from the team that made the original "Astro Boy" and "Kimba the White Lion." More or less the whole film has a disturbing tone, but its most nightmarish imagery comes right in the first 10 minutes, when the heroine Jeanne is subjected to "prima nocta" by the local baron and his men on her wedding night.
Much of "Belladonna of Sadness" is composed of lavishly painted but barely animated still images, so it's all the more startling and upsetting when one of the first pieces of fluid animation in the whole movie shows the naked Jeanne ripped in two from her legs to her head, red bat-like figures forming out of her blood. It's a terrifying illustration of a traumatic experience — after that, you don't question why Jeanne would sell her soul to the devil in exchange for gaining some control over her life.
The Boondocks: The uncensored Health Inspector
With its casual usage of the N-word, the extreme self-loathing racism of Uncle Ruckus, and multiple episodes pulled from the air for upsetting Tyler Perry and BET execs, "The Boondocks" was no stranger to controversy. While a lot of the Adult Swim series' edgier satire has held up surprisingly well, one area where the show arguably went too far was in the way it continually made light of prison rape.
Tom DuBois' extreme fear of being raped in prison was first introduced in the episode "A Date With the Health Inspector," the opening scene of which depicts a nightmare wherein Tom is attacked in a prison shower by a man calling himself "the Health Inspector." When broadcast on TV, the Health Inspector's lower half was pixelated, implying his enormous girth as a visual gag. On the uncensored DVD release, you can see that the animators actually drew the rapist's three-foot-long penis. Uncensoring the image pushes the scene out of what was already extremely dark comedic territory into flat-out, deeply unsettling horror.
The End of Evangelion: The opening scene
"The End of Evangelion," the 1997 movie follow-up to the "Neon Genesis Evangelion" TV anime, has no shortage of graphic and disturbing imagery. Notably, mecha pilot Rei spends half the movie naked, giant, and slowly melting as she kills the entire planet — but "half the movie" doesn't count as a scene, so if we must single out a single short sequence of nudity as the most upsetting in the film, we're going to go with the opening scene.
At the start of the film, Asuka is comatose in the hospital. Shinji, traumatized over killing Kaworu in Episode 24 of the TV series, is visiting her and desperately pleading for her to wake up. Shinji shakes Asuka so hard that her breasts are exposed. After a series of cutaways to the ceiling, Asuka's vital monitors, her IV drip, and the locked door, we're subjected to the image of Shinji's hand in which it's clear that he's pleasured himself. The more literal Netflix translation has Shinji follow up masturbating to his comatose co-worker by saying, "I'm the lowest of the low," while the Manga Entertainment release uses the blunter localization of "I'm so f***ed up." The hospital sequence sets the scene for a "f***ed up" film that's going to put both its characters and its audience through the wringer.
Fritz the Cat: The Nazis chain up Harriet
1972's "Fritz the Cat," directed by Ralph Bakshi and based on the comics by Robert Crumb, was the first X-rated American animated film. Filled with sex, drugs, violence, racial stereotypes, bodily functions, and social commentary on the '60s counterculture, it was designed to shock and offend, and multiple scenes from the film — the bathroom orgy interrupted by the pig cops, Fritz's escapades with a hyper-sexualized Black crow — could easily rank on this list just for how graphic they get.
The scene that makes this list, however, is the build-up to the rare scene that's so horrific that the animators won't show it to us. We are mercifully spared the sight of the horse Harriet being gang-raped by neo-Nazi terrorists, but the build-up to that off-screen moment, with Harriet being beaten and chained up, her breasts exposed while bleeding profusely, is hard enough to watch as is. Adding further, perhaps less intentional discomfort is the homophobic language used by the one sympathetic character in the scene. If you can believe it, this story was even more upsetting in Crumb's comic (movie-Fritz fortunately does not join the rapists, unlike his counterpart on the page).
Love Death + Robots: Beyond the Aquila Rift
When taken out of context, the sex scene in the "Love Death + Robots" episode "Beyond the Aquila Rift" doesn't look like something that should be on this list. Unless you're getting an "uncanny valley" effect from the hyperrealistic CGI, what could possibly be disturbing about enthusiastic, consensual sex between two attractive people who love each other? The naked post-coital conversation gets a bit sadder, with Thom learning he'll be unable to return home to Earth after his spaceship went off-course, but hey, at least he's reunited with his girlfriend Greta, right?
Wrong. Like many episodes of the Netflix sci-fi anthology series, there's a twist ending, and it's one that paints the sex scene in a much more horrifying light. Greta isn't real — nor is anything else Thom is experiencing. He's been placed in a Matrix-like simulation by the real "Greta," a spider alien. That the spider might have constructed this simulation out of a genuine sense of caring for the "lost souls" who wind up in her web doesn't make the reveal any less unnerving. After learning the truth, Thom is once again returned to the start of his simulation, implying he'll be caught in this cycle until he eventually dies.
Miss Machiko: The most inappropriate kids' show
Similar to our exclusion of hentai, this survey has mostly avoided listing examples from ecchi (sexually charged but non-pornographic) TV anime simply because there's way too much of it to thoroughly assess. But representing the genre is the 1981-1983 series "Miss Machiko," both because it was among the first of its type and because of its inappropriately young target audience.
Whereas most pervy anime these days airs late at night for adult viewers, "Miss Machiko" was broadcast in an early primetime "family" slot at 7:30 p.m. A show about a middle school teacher so beautiful that all of her male students just have to spend as much time as they can finding ways to sexually harass her — which she just shrugs off with minor embarrassment — doesn't seem like anything you'd want kids watching, but somehow this lasted 95 episodes.
To get a taste of the uncomfortable content in the series, the very first episode includes a scene where one of the students spies on Miss Machiko naked in the shower; the rest of the episode involves various "pranks" to try to get a peek at her panties.
Moral Orel: Alone
Adult Swim's official plot description of "Alone," the fourth episode of the third season of "Moral Orel," simply reads, "The final nail in the show's coffin." Adult Swim creative director Mike Lazzo encouraged "Moral Orel" creator Dino Stamatopolous to explore darker material in his stop-motion satire of Christian fundamentalism, but Season 3, and "Alone" in particular, was apparently too dark for Lazzo's taste and got the show canceled.
"Alone" is divided into three vignettes about three of Moralton's women and their struggles with bodily autonomy. The nudity occurs in the segment about the teacher Ms. Sculptham, and while it's less graphic than other entries on this list by virtue of its doll-like nature, the context is disturbing. In her apartment, Ms. Sculptham strips down after giving herself a coat hanger abortion. News clippings she's put up around her bathroom reveal how she lured in the town rapist, Mr. Creepler ... and her physical response to reading these articles reveals that she's turned on by the memory of the horrific event, which was her only sexual experience whatsoever.
Ninja Scroll: Sucking in poison
Yoshiaki Kawajiri's 1993 film "Ninja Scroll" is a work of strikingly stylized excess, filled with graphic violence and many scenes of female nudity. The most disturbing nude scene by far is when Tessai, one of the Eight Devils of Kimon who has the ability to turn his skin to stone, sexually assaults Kagero of the Mochizuki Kōga. Tessai is gigantic, and the way his mouth envelops Kagero's various body parts as he sucks on them is incredibly disgusting.
There's some cathartic relief, at least, to see Tessai killed shortly after. The film's stoic hero Jubei delivers the killing blow in a big fight scene, but it's later revealed that Tessai was going to die even if Jubei never showed up. Kagero's skin is poison, and simply touching her flesh, let alone having sex, is enough to kill anyone. The one narratively convenient exception to this rule: because Jubei himself has been infected with a different poison, having sex with Kagero will actually cure him rather than kill.
Perfect Blue: Filming Double Bind
The late great Satoshi Kon was a master at using animation to blur the line between what's meant to be real and what's just happening in his characters' heads. His 1997 directorial feature debut, "Perfect Blue," utilized this skill for the purposes of horror, and the result is one of the scariest anime films ever made.
The film's main character, Mima, is a retired pop idol who's trying to build a career as an actress, taking on more mature roles that challenge her former squeaky-clean public image. Her first major part is portraying a rape victim on a detective show titled "Double Bind." Even if it's just acting, the graphically simulated assault feels all too real for Mima, who begins to have psychotic breaks following the shoot. There's an actual attempted rape sequence later in the movie that's also extremely disturbing, but the way the "Double Bind" sequence forces the viewer to question what's real, as well as how it highlights the strain actors can feel when performing such material, makes it particularly noteworthy.
Pink Floyd The Wall: The Trial
Alan Parker's 1982 film, "Pink Floyd The Wall," based on Pink Floyd's 1979 album, mixes live-action and animation to tell the story of a traumatized rock star named Pink (Bob Geldof) and the metaphorical "wall" he puts up to shield himself from the world. In the rock opera's penultimate song, "The Trial," Pink is charged with the crime of "showing feelings of an almost human nature" and confronted by various figures from his life, facing the ultimate sentence of his wall needing to be torn down.
The film illustrates the number with an animated sequence designed by Gerald Scarfe for maximum body horror. The schoolmaster is puppeteered and beaten by his naked mother. Pink's wife shifts back and forth between a scorpion creature and a distorted nude figure, while his mom emerges from a talking vagina. The judge is literally a giant ass, with his mouth appearing where the opening would be and his chin testicular enough that the above image required some judicious cropping. When the judge announces Pink's sentence, his butt-mouth barfs up a sea of limbs and phallic objects for maximum grossness.
Ren and Stimpy Adult Party Cartoon: Naked Beach Frenzy
"Ren and Stimpy Adult Party Cartoon" is widely considered to be one of the worst cartoons ever made, abandoning any of the restraint that made the original Nickelodeon run of "Ren and Stimpy" feel fun and subversive in favor of a constant stream of as much mean-spirited gross-out crudity as imaginable. The episode "Naked Beach Frenzy," which never even aired on TV, casts the dog and cat duo as perverts ogling big-busted girls on the beach — and in one sequence truly cringeworthy to describe, squirting "shampoo" out of their crotches while the girls shower.
The content of the episode is gross and sexist enough, but what really pushes this episode into "most disturbing" territory is the circumstances in which it was made. One of the episode's artists, Katie Rice, voiced the "Soap Girl" character who gets fondled by Ren. Ren, of course, was voiced by and widely seen as a stand-in for series creator John Kricfalusi — who was grooming and abusing Rice at the time. Even before the full details of Kricfalusi's misconduct were revealed, the introduction that autoplays with "Naked Beach Frenzy" on the "Ren and Stimpy: The Lost Episodes" DVD set — where Kricfalusi talks about attending Rice's 15th birthday party and complains about lesbians not liking sexy girls (?) while Rice stands around uncomfortably — was enough to tell you something was up.
The Wings of Honnêamise: The scene banned in Britain
The 1987 sci-fi feature "Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise," directed by Hiroyuki Yamaga, was the first commercial release from future "Evangelion" studio Gainax — and with its exceptional artwork and world-building, it's a film that would be an unimpeachable classic if not for the scene discussed here. The sequence where astronaut protagonist Shiro Lhadatt attempts to rape his religious friend Riquinni Nonderaiko is one of those scenes that pretty much ruins the movie. It comes out of nowhere, has little bearing on the plot, and the way Riquinni responds afterwards by apologizing for defending herself is pure yikes.
The scene is so extraneous and gratuitous that when the film was released in the U.K. in the '90s, Manga Entertainment — a company infamous for adding explicit language to its anime dubs to get higher BBFC ratings — voluntarily edited the assault from the film in order to get a PG rating. According to "Manga Mania" magazine, BBFC examiner Imtiaz Karim described the censored scene as "a wholly gratuitous sexual assault in the middle of a film which was otherwise a wonderful experience for younger viewers" (via All the Anime). British viewers eventually got to see the uncut film via Anime Unlimited's 2015 Blu-ray release, but with the option to skip over the attempted rape.
If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).