10 One-Eyed Anime Characters Who Truly Lost an Eye

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Midari Ikishima one-eyed anime character with a medical eyepatch in Kakegurui
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There is something unforgettable about a character who is down to one eye. Not a scar. Not a fashion patch. An eye that is truly gone.

This is my ranking of the best one-eyed anime characters, counting down to my number one pick.

These characters span just about every anime genre, from bleak horror to over-the-top action.

Let me count them down.

Top 10 One-Eyed Anime Characters Who Truly Lost an Eye

Minene Uryu (Mirai Nikki)

Minene Uryu one-eyed anime character with an eyepatch in Mirai Nikki

Minene is the chaotic bomber of Mirai Nikki, a diary holder who despises religion and blows things up first and asks questions never. She starts the series with both eyes, which makes the patch land even harder later.

  • The Ninth Diary Holder, a terrorist with a soft side she hides well
  • Wields the Escape Diary, which makes her nearly impossible to pin down
  • Loses her left eye partway through the survival game
  • Wears a patch over a glass eye and keeps right on fighting
How They Lost It: Minene is blinded in one eye during a vicious fight, and then a cult enforcer named Yomotsu removes her left eye entirely while she is his prisoner. She later has a glass eye fitted but keeps the patch on. You can read the play-by-play on the Future Diary wiki.

Valmet (Jormungand)

Valmet one-eyed anime character with a white eyepatch in Jormungand

Valmet is a former Finnish soldier turned bodyguard on Koko’s arms-dealing crew in Jormungand. She is frightening with a knife and fiercely devoted to her boss.

  • An ex Rapid Deployment Force officer with elite close-combat skills
  • Lost her right eye years before the series begins
  • Wears a white patch over the empty socket
  • Calm and cheerful, right up until you threaten Koko
How They Lost It: Valmet’s peacekeeping platoon was wiped out by a single attacker wielding pistols rigged with blades. She was the lone survivor, and she lost her right eye in the massacre, which is why parts of the world still make her uneasy. More on the Jormungand wiki.

Chihiro Shindou (ef: A Tale of Memories)

Chihiro Shindou one-eyed anime character with a paper eyepatch in ef A Tale of Memories

Chihiro is a gentle girl who dreams of writing a novel, and she carries two heavy wounds at once. She lost an eye, and she cannot hold on to new memories.

  • A soft-spoken aspiring novelist
  • Lost her left eye in a car accident at the age of twelve
  • Lives with a memory that resets after about thirteen hours
  • Keeps a detailed diary to hold her days together
How They Lost It: The same car crash that took Chihiro’s left eye also damaged her brain, leaving her with anterograde amnesia. When doctors tried to fit a prosthetic, she would wake up in a panic and tear it out, so she settled on a paper patch she can replace daily. Her missing eye is the smaller of her two wounds, which is what makes her story hit so hard. Background on the ef wiki.

Midari Ikishima (Kakegurui)

Midari Ikishima one-eyed anime character with a medical eyepatch in Kakegurui

Midari is the most unsettling name on this list, and it is not close. A compulsive gambler at an elite academy, she chases danger the way other students chase money.

  • A former student council member hooked on life-or-death bets
  • Missing her left eye, hidden under a plain medical patch
  • Only feels alive when a wager could get her killed
  • Fixated on the series heroine, Yumeko
How They Lost It: After losing a gamble to the student council president, Midari took a pen and put out her own left eye. It is a hard scene to sit through, and it tells you exactly how far she is willing to go. Confirmed on the Kakegurui wiki.

Yagyuu Kyuubei (Gintama)

Yagyuu Kyuubei one-eyed anime character with an eyepatch over her lost left eye in Gintama

Kyuubei is a master swordfighter of the Yagyuu clan in the comedy Gintama, raised from childhood as the family heir. The patch over her left eye ties back to an old wound and a debt of loyalty.

  • A deadpan samurai with a soft spot for close friends
  • Raised as a male heir under the strict Yagyuu code
  • Lost her left eye protecting a childhood friend
  • Torn between family tradition and being herself
How They Lost It: As a child, Kyuubei stepped in when debt collectors were abusing her friend Otae Shimura, and her left eye was destroyed in the fight. A guilt-stricken Otae swore she would become Kyuubei’s new left eye, and that promise shapes the rest of her story. Sourced from the Gintama wiki.

Najenda (Akame ga Kill!)

Najenda one-eyed anime character with a black eyepatch and prosthetic arm in Akame ga Kill

Najenda is the steely, silver-haired leader of the assassin group Night Raid, a former Empire general who turned on a corrupt regime.

  • A level-headed commander with a fondness for bad puns
  • Lost her right eye, and her right arm, in one brutal defeat
  • Fights on with a patch and a mechanical arm
  • Leads from the front of a doomed rebellion
How They Lost It: Najenda was blindsided and badly beaten while trying to defect to the Revolutionary Army, losing her right eye and her right arm at the same time. She came back with a prosthetic arm, an eyepatch, and a cold resolve to tear the Empire down. See the Akame ga Kill wiki.

Mei Misaki (Another)

Mei Misaki one-eyed anime character with a prosthetic doll eye behind an eyepatch in Another

Mei is the quiet, eerie heart of the horror anime Another. Her classmates act as though she does not exist, and she drifts through the story with a calm that unsettles more than any scream.

  • The mysterious “extra” student at the center of a deadly class curse
  • Her patch hides a prosthetic doll’s eye, pale and off-color
  • Claims the false eye lets her see things others cannot
  • Soft-spoken, lonely, and quietly brave
How They Lost It: Mei lost her real left eye to an illness when she was four. Her mother, who runs a doll shop, crafted her a glass doll’s eye to replace it, deliberately in a different color. Mei says that eye can see “the color of death,” which is why she keeps it covered. More in the Another wiki.

Himeno (Chainsaw Man)

Himeno one-eyed anime character wearing an eyepatch in Chainsaw Man

Himeno is a seasoned Public Safety Devil Hunter and Aki Hayakawa’s partner in Chainsaw Man. She is easygoing, a little reckless, and the missing eye behind her patch is the price she paid to get stronger.

  • A veteran devil hunter with a laid-back, hard-drinking streak
  • Gave up an eye for good in a devil contract
  • Fights using power borrowed from a devil
  • Fiercely protective of the people she works with
How They Lost It: In Chainsaw Man, a devil’s power always costs you something. Himeno handed over her right eye to contract the Ghost Devil, which lets her summon and control its invisible arm. The eye never comes back, and the price only climbs from there. Verified through Wikipedia.

Erza Scarlet (Fairy Tail)

Erza Scarlet one-eyed anime character with an artificial right eye in Fairy Tail

Erza, the Queen of the Fairies, is one of the most beloved mages in Fairy Tail. What a lot of fans forget is that her right eye is not real.

  • An S-Class mage famous for her armor and her swordplay
  • Lost her right eye as an enslaved child
  • Wears a lifelike artificial eye rather than a patch
  • Carries the trauma of the Tower of Heaven with her
How They Lost It: As a child slave building the Tower of Heaven, Erza lost her right eye as punishment for a failed escape attempt. After she joined Fairy Tail, the healer Porlyusica gave her an artificial eye. For a long time she could only cry from her remaining eye, which is one of the quietest and saddest details in the whole series. History on Wikipedia.

Guts (Berserk)

Guts one-eyed anime character with a missing right eye in Berserk

My number one is not up for debate. Guts, the Black Swordsman of Berserk, is the definitive one-eyed character in all of anime and manga, and his loss is the stuff of legend.

  • A hulking mercenary who swings a sword the size of a slab
  • Missing his right eye and his left arm
  • Hunts demons across a cursed world with a prosthetic cannon-arm
  • The blueprint for countless brooding one-eyed warriors since
How They Lost It: Guts lost his right eye and his left arm during the Eclipse, the horrifying betrayal that ended the Golden Age. Pinned and forced to watch his comrades slaughtered, he had his right eye gouged out by a demon while his transformed former leader looked on. He rebuilt himself around revenge, and he never looked back. The full account is on Wikipedia.

A Few One-Eyed Anime Facts I Like

A handful of extras on the missing-eye life:

  • In real life, an eyepatch is usually about healing, not loss. It rests an injured eye, or coaxes a “lazy eye,” known medically as amblyopia, back to strength.
  • Anime leans hard on the eyes for emotion, so much so that the oversized anime eye reads as a window to the soul. Take one away and you instantly signal loss, and a story worth telling.
  • The classic pirate eyepatch did not always mean a missing eye. One old theory says sailors wore one to keep an eye dark-adapted for going below deck. It has never been proven, but I love it as an idea.

One-Eyed Anime Characters at a Glance

Every character here is truly missing an eye. If you only came for the quick answer, this is it.

Rank Character Series Missing eye How it was lost
1 Guts Berserk Right Gouged out during the Eclipse
2 Erza Scarlet Fairy Tail Right Lost as a child slave, now artificial
3 Himeno Chainsaw Man Right Traded to the Ghost Devil
4 Mei Misaki Another Left Lost to illness at four, doll’s eye
5 Najenda Akame ga Kill! Right Lost in battle, along with her arm
6 Yagyuu Kyuubei Gintama Left Destroyed protecting Otae as a child
7 Midari Ikishima Kakegurui Left Put out with a pen after a lost bet
8 Chihiro Shindou ef: A Tale of Memories Left Lost in a car crash at twelve
9 Valmet Jormungand Right Lost when her platoon was massacred
10 Minene Uryu Mirai Nikki Left Removed during the survival game

That is my fact-checked countdown of the greatest one-eyed anime characters, every one of them truly missing an eye.

Who would you put at number one, and did any of these stories catch you off guard?

Let me know in the comments.