History TraumaCongaLine / AnimeAndManga

* Ian from ''Manga/NotSimple''. Everything, everywhere, goes wrong. And then [[spoiler:he dies.]]

* [[spoiler:Oz Vessalius]] from PandoraHearts has played the part of a CheerfulChild StepfordSmiler since he was young, but, despite being [[BrokenHero incredibly broken]], he has been able to find some happiness in the present. That is, until he's [[spoiler:[[EtTuBrute betrayed by Jack]], his trusted mentor figure, after which his world comes down around him. Along with the trauma he experienced at the hands of his [[ParentalAbandonment cold and dismissive father]], he then learns that his father's hatred of him may be justified, as it is revealed that he [[TomatoInTheMirror is not the person he thought he was]] but rather an existence dangerous to nearly everybody around him. Consequently, he experiences an [[LossOfIdentity identity crisis]] and goes into a HeroicBSOD after being shot by his best friend. Just as he's getting better after a reconciliation with said best friend, and even better after pulling off a ShutUpHannibal at Jack and calling back Alice to the world, his own beloved uncle gets stabbed by one of his friends, who turns out to be taken over by her SplitPersonality, who is also one of the crazier Baskervilles they know, and said uncle pulls a YouShallNotPass on the pursuing Baskervilles and lets Oz and co. go without him]]. It remains to be seen how he'll come out of it all in the end.

** Trafalgar Law's childhood : [[spoiler: doomed to an early death by poisoning along with all the people of his country, his father, mother, sister and friends finally die during the genocide committed by foreign nations to prevent a pandemic that would have never occurred anyway as they were poisoned, not contagious. After he managed to escape by hiding among the corpses, pretty much snapped.]] It got worse, too. [[spoiler: He joined the Donquixote Pirates as a preteen in order to hurt the world as much as he could before he died from the poison. When Doflamingo's brother and right hand, Corazon, realized Law was a D., he knew Law wouldn't be safe around Doflamingo and kidnapped him to look for a cure for his disease. Corazon dragged Law through multiple hospitals...who assumed Law was a plague carrier and called the poor kid a monster to his face. Corazon managed to find the Op-Op Fruit, which Law could use to cue himself...and died at Doflamingo's hands so Law could escape.]] All before Law's fourteenth birthday.

** Brook. Just Brook. [[spoiler: His ship got shattered, his crew (and thus family and best friends) died, then he died, but [[TheUndead came back]], just to be stuck all alone for who knows how long on a ghost ship since he can't swim. He also got his shadow stolen which would instantly destroy him, if he is in sunlight. He outright states that if it weren't for the devil's fruit, he [[DrivenToSuicide would have killed himself long ago]].]]

* ''Manga/Unico'' suffers heavily from this, in both the manga and the anime. To summarize: he is a ''baby unicorn'' that simply had the ability to make others happy. The JerkassGods hated that he was popular because of that, so they send the West Wind to kidnap him and exile him to the end of the world where he would be utterly alone. She feels pity for him though and brings him somewhere else. Too bad that Unico - as is his nature - makes friends to the miserable creatures and unlucky people he meets, [[NiceJobBreakingItHero constantly making the gods notice that he is still around]]. They send the Night Wind to take care of Unico which leads to the West Wind constantly appearing before Unico and taking him somewhere else, forcing him to abandon the friends he made (some who are implied to [[BreakTheCutie break]] from being left [[IJustWantToHaveFriends by the one friend they had]]). While he doesn't experience any direct mental harm since the West Wind constantly forced LaserGuidedAmnesia on him, he always watches his friends disappear beneath him with tearful eyes and whenever he is left alone at a new place and forgets everything, he is scared and soon calls out for someone desperately. The manga ends with the DownerEnding that this is literally Unico's destiny that he will never escape from, forever making friends, being forced away from them and then forgetting they ever existed. He is somewhere between type F (since his [[LaserGuidedAmnesia amnesia]] makes him not realize the TraumaCongaLine) and type G and every story - movie or manga - is guaranteed to be a massive TearJerker.

* ''Manga/Unico'' suffers heavily from this, in both the manga and the anime. To summarize: he is a ''baby unicorn'' that simply had the ability to make others happy. The JerkassGods hated that he was popular because of that, so they send the West Wind to kidnap him and exile him to the end of the world where he would be utterly alone. She feels pity for him though and brings him somewhere else. Too bad that Unico - as is his nature - makes friends to the miserable creatures and unlucky people he meets, [[NiceJobBreakingItHero constantly making the gods notice that he is still around]]. They send the Night Wind to take care of Unico which leads to the West Wind constantly appearing before Unico and taking him somewhere else, forcing him to abandon the friends he made (some who are implied to [[BreakTheCutie break]] from being left by the one friend they had). While he doesn't experience any direct mental harm since the West Wind constantly forced LaserGuidedAmnesia on him, he always watches his friends disappear beneath him with tearful eyes and whenever he is left alone at a new place and forgets everything, he is scared and soon calls out for someone desperately.

* ''Manga/Unicosuffers'' heavily from this, in both the manga and the anime. To summarize: he is a ''baby unicorn'' that simply had the ability to make others happy. The JerkassGods hated that he was popular because of that, so they send the West Wind to kidnap him and exile him to the end of the world where he would be utterly alone. She feels pity for him though and brings him somewhere else. Too bad that Unico - as is his nature - makes friends to the miserable creatures and unlucky people he meets, [[NiceJobBreakingItHero constantly making the gods notice that he is still around]]. They send the Night Wind to take care of Unico which leads to the West Wind constantly appearing before Unico and taking him somewhere else, forcing him to abandon the friends he made (some who are implied to [[BreakTheCutie break]] from being left by the one friend they had). While he doesn't experience any direct mental harm since the West Wind constantly forced LaserGuidedAmnesia on him, he always watches his friends disappear beneath him with tearful eyes and whenever he is left alone at a new place and forgets everything, he is scared and soon calls out for someone desperately.

* ''[[Manga/Unico Unico]]'' suffers heavily from this, in both the manga and the anime. To summarize: he is a ''baby unicorn'' that simply had the ability to make others happy. The JerkassGods hated that he was popular because of that, so they send the West Wind to kidnap him and exile him to the end of the world where he would be utterly alone. She feels pity for him though and brings him somewhere else. Too bad that Unico - as is his nature - makes friends to the miserable creatures and unlucky people he meets, [[NiceJobBreakingItHero constantly making the gods notice that he is still around]]. They send the Night Wind to take care of Unico which leads to the West Wind constantly appearing before Unico and taking him somewhere else, forcing him to abandon the friends he made (some who are implied to [[BreakTheCutie break]] from being left by the one friend they had). While he doesn't experience any direct mental harm since the West Wind constantly forced LaserGuidedAmnesia on him, he always watches his friends disappear beneath him with tearful eyes and whenever he is left alone at a new place and forgets everything, he is scared and soon calls out for someone desperately.

* ''Manga/Unico'' suffers heavily from this, in both the manga and the anime. To summarize: he is a ''baby unicorn'' that simply had the ability to make others happy. The JerkassGods hated that he was popular because of that, so they send the West Wind to kidnap him and exile him to the end of the world where he would be utterly alone. She feels pity for him though and brings him somewhere else. Too bad that Unico - as is his nature - makes friends to the miserable creatures and unlucky people he meets, [[NiceJobBreakingItHero constantly making the gods notice that he is still around]]. They send the Night Wind to take care of Unico which leads to the West Wind constantly appearing before Unico and taking him somewhere else, forcing him to abandon the friends he made (some who are implied to [[BreakTheCutie break]] from being left by the one friend they had). While he doesn't experience any direct mental harm since the West Wind constantly forced LaserGuidedAmnesia on him, he always watches his friends disappear beneath him with tearful eyes and whenever he is left alone at a new place and forgets everything, he is scared and soon calls out for someone desperately.

* ''Manga/{{Bleach}}'': Ichigo knows his need to protect can be exploited by the enemy and by the Lost Agent Arc was so GenreSavvy about this that he was starting to find it annoying. That's when it's revealed that the ArcVillain's plan took this ennui into account. The villain built up trust with Ichigo while tearing down his friends in secret, leaving Ichigo feeling isolated and alone in a world gone mad, unable to do anything other than fight for the strength to save his friends and family. Once he obtained that strength, the villain stepped forward and promptly stole them. In an instance, Ichigo was bereft of his friends, his family and his power and, quite literally, left with nothing but the clothes on his back, a sword through his chest, and tears pouring down his face at how completely he had failed. Before this arc, it would never have been believable to see Ichigo, a stalwart shounen hero, on his knees crying. This arc made it happen.

** [[spoiler:Trafalgar Law's childhood : doomed to an early death by poisoning along with all the people of his country, his father, mother, sister and friends finally die during the genocide commited by foreigh nations to prevent a pandemy that would have never occured anyway. After he managed to escape hidden among the corpses, he became a totally different kid.]]

* ''{{Kurohime}}'': Zero's past was really horrible.

* Nana from ''Webcomic/NanasEverydayLife''.

* Nana from ''NanasEverydayLife''.

* ''Manga/TokyoGhoul: Poor, poor [[Manga/TokyoGhoul Kaneki Ken]]. Where do we begin? His father died when he was only four, leaving only books to remember him by. His mother, whom he repeatedly refers to as kind and a wonderful person, [[spoiler: beat him as a child]] before working herself to death to support herself, her sister, and her son when Kaneki was ten. After his mother's death, he was sent to live with his aunt, who was verbally and emotionally abusive towards him, excluding him from family meals and instead giving him a meager amount of money to buy his own food. He gets six months or so of happiness after leaving for college, until [[TheChewToy the universe decides he hasn't had enough trauma lately]], and he goes on a date with Kamishiro Rize, who turns out to be a ghoul and tries to kill and eat Kaneki. After [[spoiler: what seems to be]] an accident involving steel beams falling and crushing Rize. To save his life, her organs are transplanted into Kaneki, turning him into a half-ghoul hybrid. ''And all of this is just up to the first episode''. After that, he is tricked into becoming a meal in the Ghoul Restaurant, then forced to fight for his own life and that of three others' because he ''tastes good''. He's then kidnapped by Aogiri and tortured psychologically and physically by having his fingers and toes torn off repeatedly with pliers and a centipede left to crawl around in his ear for ten days straight. [[spoiler: It's loosely implied that he was sexually assaulted as well.]] His defining breaking moment comes when he is forced to choose between killing a mother and a child. He chooses himself to die. His tormentor kills them both. The whole ordeal has such an effect on him that his hair turns white, his nails turn black, and he abandons the subservient ideology he was taught by his mother, instead taking it upon himself to protect everyone he cares about. This mindset leads to him eating ghouls in order to become stronger, taking a serious toll on his sanity; as he fights he's rambling incoherently about his body belonging to him. He ends up accidentally stabbing one of his comrades before coming to his senses and sobbing, apologizing over and over, and going home and [[AngstComa curling up on his bed in a ball of self-loathing for several days]]. [[spoiler: And it all ends with the possibility that Kaneki has injured or killed his best friend and Kaneki being [[CurbStompBattle brutally beaten]] by the CCG's God of Death, stabbed through the abdomen and both of his eyes. The pages of him stumbling around, his sanity slipping, asking if he's going to die, are some of the saddest from the whole manga. He's not dead, but :RE doesn't seem to be treating him much better.]] '''''And all of this happened because the poor kid just wanted to go on a date.'''''

* Poor, poor [[Manga/TokyoGhoul Kaneki Ken]]. Where do we begin? His father died when he was only four, leaving only books to remember him by. His mother, whom he repeatedly refers to as kind and a wonderful person, [[spoiler: beat him as a child]] before working herself to death to support herself, her sister, and her son when Kaneki was ten. After his mother's death, he was sent to live with his aunt, who was verbally and emotionally abusive towards him, excluding him from family meals and instead giving him a meager amount of money to buy his own food. He gets six months or so of happiness after leaving for college, until [[TheChewToy the universe decides he hasn't had enough trauma lately]], and he goes on a date with Kamishiro Rize, who turns out to be a ghoul and tries to kill and eat Kaneki. After [[spoiler: what seems to be]] an accident involving steel beams falling and crushing Rize. To save his life, her organs are transplanted into Kaneki, turning him into a half-ghoul hybrid. ''And all of this is just up to the first episode''. After that, he is tricked into becoming a meal in the Ghoul Restaurant, then forced to fight for his own life and that of three others' because he ''tastes good''. He's then kidnapped by Aogiri and tortured psychologically and physically by having his fingers and toes torn off repeatedly with pliers and a centipede left to crawl around in his ear for ten days straight. [[spoiler: It's loosely implied that he was sexually assaulted as well.]] His defining breaking moment comes when he is forced to choose between killing a mother and a child. He chooses himself to die. His tormentor kills them both. The whole ordeal has such an effect on him that his hair turns white, his nails turn black, and he abandons the subservient ideology he was taught by his mother, instead taking it upon himself to protect everyone he cares about. This mindset leads to him eating ghouls in order to become stronger, taking a serious toll on his sanity; as he fights he's rambling incoherently about his body belonging to him. He ends up accidentally stabbing one of his comrades before coming to his senses and sobbing, apologizing over and over, and going home and [[AngstComa curling up on his bed in a ball of self-loathing for several days]]. [[spoiler: And it all ends with the possibility that Kaneki has injured or killed his best friend and Kaneki being [[CurbStompBattle brutally beaten]] by the CCG's God of Death, stabbed through the abdomen and both of his eyes. The pages of him stumbling around, his sanity slipping, asking if he's going to die, are some of the saddest from the whole manga. He's not dead, but :RE doesn't seem to be treating him much better.]] '''''And all of this happened because the poor kid just wanted to go on a date.'''''

* Poor, poor [[Manga/TokyoGhoul Kaneki Ken]]. Where do we begin? His father died when he was only four, leaving only books to remember him by. His mother, whom he repeatedly refers to as kind and a wonderful person, [[spoiler: beat him as a child]] before working herself to death to support herself, her sister, and her son when Kaneki was ten. After his mother's death, he was sent to live with his aunt, who was verbally and emotionally abusive towards him, excluding him from family meals and instead giving him a meager amount of money to buy his own food. He gets six months or so of happiness after leaving for college, until [[TheChewToy the universe decides he hasn't had enough trauma lately]], and he goes on a date with Kamishiro Rize, who turns out to be a ghoul and tries to kill and eat Kaneki. After [[spoiler: what seems to be]] an accident involving steel beams falling and crushing Rize. To save his life, her organs are transplanted into Kaneki, turning him into a half-ghoul hybrid. ''And all of this is just up to the first episode''. After that, he is tricked into becoming a meal in the Ghoul Restaurant, then forced to fight for his own life and that of three others' because he ''tastes good''. He's then kidnapped by Aogiri and tortured psychologically and physically by having his fingers and toes torn off repeatedly with pliers and a centipede left to crawl around in his ear for ten days straight. [[spoiler: It's loosely implied that he was sexually assaulted as well.]] His defining breaking moment comes when he is forced to choose between killing a mother and a child. He chooses himself to die. His tormentor kills them both. The whole ordeal has such an effect on him that his hair turns white, his nails turn black, and he abandons the subservient ideology he was taught by his mother, instead taking it upon himself to protect everyone he cares about. This mindset leads to him eating ghouls in order to become stronger, taking a serious toll on his sanity; as he fights he's rambling incoherently about his body belonging to him. He ends up accidentally stabbing one of his comrades before coming to his senses and sobbing, apologizing over and over, and going home and [[AngstComa curling up on his bed in a ball of self-loathing for several days]]. [[spoiler: And it all ends with the possibility that Kaneki has injured or killed his best friend and Kaneki being [[CurbStompBattle '''brutally beaten''']] by the CCG's God of Death, stabbed through the abdomen and both of his eyes. The pages of him stumbling around, his sanity slipping, asking if he's going to die, are some of the saddest from the whole manga. He's not dead, but :RE doesn't seem to be treating him much better.]] '''''And all of this happened because the poor kid just wanted to go on a date.'''''

* Poor, poor [[Manga/TokyoGhoul Kaneki Ken]]. Where do we begin? His father died when he was only four, leaving only books to remember him by. His mother, whom he repeatedly refers to as kind and a wonderful person, [[spoiler: beat him as a child]] before working herself to death to support herself, her sister, and her son when Kaneki was ten. After his mother's death, he was sent to live with his aunt, who was verbally and emotionally abusive towards him, excluding him from family meals and instead giving him a meager amount of money to buy his own food. He gets six months or so of happiness after leaving for college, until [[TheChewToy the universe decides he hasn't had enough trauma lately]], and he goes on a date with Kamishiro Rize, who turns out to be a ghoul and tries to kill and eat Kaneki. After [[spoiler: what seems to be]] an accident involving steel beams falling and crushing Rize. To save his life, her organs are transplanted into Kaneki, turning him into a half-ghoul hybrid. ''And all of this is just up to the first episode''. After that, he is tricked into becoming a meal in the Ghoul Restaurant, then forced to fight for his own life and that of three others' because he ''tastes good''. He's then kidnapped by Aogiri and tortured psychologically and physically by having his fingers and toes torn off repeatedly with pliers and a centipede left to crawl around in his ear for ten days straight. [[spoiler: It's loosely implied that he was sexually assaulted as well.]] His defining breaking moment comes when he is forced to choose between killing a mother and a child. He chooses himself to die. His tormentor kills them both. The whole ordeal has such an effect on him that his hair turns white, his nails turn black, and he abandons the subservient ideology he was taught by his mother, instead taking it upon himself to protect everyone he cares about. This mindset leads to him eating ghouls in order to become stronger, taking a serious toll on his sanity. Watching him ramble incoherently about his body belonging to him is utterly heartbreaking. He ends up accidentally stabbing one of his comrades before coming to his senses and sobbing, apologizing over and over, and going home and [[AngstComa curling up on his bed in a ball of self-loathing for several days]]. [[spoiler: And it all ends with the possibility that Kaneki has injured or killed his best friend and Kaneki being [[CurbStompBattle '''brutally beaten''']] by the CCG's God of Death, stabbed through the abdomen and both of his eyes. The pages of him stumbling around, his sanity slipping, asking if he's going to die, are some of the saddest from the whole manga. He's not dead, but :RE doesn't seem to be treating him much better.]] '''''And all of this happened because the poor kid just wanted to go on a date.'''''

* Poor, poor [[Manga/TokyoGhoul Kaneki Ken]]. Where do we begin? His father died when he was only four, leaving only books to remember him by. His mother, whom he repeatedly refers to as kind and a wonderful person, [[spoiler: beat him as a child]] before working herself to death to support herself, her sister, and her son when Kaneki was ten. After his mother's death, he was sent to live with his aunt, who was verbally and emotionally abusive towards him, excluding him from family meals and instead giving him a meager amount of money to buy his own food. He gets six months or so of happiness after leaving for college, until [[TheChewToy the universe decides he hasn't had enough trauma lately]], and he goes on a date with Kamishiro Rize, who turns out to be a ghoul and tries to kill and eat Kaneki. After [[spoiler: what seems to be]] an accident involving steel beams falling and crushing Rize. To save his life, her organs are transplanted into Kaneki, turning him into a half-ghoul hybrid. ''And all of this is just up to the first episode''. After that, he is tricked into becoming a meal in the Ghoul Restaurant, then forced to fight for his own life and that of three others' because he ''tastes good''. He's then kidnapped by Aogiri and tortured psychologically and physically by having his fingers and toes torn off repeatedly with pliers and a centipede left to crawl around in his ear for ten days straight. [[spoiler: It's loosely implied that he was sexually assaulted as well.]] His defining breaking moment comes when he is forced to choose between killing a mother and a child. He chooses himself to die. His tormentor kills them both. The whole ordeal has such an effect on him that his hair turns white, his nails turn black, and he abandons the subservient ideology he was taught by his mother, instead taking it upon himself to protect everyone he cares about. This mindset leads to him eating ghouls in order to become stronger, taking a serious toll on his sanity. Watching him ramble incoherently about his body belonging to him is utterly heartbreaking. He ends up accidentally stabbing one of his comrades before coming to his senses and sobbing, apologizing over and over, and going home and [[AngstComa curling up on his bed in a ball of self-loathing for several days]]. [[spoiler: And it all ends with the possibility that Kaneki has injured or killed his best friend and Kaneki being [[CurbStompBattle '''brutally beaten''']] by the CCG's God of Death, stabbed through the abdomen and both of his eyes. The pages of him stumbling around, his sanity slipping, and asking if he's going to die, are some of the saddest from the whole manga. He's not dead, but :RE doesn't seem to be treating him much better.]] '''''And all of this happened because the poor kid just wanted to go on a date.'''''

* Poor, poor [[Manga/TokyoGhoul Kaneki Ken]]. Where do we begin? His father died when he was only four, leaving only books to remember him by. His mother, whom he repeatedly refers to as kind and a wonderful person, [[spoiler: beat him as a child]] before working herself to death to support herself, her sister, and her son when Kaneki was ten. After his mother's death, he was sent to live with his aunt, who was verbally and emotionally abusive towards him, excluding him from family meals and instead giving him a meager amount of money to buy his own food. He gets six months or so of happiness after leaving for college, until [[TheChewToy the universe decides he hasn't had enough trauma lately]], and he goes on a date with Kamishiro Rize, who turns out to be a ghoul and tries to kill and eat Kaneki. After [[spoiler: what seems to be]] an accident involving steel beams falling and crushing Rize. To save his life, her organs are transplanted into Kaneki, turning him into a half-ghoul hybrid. ''And all of this is just up to the first episode''. After that, he is tricked into becoming a meal in the Ghoul Restaurant, then forced to fight for his own life and that of three others' because he ''tastes good''. He's then kidnapped by Aogiri and tortured psychologically and physically by having his fingers and toes torn off repeatedly with pliers and a centipede left to crawl around in his ear for ten days straight. [[spoiler: It's loosely implied that he was sexually assaulted as well.]] His defining breaking moment comes when he is forced to choose between killing a mother and a child. He chooses himself to die. His tormentor kills them both. The whole ordeal has such an effect on him that his hair turns white, his nails turn black, and he abandons the subservient ideology he was taught by his mother, instead taking it upon himself to protect everyone he cares about. This mindset leads to him eating ghouls in order to become stronger, taking a serious toll on his sanity. Watching him ramble incoherently about his body belonging to him is utterly heartbreaking. He ends up accidentally stabbing one of his comrades before coming to his senses and sobbing, apologizing over and over, and going home and [[AngstComa curling up on his bed in a ball of self-loathing for several days]]. [[spoiler: And it all ends with the possibility that Kaneki has injured or killed his best friend and Kaneki being [[CurbStompBattle '''brutally beaten''' by the CCG's God of Death, stabbed through the abdomen and both of his eyes. The pages of him stumbling around, his sanity slipping, and asking if he's going to die, are some of the saddest from the whole manga. He's not dead, but :RE doesn't seem to be treating him much better.]] '''''And all of this happened because the poor kid just wanted to go on a date.'''''

* The entire series of ''Manga/SevenSeeds''. It starts off by some of the protagonists waking up to a ship they are on sinking, then learn that they are in the future after [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt meteorites impacted upon Earth]] and, not believing this story, head off on their own to see ruins of their hometowns. ''Then'' we even get some flashback chapters that show or describe the world before the impact, and even that one isn't sunshine and rainbows, with natural disasters like earthquakes and floods being an almost daily occurrence. And even shelters, made to keep some of the people save, don't do all that much better.
** Then you have the entire candidacy for Team Summer A. These are kids who are raised in an institution, knowing of the meteorites to come and are being raised for survival in a post-apocalyptic world and are in constant rivalry to be chosen for Team Summer A. Things get worse when [[spoiler:Ango (and Ryo) find out that "dropping out" means getting killed, that their Final Test to determine who will be chosen involves ''killing'' [[KillEmAll everyone]] except the last remaining seven ''and'' then there is the Final Test itself. Students get killed by guns exploding due to backfiring from poor maintenance, being buried alive under rock, getting maimed by animals, being half-crushed under rocks and slowly dying...]] It's not a surprise that the members of Team Summer A are a bit...[[AxCrazy unhinged]] at times.

** Edward from the 2003 anime adaption. Both at the beginning of the series and at the end.

* Both Sorata and Nanami of ''LightNovel/SakurasouNoPetNaKanojo'' suffer through this in episode 21. While they had some other outstanding issues, it finally reached a boiling point for both of them after all the bad things that kept happening to them, such as their failures to achieve something in the goals they were reaching for.

* Simon from ''Anime/TengenToppaGurrenLagann'' has basically everyone close to him die, and no matter how much ScrewDestiny is the theme of the series there seems to be nothing he can do to prevent it. In the end, he [[spoiler:abandons Spiral Power entirely, because he knows first hand how destructive it is.]]

** Connie Springer. Just...the things done to that poor boy over the course of a month. He starts out as PluckyComicRelief, but once things go downhill for him they go downhill ''quickly''. [[FreshMeat Fresh]] from graduation, he's thrust into battle against the Titans and nearly killed several times. Many of his classmates die horrible deaths, leaving him deeply shaken. Even so, he [[CowardlyLion does not lose]] the will to fight. Then it went FromBadToWorse, as strange events within Wall Rose result in him finding [[spoiler: his village devoid of life, save a single crippled Titan that he's absolutely sure ''greeted him'' and looks like his mother]]. Then, he finds out that [[spoiler: not only are three of his good friends secretly Titan Shifters, his surrogate Big Brother is in fact TheMole]] and nearly kills them all. Last but definitely not least, he takes part in an investigation of [[spoiler: his DoomedHometown, confirming that Titans were once human. The Titans that attacked within Wall Rose were his friends and family, who are all dead now. And the mysterious Titan that spoke to him ''is'' his mother, trapped as a near-mindless monster and probably doomed to spend the rest of her life as a test subject for the military]]. Ouch.