The Best Mystery Donghua

Key Takeaways

• Uncommon mystery donghua offer fresh unique experiences, standing out from traditional martial arts/cultivation tropes.
• Chinese donghua like
  The Island of Siliang
  and
  Drowning Sorrows in Raging Fire
  blend genres for engaging stories.
• Shows like
  Twin Spirit Detectives
  and
  Die Now
  provide intriguing takes on horror and chaos, making them fascinating to watch.

Chinese donghua are usually characterized by a very heavy incorporation of traditional martial arts and/or cultivation tropes. This isn’t inherently a bad thing, since it does make donghua stand out from other types of animation, but it does become redundant after some time. Because of this, the rarer tropes that do make their way into donghua tend to stand out as truly fresh and distinct.

Take mystery donghua, for example. They’re pretty uncommon, but the industry has produced some fantastic and popular shows that perfectly capture the essence of the “enigmatic thriller” trope that the mainstream media seems to adore. Throw in a few donghua-specific twists, and these shows manage to create a unique and out-of-the-ordinary experience that really works.

7 The Island Of Siliang

Cultivation Donghua With A Touch Of Mystery And A Very Hardcore Female Lead

The Island of Siliang is an action-fantasy donghua that’s right on brand with what donghua are. It obviously has martial arts and cultivation, but also has a lot of mythology and supernatural tropes — and also stands out by weaving in a strong element of mystery. What truly sets it apart is its hardcore female lead, Tu Li, who easily outshines many male counterparts in similar stories.

The story dives deep into divinity and mythology and explores the idea that even the gods aren’t flawless. They make mistakes, lose their way, and can fall prey to corruption and immorality. However, in this world, doing so earns them a life sentence on a mysterious island that is designed to keep them contained for eternity, strip away their power, and eventually end their existence. Tu Li, the mortal protagonist, finds herself trapped on this isolated island and has to navigate the chaos of these fallen immortals while trying to find a way off of it.

6 Drowning Sorrows In Raging Fire

Has A Premise Slightly Reminiscent Of Psycho-Pass Or X-Men

Sci-fi blended with supernatural elements, mystery, and action always makes for an exciting combination, and Drowning Sorrows in Raging Fire is a great example. It covers all three of these genres and comes up with a very distinct ‘mystery-heavy’ premise. It also helps that the show is completely set around a special unit in the police force and is primarily built on solving cases — kind of like Psycho-Pass.

The premise of Drowning Sorrows in Raging Fire revolves around a special force called the Deviant Control Office tasked with monitoring individuals with “special abilities.” It’s supposed to prevent these individuals from acting up and causing disruption in the lives of normal people for the sake of more power. Things take an intriguing turn when a newly appointed member of the team is handed the responsibility of dealing with a thousand-year-old man who not only claims to be an emperor but insists on being treated as such.

5 Aiyou’s Secret Room

Escape Room With A More Existential Twist

For fans of escape rooms and high-stakes scenarios that steer clear of overly dramatic outcomes, Aiyou’s Secret Room is the donghua to opt for. It’s a romance mystery thriller that creates a perfect balance between its tropes without the themes becoming redundant. The best part is, despite its very unusual premise, the show keeps a consistent format of ‘mystery, conflict build-up, and resolution’ that keeps the audience engaged throughout.

The story revolves around two office workers who decide to try their luck in the town’s notoriously challenging escape room, run by someone named Xu Aiyou. Surprisingly enough, the escape room isn’t too difficult, and the two manage to solve it pretty quickly. However, the unsettling — and downright terrifying — events that follow afterward lead them to dig a little deeper into the owner and her past.

4 Twin Spirit Detectives

Paranormal Investigators Who Get Uno Reversed

Horror stories with unwanted ghost guests haunting a particular character is one thing, but horror where the main characters professionally identify as paranormal investigators and actively go out to look for trouble is an entirely different ball game. Twin Spirit Detectives is a donghua revolving around a set of twins who do exactly that.

Sun Xiaotu and Sun Xiaohu are a pair of gutsy twins who aren’t fazed by anything pertaining to their jobs as ghostbusters/paranormal investigators. However, in one of their seemingly routine cases surrounding another pair of twins, they realize how removed from reality they actually are when the haunting part of their job somehow backfires on them.

3 The Founder Of Diabolism

Flawed Main Character On The Path To Redemption — Maybe?

The Founder of Diabolism is a cultivation donghua with shounen-ai elements that also delivers a hefty dose of dark mystery and fantasy. Unlike other cultivation stories, this one starts with the main character being a rather terrible person.

The main character, Wei Wuxian, takes the forbidden cultivation path — widely feared for its demonic and evil reputation — instead of sticking to the usual “good guy” route. He ends up becoming almost invincible because of it, and is a horrendous person who feeds off of the terror he instills in his enemies. Naturally, this doesn’t end well for him, as he’s eventually defeated by a rival clan and completely wiped out; but that’s just the beginning. Wei Wuxian gets reincarnated into the body of someone equally eccentric and is reluctantly dragged into solving the mysteries of his existence alongside an old classmate.

2 Uncharted Walker

Psychological Survival On An Isolated Island

Survival tropes, where characters with different backgrounds and personalities are stranded on a remote island and are forced to cooperate to get home, are not only uncommon in donghua but in animation in general. Uncharted Walker takes this classic survival setup and adds its own dark twist to it involving inner demons and interpersonal relationships between the characters that get darker by the minute.

The show follows two groups of people who are isolated on a strangely malicious island. Although these people do not get along and are starkly different from one another, they have to put aside their differences and work together in order to survive the very real horror brewing in the darkness of this island.

This donghua touches on some mature themes and should be approached with caution.

1 Die Now

Underground Conspiracies Rendered True

Die Now is a donghua that gets its mystery label not because it’s about solving clear-cut cases or dealing with ambiguous conflicts, but because of its sheer chaos. It’s all over the place — no clear conflict, no tidy resolutions, and no clean framework — and that’s exactly what makes it so fascinating.

It has a completely unhinged premise that starts off pretty tame — with a series of murders around the main character. During all the chaos, his girlfriend goes missing, which prompts him to start his own investigation. This leads him to a bizarre and sinister gaming community that hosts high-stakes events — where the stakes are literally life or death. The deeper he digs, the more he realizes there’s something much bigger and far more malevolent brewing behind the scenes.