History ADeathInTheLimelight / AnimeAndManga

* The ''Anime/KanColle'' anime adaptation does this with aplomb to Kisaragi. After brief appearances in the first two episodes, Episode 3 is devoted almost entirely to Kisaragi and her SenpaiKohai dynamic with Mutsuki. The episode piles death flag after death flag onto Kisaragi before finally sinking her with a [[LastBreathBullet Last Breath Bomb]].

* The ''Anime/KanColle'' anime adaptation does this with aplomb to Kisaragi. After brief appearances in the first two episodes, Episode 3 is devoted almost entirely to Kisaragi and her SempaiKouhai dynamic with Mutsuki. The episode piles death flag after death flag onto Kisaragi before finally sinking her with a [[LastBreathBullet Last Breath Bomb]].

* ''Manga/PandoraHearts'' does this with a ''lot'' of characters, most notably [[HeroicSacrifice Elliot]] [[TomatoInTheMirror Nightray]]. Subverted with Leo, who was impaled in the middle of his fight with Oz, and lives [[HealingFactor thanks to being a Baskerville]].
** Also subverted with Reim Lunettes and Lily Baskerville, who, after getting a chapter's worth of attention with each other, [[FauxDeath put himself in a death-like state]] after being non-fatally wounded and got shot in the head then recovers respectively.

* ''Anime/DemonSlayerKimetsuNoYaiba'': Rengoku, the Flame Hashira, takes a prominent role in the story during the Mugen Train movie, then dies at the end fighting an extremely powerful demon.

* The ''Anime/KantaiCollection'' anime adaptation does this with aplomb to Kisaragi. After brief appearances in the first two episodes, Episode 3 is devoted almost entirely to Kisaragi and her SempaiKouhai dynamic with Mutsuki. The episode piles death flag after death flag onto Kisaragi before finally sinking her with a [[LastBreathBullet Last Breath Bomb]].

** Toji Suzuhara gets two episodes devoted to him, before fatefully being inserted into an angelically-possessed EVA, [[DoomMagnet meaning that Shinji has to kill his new best friend]]. [[spoiler: [[DownplayedTrope Toji survives in the anime, though he loses a leg]]; [[DarkerAndEdgier he dies in the manga, though, which was created long after the tv anime]]]].

* Although L is a major character in ''Manga/DeathNote'', his death episode is the first glimpse the viewer gets of his childhood. The episode also focuses more on his thoughts, feelings and doubts than ever, whereas before he was single-mindedly devoted to exposing Kira. You just know something bad is about to happen!
** Subverted in Matsuda's eponymous limelight episode. After being suspecting that the Yotsuba Group will kill him for knowing too much, the rest of the Kira Investigators order him to 'kill himself' before he is killed. Dramatic music plays as he does a hand stand on a balcony while 'accidently' falling, only for him to fake his death by rebounding off a matress on a lower floor's balcony into the lower floor, while an actor plays the roll of Matsuda's corpse that supposedly hit the ground.